Joe Biden Wants Abortion Any Time, Anywhere, Under Any Circumstances (Makes me wonder if Joe comes with his own Abortion Kit)

 

Joe Biden Wants Abortion Any Time, Anywhere, Under Any Circumstances (Makes me wonder if Joe comes with his own Abortion Kit)

 OPINION   DAVE ANDRUSKO   SEP 30, 2020   |   2:56PM    WASHINGTON, DC

I have long since given up pretending I understand the long-term impact of presidential debates, particularly the first of three, which took place last night in Cleveland, Ohio.

Quick flash polls are just that—a snapshot in time. Having said that, consider this from Gary Bauer this morning:

The post-debate snap polls were predictable. CNN viewers declared Biden the winner. Breitbart‘s snap poll declared Trump the winner.  But here’s one poll that may deserve a second look: Viewers on the Spanish language station Telemundo said Trump won by a landslide – 66% to 34%.

This latter number may be, in the end, the far more important index. As we’ve discussed for months, pro-abortion former Vice President Joe Biden’s support in the Latino community is spotty. For example, the last Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 39% of Hispanic registered voters in Florida supported President Trump.

We’re doing a separate post today on an interview Biden gave the editorial board of the New York Times way back in January which I had missed. His support for abortion was clear and unambiguous even as his phony baloney excuse for flipping on  the Hyde Amendment was fuzzy, if not downright contradictory.

Last night was not Fox News’ Chris Wallace finest hour. The questions, which he chose, gave Biden a huge advantage. Even more important, Wallace misrepresented what the President had said on a very sensitive topic and over and over and over allowed Biden to slide out of uncomfortable positions by failing to ask obvious follow up questions.

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For example, Biden said

The party is me. Right now, I am the Democratic Party. …I am the Democratic Party right now. …The platform of the Democratic Party is what I, in fact, approved of, what I approved of.

But Wallace didn’t ask about what that platform said about abortion, a huge oversight, because—as he has throughout the campaign—Biden portrayed himself as Mr. Middle-Of-The-Road.

There is nothing about the abortion plank of the Democrat Party’s platform that is middle-of-the-road. NRL President Carol Tobias said this morning, “The Democratic Party and its leadership want abortion at any time, anywhere, and under any circumstances.” By announcing to the world that he had approved of the platform, “it means that Joe Biden wants abortion at any time, anywhere, and under any circumstances.”

The Republican Party platform is staunchly pro-life. It concludes with this 100% accurate critique of the Democrats’ position:

The Democratic Party is extreme on abortion. Democrats’ almost limitless support for abortion, and their strident opposition to even the most basic restrictions on abortion, put them dramatically out of step with the American people. Because of their opposition to simple abortion clinic safety procedures, support for taxpayer-funded abortion, and rejection of pregnancy resource centers that provide abortion alternatives, the old Clinton mantra of “safe, legal, and rare” has been reduced to just “legal.” We are proud to be the party that protects human life and offers real solutions for women.

To be fair, Wallace did ask a probing question about proposals by Democrats to pack the Supreme Court with additional justices if they win control of the Senate in November. But, again, Wallace allowed Biden to evade the question that Biden has refused to answer, because he knows the American public doesn’t support it:

Mr. Vice President, if Senate Republicans, we were talking originally about the Supreme Court here, if Senate Republicans go ahead and confirm Justice Barrett there has been talk about ending the filibuster or even packing the court, adding to the nine justices there. You call this a distraction by the President. But, in fact, it wasn’t brought up by the President. It was brought up by some of your Democratic colleagues in the Congress. So my question to you is, you have refused in the past to talk about it, are you willing to tell the American tonight whether or not you will support either ending the filibuster or packing the court?

When Biden filibustered, President Trump asked him the same question (and others in the same vein). Biden was not going to answer and said so at the end of that segment:

I’m not going to answer the question.

The next debate is scheduled for October 15, but, predictably, the Biden campaign is already hedging. According to POLITICO

In a call with reporters after the debate, the campaign was asked whether it would commit to the next two debates and whether it would seek changes with the debate commission. Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said only that the campaigns are in ongoing talks with the debate commission and “I would imagine there would be some additional conversations” going forward.

Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a top Biden surrogate, said it wasn’t obvious Biden should commit to future debates.

When you have a chance, please read my story on Biden’s ever-so-revealing interview with the editorial board of the New York Times.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in his National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.

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Pro-Abortion Groups Spending Millions Trying to Defeat Amy Coney Barrett NATIONAL MICAIAH BILGER SEP 30, 2020

 

Pro-Abortion Groups Spending Millions Trying to Defeat Amy Coney Barrett

 NATIONAL   MICAIAH BILGER   SEP 30, 2020   |   4:17PM    WASHINGTON, DC

Pro-abortion groups are spending millions of dollars to try to stop Amy Coney Barrett from being confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Hill reports some groups are spending twice the amount that they did two years ago when President Donald Trump nominated Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

These include Demand Justice, a progressive pro-abortion group, which plans to spend $10 million on ads against Barrett, the report states. Its ads, scheduled to air in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina, focus on the potential impact of Trump’s choice.

Planned Parenthood also is fighting to stop Barrett from being confirmed, but it refused to tell The Hill how much it is spending on the effort. Overall, the billion-dollar abortion chain plans to spend at least $45 million on the 2020 election.

Last week, Trump named Barrett as his choice to fill the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a heroine of abortion activists. The president and many others have praised Barrett as a “brilliant and gifted” lawyer who will uphold the Constitution and not legislate from the bench.

A Notre Dame law professor and judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Barrett is Catholic, conservative and pro-life. If confirmed, pro-life advocates hope and abortion activists fear that she could lead to the undoing of Roe v. Wade and help restore protections for unborn babies.

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According to Planned Parenthood, Barrett once said abortion is “always immoral” and suggested that Roe was wrongly decided.

“This is more than Justice Ginsburg’s seat — it’s the people’s seat. Planned Parenthood Action Fund will rise up and fight to stop Amy Coney Barrett, and any nomination, before the 2021 Inauguration,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in a statement.

The abortion group is lobbying the U.S. Senate to delay any confirmation until after the November election when it hopes pro-abortion Democrat Joe Biden will win. Biden promised to appoint judges who support a “woman’s right to choose” abortion.

Documents uncovered by The Stream this week suggest leftist groups plan to use the angle that voters should decide who gets to appoint the next Supreme Court justice – even though they already have. Trump is still president, and the vacancy happened under his administration.

According to the report, the leftist groups also are planning protests outside courthouses across the nation on Sunday.

Meanwhile, pro-life and conservative groups also are spending millions of dollars in support of Barrett, according to The Hill. They include the Susan B. Anthony List, the Judiciary Crisis Network and Americans for Prosperity.

Pro-life leaders have praised her as an excellent choice for the court.

If confirmed by the Senate, Barrett would solidify a strong 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

The Senate has a Republican majority, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said they have the votes to confirm Barrett before the November presidential election. A hearing on her confirmation is scheduled for Oct. 12.

Barrett is a former clerk of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Like Scalia, she has been described as an “originalist” judge. Though her judicial rulings on abortion are few, she did rule in support of two Indiana pro-life laws during her time on the Seventh Circuit.

She also has made several statements about the value of babies in the womb. According to the Law and Crime blog, Barrett signed a public letter in 2015 that emphasized “the value of human life from conception to natural death.” She also said she believes that life begins at conception.

Barrett is a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, a devout Catholic and a wife and mother of seven children.

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Amy Coney Barrett Open to Overturning Roe v. Wade Because Precedent Isn’t Forever NATIONAL MICAIAH BILGER SEP 30, 2020

 

Amy Coney Barrett Open to Overturning Roe v. Wade Because Precedent Isn’t Forever

 NATIONAL   MICAIAH BILGER   SEP 30, 2020   |   5:46PM    WASHINGTON, DC

At the forefront of so many Americans’ minds is the question of how Amy Coney Barrett would rule on abortion if confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Barrett, President Donald Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee, would replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a heroine of abortion activists who consistently ruled in favor of abortion during her nearly three decades on the court.

