Completely Unnecessary

Palin’s widely anticipated stuff up on Supreme Court cases aired tonight.

The governor believes Roe v Wade should be left to the states because she’s ‘a Federalist’, but also believes there’s an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution.

I’ll leave that contradiction aside because I don’t care about Palin’s stance on abortion (and her verbal roulette in that clip probably doesn’t explain it that well anyway).

The anticipation had to do with Couric’s follow up. Palin notably couldn’t think of any other Supreme Court cases with which she disagreed - other than nameless ones that should be left to the states.

But as Jezebel commenter, lacey in ak, points out, at least one decision should have occurred to the governor. Perhaps Palin might have remembered that she filed an amicus brief in Exxon v Baker and then released a statement complaining about the decision.

That last part happened in June.

In other news, in the Senate today the bailout was strangely attached to the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Bill. Ezra Klein explains:

Tax bills have to originate in the House of Representatives. But the current thinking is that the Senate should pass a bailout bill to increase pressure on the House. So they needed to find some piece of legislation that had already passed the House but had not yet passed the Senate.

The 25 Nay votes are a strange mishmash of Senators from both sides of the aisle. It’s probably not often that Russ Feingold finds himself voting with Brownback, Sessions and Inhofe. (Also means that Feingold voted against the Wellstone bill, which must have killed him.) Dole made a bid to hang onto her Senate seat with her ‘no’ vote - who knows if it’ll work.

And, finally, the corruption trial of Senator Ted Sevens (R-AK) continues apace. Today, friend and renovator, Bill Allen, testified that while Stevens asked for an invoice, it was clear that Allen should never bill the senator for work done to ‘the chalet’.

Apparently Allen and Stevens were such close friends that they:

used to go to “boot camp” in the desert Southwest - where they would walk around, eating little and drinking only wine, “trying to get some pounds off.” [ADN via Mudflats]

I have no idea.

(Sounds pretty awesome though…)

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I know I’m behind the times; on the upside, I know far more about Australian irrigation, catchment levels and the Murray-Darling scheme than I’d ever hoped to learn.

Anyway, onto Justice Kennedy, who reasserted himself as my favorite Supreme Court justice after a lengthly period on my shit list. Writing the Opinion (.pdf) in Boumediene v. Bush (the case that gave Gitmo detainees their rights back) he said:

Although the United States has maintained complete and uninterrupted control of Guantanamo for over 100 years, the Government’s view is that the Constitution has no effect there, at least as to noncitizens, because the United States disclaimed formal sovereignty in its 1903 lease with Cuba. The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say “what the law is.”

I feel that ‘Snap!’ doesn’t properly represent the the six years of illegality under which these detainees have been held.

Kennedy first won his way into my heart via his Opinion in 1993’s Church of the Lukumi Babalu-Aye v. City of Hialeah:

Our review confirms that the laws in question were enacted by officials who did not understand, failed to perceive, or chose to ignore the fact that their official actions violated the Nation’s essential commitment to religious freedom… No one suggests, and on this record it cannot be maintained, that city officials had in mind [as the target of their ordinances] a religion other than Santería.

I might not always agree with him, but the man does not mince words, which I respect more than most things. The Hialeah ruling is like series of uppercuts to the judge below him - awesome.

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Exhibit A: SCOTUS’ recent 6-3 vote upholding Indiana’s voter ID law. The law requires residents to produce a state or federal ID to vote. (Free IDs are provided by the state, but require an original birth certificate or passport.)

Exhibit B: Bill progressing through Missouri that would require proof of citizenship from voters. Residents would be required to produce an original birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport. (Missouri is also recently advanced a bill similar to the one upheld by the Supreme Court.

Exhibit C: Justice John Paul Stevens (88), Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (75), Justice Antonin Scalia (72), Justice Anthony Kennedy (71), Justice Stephen Breyer (69), Justice David Souter (68).

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I think ‘Supreme Count Upholds Ban on Abortion Procedure’ says it all.

The NYT just filed the story 10 minutes ago, so PP and Naral don’t have anything yet. Presumably, they’re going to need time to formulate their responses. Nothing from the ACLU. Neither does Feministing.

