Well, that may have been your point, but when we are talking about credibility of the hearsay, by injecting the unlikely claim about Hitchens' conversion, then we are not just discussing the admissibility of hearsay.ant wrote:Brilliant retort! Except it entirely misses the point: the ability of hearsay to place words in the mouth of anyone, particularly the dead.Harry wrote:Well, actually not. It is entirely consistent with her previous views and her obvious political interest in the character of the court.
That's a pretty scurrilous thing to say. Of course you will deny that you actually accused me of reacting from emotion, much less of being unhinged. Oh, no, not Ant. Ant would never do that.ant wrote:This is an emotional time for the unhinged left - I get it.
I don't find that I agree with Ocasio-Cortez about very much.ant wrote:You sound nearly as naive as Ocasio Cortez who is on record saying the dying wishes of Ruth should not be ignored and that "we" are in an "a fight for our lives" now.
As for it being a "fight for our lives," I think it would be wise of Mitt Romney, who is probably the swing vote, to reflect on his experience in Blue State politics to see what would be the result of putting an overturner on the court. Trump, who has probably paid for a few abortions in his day, does not care about abortion laws one bit. Nor does he care about the Republican party. But a lot of cogent analysis has found that if voters actually have to vote on the issue of outlawing abortion, the Republicans will be kicked out of power in all but the deepest red states, the ones who are not considered swing states at this point. They amount to about 130 electoral votes.
The Supreme Court could win Iowa for Trump, and in a pinch Pennsylvania, but it is very likely to lose Florida for him. The problem is, as occasional burps of foolishness from the red state frenzy over abortion have shown, they can't win on the issue of rape. Not very many people, (by which I mean no more than about 30% of the public) believe that a woman who has been raped has an obligation to carry that child to term. And like Obamacare, when the issue is actually on the ballot, it will swing against the Republicans.
The current Republican drive to overturn Roe v Wade needs a rationale that will hold up. Tribalism is enough in the Deep Red states, but not in the bulk of the country. They could argue that Roe v Wade was wrongly decided because there is no right to privacy, as Scalia insisted, in which case there is no protection for the right to use contraception, either. But of course no one, even in the party of Trump and McConnell, is foolish enough to go after contraception. (These "staying on message" requirements can be quite stringent. Trump actually proposed putting women in jail for getting an abortion, once, foolishly thinking that he understood the arguments and that the right is willing to take the position that abortion is murder.)
So what is the right-wing position? That it ought to be able to use heartbeat bills and social denial of abortion provision through admitting privilege requirements and lots of other seemingly legitimate restrictions to fight abortion. But they never come to grips with the actual issue, which is that privacy rights need a solid reason to be squashed, and they are not willing to take the extreme positions, such as that abortion is murder, needed to justify that on the basis of principle.
But that's okay, because principle was never their goal. The Republican party is the rickety cart driven by the libertarian rich who dangle the carrot of abortion restrictions in front of the religious right, the horse who powers them to electoral victory. The last thing they want is for the horse to actually get the carrot. Then what would they dangle?
The irony is that they are going to end up increasing the use of RU-486 and other "murder weapons" since women may not be able to wait until they know that they are actually pregnant to do something about the possibility. And their credibility keeps dropping.
That is assuredly true, though sometimes a good rallying cry can get people fired up.ant wrote: alleged "dying wishes" do not count,