I find it sad that some people think the spousal notification law is defensible. Put into a related context, would men appreciate a law that requires them to notify their spouses if they got a vasectomy? A penile implant? A prescription for Viagra? How would a man react to a law that absolutely requires him to notify his wife that he's taking the Little Blue Pill? He'd feel insulted, angry, even outraged that the government is trying to mandate what he has to tell his wife about his own health decisions.

Judge Alito is not only short-sighted, but clearly views wives as the marital property of men. Interestingly, we went to Afghanistan to overthrow people who thought that way.

I would like to apologize for the tone of my letter below. It was a knee jerk reaction to what Kate wrote. I stand by what I said though, just not by the way I said it. Normally I try to be more reserved, but the way in which the comment was written provoked my response. I will try to leave emotions out and just state my logical argument.

A child is not property of the woman and the decision to abort it is not a woman's health decision. I am pro choice, as I don't think a government should tell people how to run their lives (and I don't consider abortion a murder), but there is absolutely nothing wrong with requiring this decision to be made by the two people who produced the child in the first place. When the child is born the father usually feels that it's his as much as the mother. As a man I would be extremely angry if my wife made the decision to abort OUR child on her own without consulting me.

This is a completely normal desire and has nothing to do with looking at women as men's property. Kate's reaction is that of an extreme feminist who, for whatever reason, sees men as evil creatures that women have to constantly fight against. I see women and men as equal partners. As such all family decisions (especially as major as abortion) should be made in cooperation with each other. That is what people in good relationships do.

Well said, reddogs. As a domestic violence counselor, I can say I have personally met many women for whom spousal notification could mean serious injury or death. Statistically, domestic violence often begins or escalates with pregnancy or the birth of a child. Certainly, we would all love to be in a world where couples can lovingly discuss their options in the face of an unexpected pregnancy. That's the way it "should" be. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where that's not always possible. The question is, do we trust women to decide for themselves when it is safe for them to discuss this topic with their husbands or boyfriends? From judges like Alito (and even Salon letters like ranndino), the answer is clearly NO.

Although I generally find Salon's coverage to be precise in a way that few other media sources are, I think you have significantly over-reached when stating that Judge Alito "ruled that the federal government does not have the right to regulate the sale of machine guns."

First of all Judge Alito wrote a dissent; as such he did not "rule" anything. He simply advanced arguments why the ruling of the majority was wrong.

More substantively, he did not even argue that "the government does not have the right to regulate the sale of machine guns." Instead, he argued that Congress overstepped its power under the Commerce Clause (which gives it the power to enact legislation affecting interstate commerce, but leaves issues relating to intra-state commerce to the individual states) because it did not adduce evidence that the statute in questions had a significant enough impact on interstate commerce.

To quote from Judge Alito's dissent:

as I explain below, 18 U.S.C. � 922(o) might be sustainable in its current form if Congress made findings that the purely intrastate possession of machine guns has a substantial effect on interstate commerce or if Congress or the Executive assembled empirical evidence documenting such a link. If, as the government and the majority baldly insist, the purely intrastate possession of machine guns has such an effect, these steps are not too much to demand to protect our system of constitutional federalism.

Judge Alito also went out of his way to make clear that "the statute challenged here would satisfy the demands of the Commerce Clause if Congress simply added a jurisdictional element--a common feature of federal laws in this field and one that has not posed any noticeable problems for federal law enforcement."

In short, Judge Alito was not commenting on the federal government's right to regulate machine guns, but rather on the specific manner in which the relevant statute was passed. People -- like Sen. Hatch, a noted opponent of Commerce Clause limitations -- might object to Judge Alito's reasoning. But I don't think it�s fair to do so on the grounds suggested by Salon.

Call me crazy but the last time I checked it is the job of a responsible judge to objectively interpret laws. This interpretation should have nothing to do with their personal feelings and everything to do with their philosophy on how to interpret the constitution. Personally, I'm absolutely for abortion. I think the legalization of the practice has had a positive effect on society, and I do not find it to be the least bit immoral. On the other hand, I firmly believe that Roe v. Wade is an incredibly sketchy ruling based on some very abiguous reasoning. The real arguement against it has everything to do with protecting states rights and nothing to do with the morality of aborting a pregnancy. If I were a judge on the Supreme Court, I would vote to overturn Roe, despite my personal preferences because that would be the responsible thing to do. If we want abortion to be unconditionally available to all American women we should ammend the consitution to say so.

It might also be prudent to consider that there are other issues at stake here besides abortion and gun control. Apparently a couple hundred prisoners are still being held in Guantanamo Bay for no apparent reason. It might surprise a lot of people to hear that in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Scalia's opionion would widely be percieved to be the most "liberal". Of all the justices on the Supreme Court, only Scalia and Stevens seemed to realize that the term "unlawful enemy combatant" has absoutely no legal justification and the only way to legally detain someone is either through the criminal justice process or as a POW under the Geneva Conventions. Based on that ruling, if Alito is going to have the same sort of reasoning as Scalia, I say bring him on.