Kennedy sided with the majority. I can’t believe it. Kennedy is my ‘Church of the Lukumi Babalu-Aye vs. City of Hialeah’ savior - the go to guy.

This is going to be really bad.

The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions.

More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics. Nearly 90 percent of those occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not affected by Tuesday’s ruling.

Six federal courts have said the law that was in focus Wednesday is an impermissible restriction on a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Really bad. I hate to sound like a doomsday prognosticator, but this doesn’t bode well for any ruling via further action in South Dakota and any of the other states that will try outright bans now.

Something like only 40% percent of women in my age bracket think abortion rights are something worth fighting for, are important. When the rest of these cards fall, it won’t be women like me and the ones that read this blog that suffer. It’ll be working-class women 200 miles from a clinic that have to take three days off work and pay for a hotel because of waiting periods. It’s poor young girls who don’t have the savvy to speak in front of a judge. It’s going to be the poor and the disadvantaged and America will continue this insane backward slide against women’s rights.

Oop, Feministing just blogged. They’re right.

From SCOTUSblog:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking out in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling “an alarming decision” that refuses “to take seriously” the Court’s 1992 decisions reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.

Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said “the Court’s opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman’s health.” She said the federal ban “and the Court’s defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court — and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power.”

I bet she really misses Sandra Day O’Connor now. Me too. Fuck, I’m going to bed.

More from the AP:

Kennedy’s dissent in 2000 was so strong that few court watchers expected him to take a different view of the current case.

Kennedy acknowledged continuing disagreement about the procedure within the medical community. In the past, courts have cited that uncertainty as a reason to allow the disputed procedure.

But Kennedy said, “The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice.”

He said the more common abortion method, involving dismemberment, is beyond the reach of the federal ban.

While the court upheld the law against a broad attack on its constitutionality, Kennedy said the court could entertain a challenge in which a doctor found it necessary to perform the banned procedure on a patient suffering certain medical complications.

Another Update: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is a place to look for a statement as well. They filed an amicus brief with the Court noting that it is sometimes the safest procedure for women.

Another (I lied about the bed thing. It’s only 1:15… who’s tired): Dan Savage:

One of the liberals “pitted against” the conservative majority on the court—John Paul Stevens—turns 87 on April 20th. George W. Bush has 642 days left in office. Pray for Stevens. Another Bush appointment to the US Supreme Court would be a disaster for women, gays, minorities, prisoners, “enemy combatants,” and the environment.

In addition to praying for Stevens, anyone that cares about the rights of women, gays, minorities, etc., needs to register to vote, get behind a Democratic candidate, write checks, support the Democratic nominee whoever that person is, vote next November and make sure all your friends do the same. No pouting if your preferred candidate doesn’t get the nomination. And no squandering votes on third-party candidates.

Amen.

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The Washington Supreme Court today joined the New York Supreme Court in upholding the ban on gay marriage. As New York and Washington seemed like two of the most likely states for gay marriage, anyone on this side of the issue has to be feeling pretty crappy today.

The decision by the court points out that they’re simply ruling on the ability of the legislature to make rules for the state, and not making a judgment on the quality of the law itself. Yet, the court says:

…limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to the survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children’s biological parents.

Apparently, adopted children and those raised by same-sex couples (even when one of the parents is the biological parent) aren’t the same as real kids. Thoughts on how this might be extrapolated?

In one of the dissents (there were three, with four justices dissenting), one of the justices points out:

If the DOMA is really about the “sanctity” of marriage, as its title implies, then it is clearly an unconstitutional foray into state-sanctioned religious belief.”

I’m getting a bit sick of the ‘punch to the guts’ feeling when it comes to politics in America.

Here are the links to the decision, if you care to read them. And here is one of what is sure to be many blogs out of The Stranger today.

Update: Also, part of the ruling claims that there is no unequal treatment for gays:

Neither a man nor a woman may marry a person of the same sex.

Unfortunately for gay people, this also means they won’t be able to marry the person they’d like to share their life with. That is the most foolish rationale ever.

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