Hurricane Edith Coming?It's blowing in at 9pm TONIGHT!
Scared of Hurricane Emily?
FUGGEDABOUDDIT!
Be afraid of Hurricane Edith!
There are two Ediths who are in the eye of the storm which will surely be blowing out of your Cable News Television sets soon...perhaps as soon as today.
*There has to be a diversion from the CIA-outing snakes crawling around the West Wing.
One Edith stands out as more radically conservative than the other. Neither are going to give proper balance to the SCOTUS.
Democrats already say that Edith Hollan Jones is unacceptable because she has shown an activist's defiance - she has a record of flaunting her defiance of the US Supreme Court on the issue of a standard set by the Supreme Court for establishing a condemned convict's retardation - and we can expect a major battle if she is nominated by Bush. (Why would Bush do such a stupid thing, knowing the country is so divided? I'll tell you why - because he is Bush.)
An Edith Hollan Jones nomination would spell "I-N-S-T-A-N-T - - F-I-L-I-B-U-S-T-E-R" for Democrats.
I heard a Houston journalist, who knows her well, say that she wrote a revealing minority opinion on a case involving a woman's right to choose, proclaiming that Roe v Wade was "bad law" and that sometimes, regardless of standing law, an overturning should be considered.
From McCorvey v Hill, 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Sept 2004 [FindLaw.com]:
Edith Jones opinion:
I agree that Ms McCorvey's Rule 60(b) case is now moot. A judicial decision in her favor cannot turn back Texas' legislative clock to reinstate the laws, no longer effective, that criminalized abortion.
It is ironic that the doctrine of mootness bars further litigation of this case. Mootness confines the judicial branch to its appropriate constitutional role of deciding actual. live cases of controversies. Yet, this case was born in an exception to mootness and brought forth, instead of a confined decision, an "exercise of raw judicial power." [..] Even more ironic is that, although mootness dictates that Ms. McCovery has no "live" legal controversy, the serious and substantial evidence she offered could have generated an important debate over factual premises that underlay Roe.
McCorvey presented evidence that goes to the heart of the evidence Roe struck between the choice of a mother and the life of her unborn child. First, there are about a thousand affadavits of women who have had abortions and claim to have suffered long-term emotional damage and impaired relationships from their decision.
Studies by scientists, offered by McCorvey, suggested that women may be affected emotionally and physically for years afterward and may be more prone to engage in high-risk, self-destructive conduct as a result of having had abortions. Second, Roe's assumption that the decision to abort a baby will be made in close consultation with a woman's private physician is called into question by affadavits from workers at abortion clinics, where most abortions are now performed.
According to the affadavits, women are often herded through their procedures with little or no medical or emotional counseling. [...}
If the courts would delve into the facts underlying Roe's balancing scheme with "present-day knowlege", they might conclude that the woman's "choice" is far more risky and less beneficial and the child's sentience far more advanced than the Roe court knew.[..]
The problem inherent in the Court's decision to constitutionalize abortion policy is that, unless it creates another exception to the mootness doctrine, the court will never be able to examine its factual assumptions on a record made in court.
Read one (pasty) white conservative male's opinion on Jones and/or Clement (or any other ultra-Conservative female judicial nominee):
"If that sense of things is right, then it could make a notable difference if the decision that upholds the law on partial-birth abortion — and the decision turning the law on abortion onto a different axis — were written and announced by a woman."
- Hadley Arkes
Makes you all warm inside, knowing that pasty white men are propping up the ladies in order to take away our freedom of conscience, doesn't it, gals?
My problem with Edith "Joy" Brown Clement is that she is a conservative with an apparently paperless record on her Roe v Wade opinion. Senate - approach Joy Clement with great caution! She has not left much of a paper trail.
Corporate America would favor Clement because she was once a private practitioner who represented business interests -- experience that the big business community says the Rehnquist court now lacks. Clement might be friendly to corporate America, but she may not be as "friendly" to the women of this nation. If women held more CEO seats, knowing she's a conservative in the Federalist Society mold (and not knowing what she might do with our right to choose), I wonder if the enthusiasm for Joy Clement would be as great.
We are left to wonder if "Joy" Clement will try to overturn Roe v Wade. You can't blame us. We trust Bush as far as we can throw him. I think that the Senate would have a hard time filibustering Joy Clement, though...and I don't yet see a solid reason why they would. She really hasn't been involved in any terriibly controversial decisions. She'd definitely be a better choice over Edith Hollan Jones.
