On Friday,
Fitzgerald was supposed to indict Karl Rove. Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld were going to be named unindicted co-conspirators. Maybe
Condoleezza Rice too. Who knew — maybe even Clarence Thomas.
There was even talk of a posthumous indictment for Nixon.
It was going
to be Fitzmas Day! (Which is much like Christmas except instead
of having her baby in a manger, the woman has a late-term abortion.)
Oh, it was hard to fall asleep on Fitzmas Eve!
But Friday
came, and only Irve Lewis Libby was accused of committing any
crimes. They were all crimes like perjury and obstruction of justice,
personal to Libby, unrelated to the administration.
Fitzmas sucked.
Instead of GI Joe and Mr. Machine, all Democrats got was a lousy
cardigan sweater.
With the
Democrats still reeling from Friday's sad news, Bush gave them
a right-hook by nominating the stunningly qualified Judge Sam
Alito on Monday. (So I guess not all qualified candidates for
the Supreme Court turned Bush down before he nominated Miers.)
Not only
is Alito qualified, but he also does not consider membership in
the Federalist Society comparable to joining the Klan. In other
words, this was just the sort of judicial nominee that would have
terrified the White House a month ago.
Judge Alito's
dear 90-year-old mother — who evidently had not yet been
briefed by White House political consultants to avoid stating
positions popular with Americans — immediately said of her
son, "Of course he's against abortion."
As a judge
on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito voted to uphold a Pennsylvania
statute passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor
that required women to notify their husbands before getting an
abortion. (This was later deemed an "undue burden" by
liberals' favorite Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.)
There is
no question about Alito's qualifications. Democrats can only oppose
him for his record, which will alarm a narrow segment of lunatics
commonly known as "the Democratic Party base."
Now that
timid Republicans are forced to face their fears, it turns out
that liberal America was always a paper tiger. Americans are not
rising in anger at a judicial nominee who would uphold a state
law requiring husbands to be notified of their wives' abortions.
The only
people attacking Alito for his abortion ruling are the usual nuts
— Planned Parenthood, NARAL, People for the American Way
and senators from New York and California (or what CBS thinks
of as "the American heartland").
So confident
are the Democrats about the popularity of their stance on abortion
that the day after Alito's nomination, Senate Democrats shut down
the Senate so they wouldn't be forced to talk about Alito.
Minority
Leader Harry Reid dramatically invoked an obscure Senate rule
to close the Senate for two hours, putatively in order to rehash
old arguments about the Iraq war in closed session. In other words,
Reid demanded more transparency in government by shutting the
doors, throwing out the public, dimming the lights, and turning
off the TV cameras in the chambers of the U.S. Senate.
That night,
the cable news shows were fixated on Reid's weird stunt —
and Senate Democrats narrowly avoided having to talk about Alito's
abortion ruling for one more day.
If this is
not a coincidence, let's see how long it takes Harry Reid to go
on TV and state his position on a wife having to notify her husband
before getting an abortion. Heck, I'd settle for seeing Harry
Reid definitively adopt any position on legalized abortion.
The nuts
are perplexed. Why aren't Senate Democrats screaming from rooftops:
"This is a judge who would force women to tell their husbands
before they have an abortion! Are you people listening?"
Maybe the
Democrats aren't running from their base. Maybe they're trying
to help NARAL by preventing anyone from finding out about their
agenda. If only Democrats could get the American people to believe
that a group with the words "abortion" and "rights"
in its name is some kind of benevolent little charity that holds
bake sales.
Believe me,
you don't want the Democrats out there reminding the American
people that it's a constitutional right to abort a baby five minutes
before birth. I understand that People for the American Way thinks
it is "the American way" for wives not to tell their
husbands about an abortion. But that's because they need to get
out more.
In a 2003
Gallup poll, 72 percent of respondents favored a law requiring
the husband of a woman to be notified if she decides to have an
abortion. To put it another way, only 28 percent of Americans
hold the position that married men have absolutely no reproductive
rights whatsoever (but a lot of responsibilities!).
Upward of
60 percent of self-described "liberals" and "Democrats"
favored husbands being notified of their wives' abortions. This
is consistent with polls going back a decade.
If these
poll results don't sound right to you, try crossing Central Park
sometime. You'll find another part of Manhattan that's not the
Upper West Side. Or do something wild and visit Queens or Staten
Island. You won't even have to leave New York City! See how normal
people react to the idea of a woman being required to tell her
husband that she's having an abortion.
In the past
few years, the Democrats have had to run from big government,
gun control, welfare, criminal rights and gay marriage. With the
Alito nomination, it looks like the Democrats are going to have
to renounce the NARAL ladies or prepare for another sad day after
the 2006 elections.
