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Showing posts from August, 2005

C'est moi, dammit!

Your blogstress was much amused to find yet another reference to her American Prospect piece on John Roberts , this time by the eminent scholar George Weigel on a Web site called Tidings. Weigel writes: Shortly after Judge Roberts' nomination, President Bush was accused of "playing the Catholic card" in an opinion piece widely circulated in the blogosphere. "Playing the Catholic card" is, to be frank, either a vulgar appeal to ancient prejudices or code-language for "someone who can't be trusted to take Planned Parenthood's position on abortion." Well, Mr. Weigel, if you're going to bandy about accusations of vulgarity, it is only fair to credit the blogstress with her craft. Another curiosity of Weigel's piece, written in the form of "An open letter to Patrick Leahy" (the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee), is his apparent lifting of central argument from a press statement issued by the far less eloquent Wil

On the cutting table

While your blogstress was dallying in her summer doldrums, all manner of remarkable developments have occurred without her sage comment. Truth be told, your Webwench seems to be suffering some form of outrage fatigue. Happenings which, under any other administration but Bush II, would have elicited great hue and cry, are met with a wimper by your cybertrix, who has been known to mutter, "Well, that's just what they do." How else to explain the failure of your net-tête to note, last week, the reported firing of a career employee of the Justice Department for daring to challenge the demands of higher-ups to downplay a study that revealed aggressive police tactics used against black and latino drivers? Here, the New York Times ' Eric Licthblau reports : The demotion of the official, Lawrence A. Greenfeld, whom President Bush named in 2001 to lead the Bureau of Justice Statistics, caps more than three years of simmering tensions over charges of political interference a

Arbiters of the Faith

Your blogstress is, admittedly, a few days late bringing the latest antics of her co-religionists on the right to her readers' attention. From your Webwench's dear friend, St. Jacques du Fenway, we learn of an attack by right-wing Catholics on faculty at Catholic Colleges who appear not to be toeing the line. On Wednesday, Ralph Ranalli and Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe wrote: A conservative Catholic group billing itself as a "movement to rescue Catholic higher education" has called for the ouster of three Boston College professors who it says supported removing the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose parents fought to keep her alive. A spokesman for Boston College, Jack Dunn, issued a statement criticizing the group, saying, ''The publicity-seeking rhetoric and unfounded accusations of the Cardinal Newman Society are a disservice to Catholic colleges and universities and the church that they proudly serve." From

Revelation

From your blogstress' new friend, Caesarshead, comes this: Subj: Revelation: Put it on a bumper sticker Jesus is a Liberal Actually, La Tête du Caesar has a point. Jesus counted women among his disciples, never said a word against homosexuality and intervened against the death penalty (stoning of the adulteress)--not to mention all of that stuff about the poor.

Dems need to launch
a new constitutional amendment

Just up on The American Prospect Online is your blogstress' latest take on last weekend's right-wing hatefest, Justice Sunday II. Here, your cybertrix calls on Democrats to craft a bill for a constitutional amendment that would create an explicit right to privacy. How fun it would be to watch righties vote "no" on what the American people think is a God-given right.

Justice Sunday II

NASHVILLE, TENN.—-The discipline was dazzling--everybody on the same page. The usual rhetoric was deployed--the railing against "activist judges," waxings on the "originial intent" of the Constitution’s framers; abortion defined as baby-killing; the horror of "homosexual sodomy." It was a typical assemblage of speakers for a right-wing confab: 10 men, 2 women, all but one of them white. As usual, a couple of right-wing Catholics made common cause with right-wing Protestant evangelicals. Yet, for all that, this second incarnation of the Family Research Council’s second "Justice Sunday" simulcast fell a bit flat. Perhaps it was the lack of zealous enthusiasm for the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, most probably due to the revelation that, while in private practice, Judge Roberts did pro bono work on behalf of gay rights activists who ultimately prevailed in overturning an anti-gay Colorado statute passed through referendum, a

Touché!

On Beliefnet today, you will find your blogstress's rejoinder to the nasty bit of business published on that otherwise laudable site by William Donohue, president of the Catholic League.

The enigma

If the Roberts nomination finds itself in the teeniest bit of trouble, it's the righties and not the Democrats who pose the threat. The news earlier this week, as reported by Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times , that Judge Roberts, then a private attorney, performed pro bono work for gay rights activists who challenged--and won before the Supreme Court--the statute championed by James Dobson that would have sanctioned all manner of discrimination against non-heterosexuals, has caused a bit of discomfort on the right. At the Web site of the Agape Press, Bill Fancher interviews Paul Weyrich , who expresses his dismay: The revelation that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was instrumental in a homosexual rights ruling has stunned his supporters. The Romer v. Evans decision, which overturned a Colorado initiative that denied special rights to homosexuals, is considered among the most egregious examples of judicial activism ever. Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, who

Now, everybody's in the act

Having cast her customary spell of glamour over all her endeavors, your blogstress now finds herself in much excellent company--including that of writers much better-paid than she--in the conduct of alleged anti-Catholic bigotry. Christopher Hitchens has kicked up quite a bit of dust on Slate with a harangue about the John Roberts nomination and the Church of Rome, a piece that encompasses an amusing aside about the Vatican's rescue of Cardinal Bernard Law, the discraced former archbishop of Boston. (A similar rescue was made for Father Paul Marcinkus of Chicago, who was wanted for financial shenanigans in that toddlin' town, so, at the pope's invitation, he secreted himself away in some catacomb off St. Peter's Square.) A very sane young man, James Joyner of Outside the Beltway , has taken up Hitchens' larger argument, engaging in a go-round with Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review. Click here to read Joyner

Fetch

Oh, how it pains your blogstress to contemplate the Specter of traffic being driven from her erudite site to something called RedState , however, she finds herself driven to taking the high road on a bit of low culture executed rather brilliantly by State author Mark Kilmer, in his review of the Sunday talk shows: Arlen Specter might have violated his leash law, made when the Senate GOP agreed to let him be Judiciary chairman in January despite strong objections, that he would support the President's nominees. With Judge John Roberts, Specter says that he will make up his mind when the process is complete. Those of you who remember Specter taking a licking from the values crowd back in January will know what Kilmer is talking about. Specter committed the infamous crime of predicting that an anti-abortion Supreme Court nominee would be unlikely to make it out of committee. We'll see about that, hmm? To read more about Specter's lonely choice in the GOP, click here.

The piece that
just won't die

Used to toiling in obscurity, your blogstress is amazed at the continued attention her July 20th piece for The American Prospect Online has continued to attract. Who knew that pointing out the shrewdness of the president's men in their choice of a Supreme Court nominee could be so controversial? Yesterday's Boston Herald carries this piece , blessedly judgment-neutral. The Sunday Boston Globe offered this op-ed column from Cathy Young of Reason magazine.