Planned Parenthood Action Fund's ranking

Here's the link.http://www.ppaction.org/ppvotes/Scorecard.html

Wording wasn't clear: he's not the only one to have received a 0% ranking (Cf., as you suggest, Brownback), but -- obviously -- it's as low as you can go.

-- Lynn Harris

No, I am sorry but I don't get it. Yes, we knew that a 0% rating was as low as "you can go." You didn't say that McCain 'was one of a large number of Senators with a zero rating.' You slanted the reporting, to make it appear that McCain was an unusually radical abortion foe. Because that fit with your argument. Even though the facts were otherwise.

I'd have a lot more respect for the pro-life forces (I think that if I were a legislator, I'd vote in favor of most reproductive rights, as might Justice Thomas, but as a judge I'd overrule Roe v. Wade in an instant) if their arguments and methods weren't so intellectually dishonest.

Since most decisions of real importance to the nation appear to be made at the Supreme court level, in reality the supreme court becomes the PRIMARY Authority in the land. MAybe who is president is somewhat irrelevant?

-- inkredulous

Before Roe versus Wade, the law concerning abortions was remarkable; it was actually decided by the people's elected representatives in their state legislatures. Not courts. In 1973, New York and Massachusetts had liberalized their abortion laws and many other states were moving in the same direction.

By all reasonable accounts, had the Supreme Court not intervened to overrule state laws on abortion, the entire field of abortion law would have been removed from the legal colloseum of radical activists on both sides; moderates, neededing compromise in state legislatures, would have won the day.

Since the time of Roe, the entire matter has been subjected to largely 30 years of uninterrupted stewardship by the federal courts, acting as a super-legislature. To the great detriment of the judiciary, and particularly the judicial selection process. We no longer pick judges and justices based on legal criteria but how we might hope that they "legislate" in the ongoing, never-ending legislation-by-court-order.

This is why someone like me hopes that a Republican will be elected President, and a more or less permanent majority of Justices who share the thinking of Justice Thomas will be established on the Court. Abandon Roe, and immediately look to state legislatures to enact reasonable, moderate, publicly-supported laws relating to abortion and reproductive rights.

I am aware of how he hopes to attack McCain:

"Mr. Obama, in his victory speech in Madison, Wis., acted almost as the primaries were behind him, offering a case against the probable Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, as he spoke disparagingly of “Bush-McCain Republicans.” It amounted to a preview of what an Obama-McCain race might be like, and it reduced Mrs. Clinton, at least for one night, to the role of bystander."

-New York Times, 2/13/08

I was listening to NPR last night.

After McCain's speech last night, when he attacked Obama for talking about hope and called war opponents naive, Mara Liasson gave the speech a rave and talked about it was somehow setting up McCain to run from the center. I suppose that if you also work for Fox News, then McCain might look like a centrist to you.

But the press has decided that McCain is a maverick, a straight talker, a natural leader, a military expert, and no amount of reality will shake this conviction.

-- Joe Buck

NPR as Republican apologist? Huh? The network that employs Daniel Schorr as its "Senior News Analyst"? Where Salon's own Garrison Keillor makes his broadcasting home? The network where you can find Amy Goodman, Ferai Chedeyah, Kurt Anderson, Terry Gross and Tavis Smiley? The partner network with Pacifica Broadcasting?

Remember, Mara Liasson and Juan Williams are respectively, the voices of moderation and the left at Fox. At NPR, they are just moderates at a network whose views range from the moderate left to the extremist left.

Just asking. Name-calling seems like such a productive way to manage serious national affairs.

As for the "racism" charge, let's not look to Rick Santorum; he's too young. Let's find someone who was actually there to witness the Klan in the 40's and 50's, and who had a hand in fighting integration. Let's ask Robert Byrd, (D-W.VA), former "Kleagle" of the West Virgina Klan.

Okay?

Gosh, it would be nice if we could all get past the race issue. Let's ask Al Sharpton how to do that.

The Elephantman decries imagined name calling with actual name calling.

Does Salon pay you to be the official Republican Jester or is it just a hobby? In any case keep it up, because you ROCK pal.

--Anonymous

I am so relieved to know that it was just my imagination. And that no one should understand any of this to imply that Republicans are racist. Glad to have cleared that up. No doubt Salon "progessives" are exquisitely sensitive to that kind of thing.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/02/jewish_rep_cohen_battles_antis.html

Democrats - the party steadfastly opposing racis-- WOOOOPS!

An appropriate screen name in this instance. Before you attacked Justice Thomas, whom you don't know, and about whose rulings you seem to have little understanding, you should have read his dissent in Lawrence v Texas.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZD1.html

As a legislator, he'd have voted to repeal Texas' state law criminalizing homosexual sodomy. An "uncommonly silly law" was the description that both he and Justice Scalia used to describe the law.

But as a Supreme Court Justice, Thomas (properly) rejected the notion that homosexual sodomy was a "fundamental right" that the founding fathers had intended to protect under the constitution.

So you see, your prejudices against Justice Thomas, probably as a result of reading articles like those on Salon, are unfounded.

Tossed out on the eve of the election, no less.