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Five Votes to Overturn Roe? NO.

Earlier this week, conservative blog “The Confluence” reposted their favorite lie, that with Alito, there are now 5 votes on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. This is patently false, as anyone who cares enough to invest even five minutes worth of investigation could tell you.

PUMAs love to leverage this lie, to convince susceptible swing voters that it’s okay to vote for theo-cons like Palin, because the damage to Roe’s already been done. Thankfully, they’ll never have the chance to vote for her again. But it’s worth noting, just to correct a blatant and knowing lie, that there are certainly not five votes to overturn Roe.

Indeed, if there were, it’d already be gone. The Court had the chance to overturn Roe in Gonzales v. Carhart in 2007. There, five Justices voted to limit the right to a specific late term abortion procedure (erroneously, I think); four would have preserved a stronger right to choose; and only two would have overruled Roe outright.

This was Justice Kennedy’s chance to flip and strike down Roe if he wanted to, but instead he himself authored an (admittedly flawed) opinion that explicitly preserved the right to choose. Indeed, Kennedy has voted many times previously to preserve Roe, once when its continuing survival was most in doubt. There may be anywhere between two and four votes to overturn Roe outright. But with Obama in office, that’s all there will ever be.

Note, too, that Obama will have at least one, and likely three chances to appoint justices to the Supreme Court. If any of the three likely replacements were in the hands of a conservative President, the dreaded anti-Roe majority would in fact become a reality. Make no mistake — with their support for Palin, the PUMAs would have killed Roe, Riverdaughter’s dishonest attempt to resolve the cognitive dissonance notwithstanding.

Persecution Redux: Palin Still Doesn’t Get It

From a statement recently released, on Facebook of all places:

The response in the main stream media [to my resignation] has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the “politics of personal destruction”. How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country. And though it’s honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make.

Is this intended to be a slap at the media for picking on women generally, or her specifically? Either way, it’s baffling. What “higher calling” is she leaving to pursue? We don’t know, and she’s never said. Does she even know?And when was the last time a governor quit halfway through her term, for no (plausible) stated reason? Call it a good trivia question, because I sure as Hell don’t know.

Palin has spent her last few months tilting against various windmills – first David Letterman for an admittedly tacky (but pointless) joke, and then a hitherto unheard of blogger, because Palin was shocked, just SHOCKED, to learn that there were offensive things on the internet(s). Who knew? Now, in (political) death, we see her return to her favorite pastime, yelling at the media.

In many ways, this latest emergence of her persecution complex is a perfect encapsulation of her most glaring fault: first she does something weird (here, resigning); then, when called on it, she lashes out rather than fixing or learning from her error. It’s an ugly cycle, and one that would raise a red flag in a friend, let alone a prospective vice president.

I admit, the media has been hard on Governor Palin, some would say unfairly so. But especially given her bizarre resignation, it might be time to realize –

The fault, dear Sarah, is not in your stars, but in yourself.

To Rebuild a Bipartisan View of Patriotism, GOP Must Follow Where Obama Led

Starting in 2001, self-described patriots like myself were forced to stand by while the far right wing hijacked the flag and the trappings of national pride to defend a belligerent vision of America at odds with her very being. For objecting, we were called pro-terrorist elitists, and a panoply of other awful names.

All that changed last year, when we ran and elected a President who built his entire campaign, image, and first 100 days on a unified (if left-leaning) vision of the American promise, in which all parties could participate, even by objecting.

The GOP, by contrast, ran a consensus building elder statesman who mortgaged his credibility to an inexperienced small-town politicker premised on the same divided, hyperpartisan idea of “real” and “fake” Americans. For shame.

Now, Palin is gone, and few beyond the late-night comic circle will miss her. The Republican Party should take this chance to reinvent themselves, and build a conservatism that includes, rather than excludes. Citizens can differ on their vision for the nation’s future, but neither party should argue that they, and they alone, define what it means to be an American. The Democrats have taken that step; with Palin’s departure, it’s time for the GOP to follow. What unites us matters far more than what separates us; remember that, no matter where you stand politically, this Independence Day.