Thursday, October 27, 2005
Ann, You Ignorant Slut
No indictments today, apparently, but the announcement of Harriet Miers' withdrawal probably has something to do with the Plamegate story anyhow. Since last summer, on several occasions when He Who Shall Not Be Named has found himself in political trouble, whether it was over Plamegate or Hurricane Katrina, he's used court appointments to direct attention away from it. Salon has the timeline.
As for the rest of the early commentary on Miers, better take the rest of the day off to read it. Salon also blows the smoke away from the Miers cover story, that she withdrew because the administration was unwilling to release certain documents about her tenure. At the Gadflyer, Sarah Posner discusses the damage the Miers debacle does to women, and to female lawyers. (Remember that slogan from last year: "W" stands for women? Yeah, right.) And John at AMERICABlog has nine reasons to be happy about the Miers withdrawal.
One big reason to be happy is that the mask is finally off the beast. Most savvy observers know that the wingnuts want, more than anything else in the whole wide world, judges who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. But they can't come right out and say it, because that would be committing the cardinal sin of asking nominees to prejudge cases that may come before them. So they usually couch that wish in language that's vague and neutral. But even if they try to go back to that now, nobody should buy it. They've made clear that if they don't know in advance that you're going to vote to overture Roe, they don't want you--and there's no way for them to run from it. If Harriet Miers had been precisely the same inept, sloppy, undistinguished candidate she turned out to be, but was on record opposing Roe, they would have touted her as one of America's finest jurists. As it is, however, the only person who believed that nonsense was her boss.
Atrios notes that Ann Coulter was on Fox this morning, gleefully celebrating Miers' withdrawal. Her objection to Miers is that Harriet was not opposed to the Griswold v. Connecticut ruling, which, in 1965, made contraception legal for married couples. That's right, kids. If you don't want to risk babies every time you do the nasty, you Hate America. But it seems strange to me that Coulter herself would want to make contraception harder to get, given that she looks to be the sort of woman who (channeling Dan Aykroyd), hops from bed to bed with the frequency of a cheap ham radio.
Quote of the Year? Daily Kos noted yesterday a recent Saturday Night Live parody of the teleconference between He Who Shall Not Be Named and soldiers in Iraq. It contained the following, which might be the Iraq War Quote of the Year: "The Iraqi people are so full of freedom they could burst. Sometimes an Iraqi will be so full of democracy they'll walk into a crowded area and explode."
No indictments today, apparently, but the announcement of Harriet Miers' withdrawal probably has something to do with the Plamegate story anyhow. Since last summer, on several occasions when He Who Shall Not Be Named has found himself in political trouble, whether it was over Plamegate or Hurricane Katrina, he's used court appointments to direct attention away from it. Salon has the timeline.
As for the rest of the early commentary on Miers, better take the rest of the day off to read it. Salon also blows the smoke away from the Miers cover story, that she withdrew because the administration was unwilling to release certain documents about her tenure. At the Gadflyer, Sarah Posner discusses the damage the Miers debacle does to women, and to female lawyers. (Remember that slogan from last year: "W" stands for women? Yeah, right.) And John at AMERICABlog has nine reasons to be happy about the Miers withdrawal.
One big reason to be happy is that the mask is finally off the beast. Most savvy observers know that the wingnuts want, more than anything else in the whole wide world, judges who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. But they can't come right out and say it, because that would be committing the cardinal sin of asking nominees to prejudge cases that may come before them. So they usually couch that wish in language that's vague and neutral. But even if they try to go back to that now, nobody should buy it. They've made clear that if they don't know in advance that you're going to vote to overture Roe, they don't want you--and there's no way for them to run from it. If Harriet Miers had been precisely the same inept, sloppy, undistinguished candidate she turned out to be, but was on record opposing Roe, they would have touted her as one of America's finest jurists. As it is, however, the only person who believed that nonsense was her boss.
Atrios notes that Ann Coulter was on Fox this morning, gleefully celebrating Miers' withdrawal. Her objection to Miers is that Harriet was not opposed to the Griswold v. Connecticut ruling, which, in 1965, made contraception legal for married couples. That's right, kids. If you don't want to risk babies every time you do the nasty, you Hate America. But it seems strange to me that Coulter herself would want to make contraception harder to get, given that she looks to be the sort of woman who (channeling Dan Aykroyd), hops from bed to bed with the frequency of a cheap ham radio.
Quote of the Year? Daily Kos noted yesterday a recent Saturday Night Live parody of the teleconference between He Who Shall Not Be Named and soldiers in Iraq. It contained the following, which might be the Iraq War Quote of the Year: "The Iraqi people are so full of freedom they could burst. Sometimes an Iraqi will be so full of democracy they'll walk into a crowded area and explode."
