"And Obama protects us
from the cold and the rain"

ABORTION FOE TO LEAD HHS FAITH-BASED OFFICE.

President Obama has appointed Alexia Kelley, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), to head the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Health and Human Services. Kelley is a leading proponent of "common ground" abortion reduction -- only CACG's common ground is at odds with that of Obama. While the administration favors reducing the need for abortion by reducing unintended pregnancies, Kelley has made clear that she seeks instead to reduce access to abortion. That is an extremely disturbing development, especially coming this week in the wake of George Tiller's assassination.

Under George W. Bush, the faith-based centers didn't play a policy role. But Obama has expanded the faith-based project to include a policy side, and one of its chief goals is to reduce the need for abortion.

[snip]

Kelley and CACG have made clear they are committed to Catholic doctrine on abortion and birth control. CACG has supported the Pregnant Women's Support Act, aimed at stigmatizing abortion and making it less accessible. In discussing legislation on reducing the need for abortion, Kelley has written that various pieces of legislation concerned with women's health "are not all perfect; some include contraception -- which the Church opposes." Never mind that more than 90 percent of American Catholics use it anyway.

[snip]

In a 2008 press teleconference co-sponsored by CACG and Sojourners, Kelley stated that she supported state-imposed restrictions on abortion, such as waiting periods and informed consent. In her 2008 book, A Nation for All, co-written with Chris Korzen, Kelley wrote, "Each abortion constitutes a direct attack on human life, and so we have a special moral obligation to end or reduce the practice of abortion to the greatest extent possible."

Despite this inflammatory language, Kelley has positioned herself as above the fray of the "culture wars." While she believes making abortion illegal is the best solution, she recognizes that perhaps restricting abortion in other ways is more practical. In A Nation for All, she continued, "Culture warriors in America will argue that to be pro-life, we must ensure that the unborn are protected under the law. This would indeed be an ideal situation. But legal status doesn't always realize the goal that we desire."

CACG did not issue any public statements about the Tiller assassination, though it signed one by Faith in Public Life condemning the murder. But the statement did not condemn the inciting rhetoric of the anti-choice movement. Rather, it made a kumbaya plea for common ground (which as we have seen, is not so common after all).

So, what's this?  The pragmatic way to eliminate abortion?  

I must say that I am overwhelmed by Obama's commitment to the right to choose, and the fitting tribute this pays to Dr. Tiller.

By the way, if you read the opinion it will become clear that the defendant is black.  The judge is white but, since race has nothing to do with police torturing people in New York State, we'll just overlook that.

Of course, the reason for the whole episode was the police screwing up in the first place.  They had gotten a sample (defendant had gone along with it on advice of counsel), then ruined it through their own ineptitude.  So, they came back without getting defendant's counsel involved and wanted another.

It went downhill from there to judicially-sanctioned torture.

For that matter, even if your constitutional interpretation is correct, and you win a decision in the Supreme Court of the United States, your win is worthless if BHO and his flunkies in the Administration decide that they don't want to obey, and make up excuses for courts to make their remedies a hortatory exercise.  Read the brief - it's one of the more brutal face-slap jobs I've ever seen filed in any court, anywhere.

Obama was at his best here. He was really wonderful at tying the personal with the historical and back again to the present. Having a president that can speak of personal experiences in a Muslim nation one day, and then the next day eloquently relate his great-uncle's experiences at Buchenwald is truly a special asset to this country.

Still, it seems hard to believe how quickly it all happens, and how soon we are letting go so they can fly.

How enormously proud you must be of her - that full ride scholarship is a tribute to her athleticism, hard work and academic achievement - and very rarely does that ever happen without strong parental support.

So, give yourself a pat on the back, Dad - you helped make her who she is, and she sounds like a fine young woman.

My niece is off to Hunter College in the fall, so far she is saying pre med....hopefully she takes to higher education better than her old man and crazy uncle...I have a feeling she will, she's one of those weird kids who really likes school.

And so I also recently got to see the first of my progeny graduate from college, and so I understand entirely your mood as balmy as an island breeze.  I have a photo from that day in front of me, and -- other than not being able to figure out who that old lady is who is hugging the best-looking grad ever -- I still am basking in the memories.

When Blackmum wrote the Roe decision the Griswold decision was already law.  Roe is a natural outgrowth of that decision.  Blackmum concluded a woman's right to privacy (pursuant to Griswold), given the risks of carrying to term, outweighs the state's interests in the life of the fetus until viability, and upon viability the state can set reasonable limits on abortion.  Sure, we're left with having to deal with what is a reasonable limitation, and subsequent cases have dealt with that issue.  

That ambiguity in Roe arises not because Roe was written badly.  Rather, because Roe purposefully left that question, which could arise in any number of  circumstances unforeseeable in 1972, to be determined subsequently on a case by case basis.   I doubt a full blown statement that a women's right to choose is absolute under the Constitution could possibly have commanded a majority of the Roe Court, it almost certainly couldn't today.

Roe is not a decision in anyway close to being as badly supported and written as Bush v. Gore.  The Constitution explicitly provides a means for dealing with disputed Presidential elections.  The House elects the President and the Senate the VP.  Bush v. Gore shredded this language and the Court usurped Congress's role, not to mention the role of the State of Florida.  

To equate Roe with Bush v. Gore is to pander to the hypocritical right wing who clearly don't mind judicial activism of the first order when it puts their folks in power. Roe has thus far withstood the test of time (the true test of whether a decision is "good") and is, in my view, a well thought out decision particularly when one considers the time it was written.