A new analysis on the Law and Crime blog suggested Barrett may indeed believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and rule against it, if the opportunity arises.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri strengthened pro-lifers’ hopes Tuesday when he said Barrett meets his expectations. Among other things, the pro-life senator said he “wanted to see evidence that the nominee understood that Roe was wrongly decided, that Roe was an act of judicial imperialism.”

According to Law and Crime, Barrett’s statements and writings about Supreme Court abortion cases as well as stare decisis, which means sticking to past legal precedents, suggest that she may rule to restore protections for unborn babies.

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Evidence of this comes from a 2013 lecture that Barrett gave at the University of Notre Dame, where she is a law professor. In “Roe at 40: The Supreme Court, Abortion and the Culture War that Followed,” Barrett questioned the way in which the high court ruled on Roe v. Wade.

“It brings up an issue of judicial review: Does the Court have the capacity to decide that women have the right to obtain an abortion or should it be a matter for state legislatures? Would it be better to have this battle in the state legislatures and Congress rather than the Supreme Court?” she asked, according to a student newspaper report.

“Roe was a dramatic shift. The framework of Roe essentially permitted abortion on demand, and Roe recognizes no state interest in the life of a fetus,” she continued.

While Barrett also said it was “very unlikely” that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe and subsequent abortion ruling Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the blog noted that, at the time she said it, the Supreme Court had a liberal majority.

Notably, Barrett was a member of the Notre Dame University Faculty for Life Group from 2010 to 2016, and she received an award from the Thomas More Society, a pro-life Catholic legal group, in 2018.

Her writings also suggest that she does not believe the Supreme Court should uphold Roe just for the sake of precedent, or stare decisis.

In a law review article “Precedent and Jurisprudential Disagreement” mentioned in her Senate questionnaire, Barrett wrote that “stare decisis is a soft rule” and “one of policy rather than as an inexorable command.”

A “more relaxed form of constitutional stare decisis” is “both inevitable and probably desirable, at least in those cases in which methodologies clash,” she continued, focusing on issues of precedent that justices disagree with personally.

In the article, she also mentioned Casey, an abortion ruling that came after Roe and decided that states may not pass laws that impose an “undue burden” on women’s so-called right to abortion.

She wrote:

Stare decisis is a self-imposed constraint upon the Court’s ability to overrule precedent. The force of so-called superprecedents [“cases that no justice would overrule, even if she disagrees with”], however, does not derive from any decision by the Court about the degree of deference they warrant. Indeed, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey shows that the Court is quite incapable of transforming precedent into superprecedent by ipse dixit [editor’s note: that’s Latin for just because the court says so]. The force of these cases derives from the people, who have taken their validity off the Court’s agenda. Litigants do not challenge them [superprecedents]. If they did, no inferior federal court or state court would take them seriously, at least in the absence of any indicia that the broad consensus supporting a precedent was crumbling.

These statements and others suggest Barrett may be a strong pro-life justice who recognizes that human rights are for all human beings, born and unborn.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would solidify a strong 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Pro-life leaders have praised her as an excellent choice for the court.

Barrett is a former clerk of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Like Scalia, she has been described as an “originalist” judge. Though her judicial rulings on abortion are few, she did rule in support of two Indiana pro-life laws during her time on the Seventh Circuit.

She also has made several statements about the value of babies in the womb. According to the Law and Crime blog, Barrett signed a public letter in 2015 that emphasized “the value of human life from conception to natural death.” She also said she believes that life begins at conception.

A hearing on her confirmation is scheduled for Oct. 12 in the Senate.

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President Trump is Ending Liberal Domination of Federal Courts NATIONAL THOMAS JIPPING AND JOHN MALCOLM SEP 30, 2020

 

President Trump is Ending Liberal Domination of Federal Courts

 NATIONAL   THOMAS JIPPING AND JOHN MALCOLM   SEP 30, 2020   |   6:14PM    WASHINGTON, DC

This article is an excerpt from the “2020 Mandate for Leadership: A Clear Vision for the Next Administration.” It looks back at policy decisions made by the Trump administration over the past four years. You can purchase your copy of “Mandate 2020” here.

