Woozle/2021/12/06
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This is a crosspost from Nextdoor.
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The GOP-nominated Supreme Court justices all lied -- and the media let them get away with it.
When Democrats tried to get them to state plainly their views on Roe v. Wade, they took two approaches. Some tried to convince everyone that they would leave it untouched. Others, those already on record proclaiming opposition to abortion rights, suggested they had undergone a kind of intellectual factory reset enabling them to assess the question anew with an unspoiled mind, one concerned only with the law.
- WaPo
Gosh, that sounds awfully familiar... kind of like me arguing with conservoids here in this channel. Do they all go to Evasion School as kids, or something?
But sometimes the right puts its purposes in the open. There was a particularly striking exchange between Laura Ingraham and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) on Fox News, where Ingraham grew inexplicably enraged over the mere possibility that Roe might not be overturned.
“If we have six Republican appointees on this court,” she said, "after all the money that’s been raised, the Federalist Society, all these big fat-cat dinners — I’m sorry, I’m pissed about this — if this court with six justices cannot do the right thing here,” then Republicans should “blow it up” and pass some kind of law limiting the court’s authority.
“I would do that in a heartbeat,” Cruz responded.
In other words: We bought this court, and we’d better get what we paid for.
[...] that same Ted Cruz repeatedly insisted at confirmation hearings that the very idea that a Republican appointee might have a political agenda was deeply offensive to whatever fine nominee was before them.
- WaPo
The newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, was already on record stating that abortion is a moral evil. But in her hearing, she insisted, “I don’t have any agenda.”
[...]
Kavanaugh [..] insisted in his hearing that Roe was “settled as a precedent,” because “it has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) emerged from a meeting with Kavanaugh and said he’d assured her that Roe is “settled law." She gave him her vote.
- WaPo
It is astonishing that the media took this long to realize what was obvious to everyone. The Trumpkins knew it, and were giggling behind their palms about getting away with it. Everyone else knew it, too, but felt trapped by an unwarranted respect for norms and knowing that the media was in the bag and would ridicule the simple words, “they’re lying”. It was a real emperor’s new clothes kind of situation and everyone went along with it.
[...]
[The Trumpkins] were ashamed of their position. They knew it could only be whispered in the darkness until they got power, and then once they’d brought down that veil of darkness on the land, then and only then could they shout it out loud.
[...]
From this day forward, no one should be naive enough to believe a word any conservative says on this subject, except for those few who forthrightly proclaim that the Supreme Court must read right-wing policy preferences into the Constitution. There was never any mystery about who these justices are and what they would do. There were only liars saying otherwise, and fools who chose to believe them.
- Pharyngula
Trump packed the court with liars for the Right; Biden needs to expand it to counter that -- assuming we can't just remove them for lying under oath, which really should be a thing.
- WaPo opinion piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/03/supreme-court-conservatives-lied/
- commentary on Pharyngula (via): https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2021/12/06/it-took-journalists-this-long-to-figure-that-out/