Airing of Grievances: Debbie Schlussel
If her shameful yet shameless handling of the Jill Carroll kidnapping were not bad enough, Schlussel reminds us once again why the world would be a better place of she would STFU already. Conservatives already have a great reason to vote against Bar(r)a(c)k Hussein Obama: he’s a freedom hating, race-card-playing socialist. Conservatives, liberals and moderates alike have another pretty good reason to oppose him in 2008: he’s a political neophyte who has no business even thinking about running for President until 2016 at the earliest – and then only if he accomplishes something significant in the meantime. But just because we all have at least good reasons to oppose the guy, why should that stop the cupid stunt from offering a totally crappy reason on top of that.
Hot tip: ‘Hat Air, or something like that. Baldilocks and Captain Ed have more.
UPDATE: Beth isn’t impressed, either. Is anyone? Other than Schlussel herself, that is.
UPDATE x2: Neither are Little Miss Attila and the Political Pitbull. Time for Carnival of Debbie Schlussel is a Cupid Stunt, Part Duh.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:27 am
xrlq, on Sen. Obama: “he’s a political neophyte who has no business even thinking about running for President until 2016 at the earliest – and then only if he accomplishes something significant in the meantime.”
Did xrlq vote for GW Bush?
Of course, that hasn’t been working out so well, so I can see his point. Just seems that xrlq’s ill-placed to make it.
December 21st, 2006 at 7:27 am
Clod/Raj/Croche/whatever the hell you’re calling yourself this week: as always you miss the point. For one thing, I did not vote for GWB in the 2000 primary, only in the general where the alternative would have been President Gore. For another, even at that stage GWB had a lot more relevant experience than Obama has now. Six years as an effective governor of a large state, the first four of which were gained by defeating a popular incumbent, are nothing to sneeze at. Two years as a pretty boy in the Senate (OK, four years if he still has a pulse in 2008), by defeating a carpetbagging crank after the real opponent withdraws, is. At the most, you could argue that 2016 is a little too far out for the comparison to be fair. By 2012 he will have had to face re-election, so I guess a reasonable person (read: not you) could argue that I should have picked that year instead. I didn’t for two reasons: (1) I don’t think Senate experience, by itself, is a strong path to Presidency as gubernatorial experience clearly is, and (2) I’m not all that confident the Republicans will win the Presidency in ‘08 unless the Dems are dumb enough to nominate Obama – and certainly don’t envision Obama challenging a Democrat incumbent in the ‘12 primary.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:38 pm
The day a Chicago Democrat becomes President is the day we declare “All-You-Can-Carry” Day at the U.S. Treasury. A Chicago Republican for that matter, too.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:43 pm
And, yes, Schlussel is a bumb ditch.
December 21st, 2006 at 3:52 pm
She’s not finished making an ass of herself, either. I noticed she also has gone after Sen. Brownback (”Brown-backBONELESS”–love her “wit”) because where he initially (and stupidly) opposed a Bush judicial nominee because she attended the wedding of her neighbor’s daughter (neighbors of 26 years!), he now lifted his block of the nomination. Problem is, it was a lesbian wedding. HORRORS! How dare someone attend a long-time neighbor’s wedding, if it’s a lesbian wedding! So now the cupid stunt thinks Sam Brownback isn’t conservative and is “backBONELESS.” Like someone attending one gay wedding is going to make them an activist judge for SSM? Hello? (Did Brownback–or Schlussel–worry about Scalia or Roberts or Alito being activists because they’re Catholic? No, that was the left, because their judges are activists.)
Seems to me the conservative position would be to say “Go ahead and get married, just don’t expect The Gubmint to sanction it.” Or, “Who cares, as long as the judge (Neff) isn’t a judicial activist for either side of the issue.”
But then, McCarthy–er, Schlussel–has questioned my conservative cred, so what do I know?
December 21st, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Beth:
“go ahead and get married, just don’t …” and “who cares, as long as the judge…” are more of a libertarian than a conservative position, as conservatives don’t like anything that smacks of same-sex marriage, government sanctioned or not… and they don’t dislike judicial activists in principle, they only hate liberal judicial activists.
And I don’t get the McCarthy dig. Are you saying McCarthy was wrong to oppose communism in general and in particular the communist infiltration of our government?
December 22nd, 2006 at 6:52 am
I disagree with your suggestion that conservatives generally like judicial activists. Not saying it’s never happened, only that the last example I can think, Lochner v. New York, of is more than a century old, not the result one might expect if political conservatives were clamoring too hard for the right (get it, “right?”) kind of judicial activism. By contrast, there does seem to be a significant libertarian contingent, led by Randy Barnett, that favors exactly that.
Beth can speak for herself, of course, but I took her McCarthy dig as a reference to the excesses of “the McCarthy era” generally, including HUAC’s. The analogies to Schlussel calling Obama a Muslim and Beth a non-conservative imply that her principal beef with the McCarthy era crusaders lies with their Nifong-esque hounding of non-communists alleged to be communists, not with their justifiable (at least in McCarthy’s case – HUAC’s, not so much) opposition to actual communists.
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Bush v Gore.
December 22nd, 2006 at 5:04 pm
What about it? Just because a court decision pisses off liberals doesn’t mean it is activist.
December 22nd, 2006 at 7:05 pm
funny how liberals say the same thing when the court goes and does something that pisses off conservatives… it’s all in the eyes, right?
December 22nd, 2006 at 7:58 pm
What a bunch of macaca. If the phrase “judicial activism” is interpreted so broadly as to include every court decision that pisses anyone off – even a basic ruling adopted by 7 out of 9 Justices, 2 of whom probably did not vote for the candidate it benefited – then the phrase has no meaning whatsoever. Every potential ruling that the Supreme Court conceivably could have made in that case, including a decision not to hear it at all, would have been guaranteed to piss off somebody.
Pissing people off isn’t the right definition. Issuing a decision that has no reasonable basis in law, is. Most of the cases that piss conservatives off, piss them off precisely because they have no basis in law, not just because they lead to a political outcome that conservatives happen to oppose. From a purely political standpoint, I happen to like the substantive outcomes of Lochner, Griswold, Lawrence and even Roe. But that doesn’t prevent me from decrying all four as judicial activism, because I have RTFC and found nary a mention of a constitutional “right” to free enterprise, contraception, sodomy or first-trimester abortion. Conversely, I have found a part that says states cannot discriminate arbitrarily, and haven’t found the part that says “unless you need to apply wildly differing standards from one area to the next in order to get the electoral outcome you want.” Thus it comes as little surprise that two of the four Justices who probably didn’t vote for the appellant in Bush v. Gore found the same constitutional flaw in the recount as the five who likely did.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:28 pm
Of course judicial activism is defined as every court decision that pisses off someone who wanted the court to rule in the other way.
And I challenge you to find me a judge, any judge, who has admitted making decisions on anything other than their ‘interpretation’ of the relevant statutues and the Constitution. I’ve never yet heard of or read a decision in which the judge admitted basing his decision on ‘just because I wanted to’.
Just because you’re too blind and/or ignorant and/or biased to see that the Constitution mandates abortion, allows state-based discrimination and precludes banning same-sex marriage, don’t assume that the fine jurists that serve our country are as clueless as you are.
And, oh yeah, have a nice christmas.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:59 pm
No, YOU have a nice Christmas!!!!!!!!!!
Is the legislative function inherently indefinable? How about the judicial function? Is there ANY LINE AT ALL between them that a judge might cross, such that people could recognize that a boundary between two seperate functions had been violated.
What does the word “madated” mean in your world?