Blog For Arizona

Michael: JudgeAlito.com

Wow. A campaign web site for a Supreme Court nominee. Check it out at JudgeAlito.com. It makes a good case for ScAlito based on his resume, but papers over the real issue of his clear ideological aims revealed by his record on the federal bench.

The Extreme Right is having no hesitation throwing as much weight as they can at ensuring ScAlito's ascension. Given that only a scintilla of information about his position on abortion is demonstrated by the record, their zeal and unstinting support may seem a surprising contrast to their scuppering of Miers.

Unlike Miers, who made some unfortunate comments about 'autonomy', ScAlito has clearly signalled his allegiance to the strategy of incrementally decreasing women's access to abortion. But there is no strong signal that he is ready to sack Roe, and there's a good reason for that: burning Roe is a conservative straw man. It is a good rabble rouser, but it's not a valid judicial strategy. Civil Libertarians holding their fire until ScAlito clearly signals an intent to overrun Roe are likely to never get a chance to repulse ScAlito's assault on our rights.

Rather than a frontal assault on Roe (a decision which a clear majority of Americans support), a fifth column of jurists like ScAlito seek to chip away at the foundations of a woman's privacy until Roe is just more dead-letter law and collapses into the void they've dug. ScAlito poses a dire threat to the rights of American women, especially the poor and victimized, but not because he's posed to conquer Roe. Unless the we stop focusing exclusively on the citadel of Roe, we might find the war for women's rights has been lost because we were massed on the wrong battlefield.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 11/04/2005 02:36:00 AM