Our system of government and the liberty it provides are compromised when judges decide cases based on their own personal views and political beliefs rather than the law.

If the American people and their elected representatives make the law, then elections are critical, but if judges effectively amend or undermine the law under the guise of interpreting it, then their appointment is critical.

That is the switch that has occurred. Judges today are far more powerful than they were designed to be. Many judges do exactly what our Founders and most brilliant judges—like George Mason, Justice Benjamin Curtis, Justice George Sutherland, Justice Robert Jackson, and Justice Clarence Thomas—warned about. And as a result, the process for appointing them is much more political and divisive than it should be.

If judges make decisions based on their own views, reflections, or impressions, then, in the eyes of the public and many of their elected representatives, it becomes essential to appoint judges who have the views, reflections, and impressions needed to advance their desired political agenda.

In a 2002 speech, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that the more we reject Originalism as the proper approach to judging and come to accept “living constitutionalism” as an acceptable or desirable method of interpretation, the more choosing those judges will be “a very political hot potato. Every time you need to appoint a new Supreme Court justice, you are going to have a mini-plebiscite on what the Constitution means.”

The ongoing conflict over judicial appointments, therefore, is really an ongoing conflict over judicial power. It is a conflict over whether to embrace or reject the limited-but-important role designed for the judiciary by America’s Founders.

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Who nominates and appoints federal judges matters. When he was a senator in 2005, Barack Obama said that judges should decide cases based on their “deepest values,” “core concerns,” “broader perspectives on how the world works,” “the depth and breadth of [their] empathy,” and “what is in the judge’s heart.” As president, many of the men and women he nominated for federal judgeships fit this mold.

One nominee, for example, wrote that judges are on a “continuing search for constitutional meaning” and that the Constitution may “absorb new meanings.” He also wrote that judges may find the Constitution’s meaning in such things as “evolving norms and traditions of our society and “social movements.”

Such views would likely have struck the Framers as extremely strange and profoundly wrong.

The current president, on the other hand, seems to have embraced the Framers’ original design for the judiciary. In their hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, for example, President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees have consistently pledged to put aside their personal views, to interpret the Constitution and statutes as written, and to apply the law impartially.

In those confirmation hearings, some senators have aggressively pressed these nominees for their personal views on certain issues that already are, or certainly will be, before the federal courts. They demand that nominees embrace particular legal positions and, in various ways, provide evidence of how they would decide future cases that involve specific issues.

In other words, they seek the opposite of what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she would provide in her 1993 confirmation hearing: “no hints, no forecasts, no previews.”

Advocates of a powerful, political judiciary not only accept that judges decide cases based on their personal views and priorities, but also endorse their doing so. They want to be sure that under the guise of interpreting statutes and the Constitution, judges will advance their political agenda.

Conditioning support for judicial nominees on their commitments, hints, or forecasts of future decisions is like hiring umpires or referees based on the teams they promise to favor in the upcoming season. Ginsburg said that providing such hints or forecasts would “display disdain for the entire judicial process.” And she was right.

Pressing judicial nominees for commitments or previews about future cases is dangerous for another reason. Many of these nominees are already judges on federal or state courts and therefore have already taken an oath to fulfill their judicial duties impartially. The oath for federal judicial office specifically says that judges must “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”

Resisting efforts to extract commitments or to disclose personal views is therefore necessary to preserve impartiality not only for the future, but also, in many cases, in the present as well.

Advocates of a more powerful, political judiciary are opposing current nominees in unprecedented ways. From 1789 through 2016, for example, the Senate confirmed more than 95% of judicial nominees without opposition. That figure has dropped to 25% under the current president.

The Senate had to take a separate vote to end debate on fewer than 4% of Obama’s judicial nominees who were confirmed at this point in his presidency, compared to 80% for Trump.

Despite these and other opposition tactics, as of Sept. 9, Trump has appointed 24% of the entire federal judiciary. More important, he has already appointed 53 judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which has the last word on nearly all cases in the federal court system. That constitutes 30% of this middle level of the federal court system, compared to an average of less than 19% at the same point under the previous five presidents.

LifeNews Note: This article originally appeared at Daily Signal.

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