From The Half-Red House

(see The AP article at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gn0Annr0h-9FIDc_3RXgyXWP40nQD98HG2P00)

The murder, a few hours ago, of Dr. George Tiller, a physician who has been a steadfast and lonely champion of safe and legal abortion in Kansas, makes it essential that the new supreme court nominee’s stance on abortion rights be known to the public. The Senate must not approve a nominee who will permit further erosion of abortion rights and tacit encouragement for lawless and murderous opponents of safe legal abortion to take effective vigilante action to make it unavailable. If Sotomayor’s stance on abortion is anti-choice, her nomination should be rejected or withdrawn. Good all-around choice though she may be for the Court, she should be disqualified if she is, in effect, a stalking-horse for the undoing of Roe vs. Wade.

Mr. Obama has stated that he wants dialogue on abortion, and that the goal of his administration is to reduce the number of abortions that need to be performed. The mild tone is helpful, but it is also necessary to reverse the harmful trend in the law that has been so noticeable during the Bush years, giving encouragement to anti-abortion activists who are ready to intimidate, vandalize and even kill to get their way. To do this, we must break the “tradition” of refusing to demand answers of judicial nominees on the abortion question. Sotomayor must be required to testify on the subject of abortion, and if she pleads the fifth amendment during Senate hearings, Senators should suspect that she has something to hide and reject the nomination.

It is interesting that the suspect in the Tiller murder is being described in all the media as a troubled, isolated individual and not part of a conspiracy, even though Dr. Tiller’s clinic had been sabotaged repeatedly in recent weeks. Dr. Tiller was shot while he was attending his church with his wife. Presumably, the killer was a sharpshooter who had been planning this act carefully and knew exactly when and where the doctor would be unguarded. The fact that the possibility of a conspiracy is being pooh-poohed in the media leads me to suspect that there is in fact a conspiracy.

All in all, I’m happy to see a Latina woman appointed to the Supreme Court. She appears to be super-competent in the law and to have experienced the effects of poverty first hand, which might give her the compassionate qualities that Mr. Obama and I both value. Liberal and progressive groups have nothing but praise for the nomination, and, predictably but so-far unsuccessfully, right-wing groups are pulling out all the stops to paint her as some kind of socialist.

Still, I will miss David Souter’s calm, private style and his well-thought-out opinions, and the blogosphere has been filled with questions about Sotomayor’s stance on reproductive rights.One of the more thoughtful comments is here:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2009/05/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html .

It seems she ruled in favor of a federal ban on distributing reproductive health aid through groups that permit abortion abroad, and she has ruled in favor of the rights of anti-abortion protesters at clinics. She has never ruled on abortion per-se (or even on contraception, according to one source). There is reason to believe that she may be personally “pro-life”, if for no other reason than that she belongs to a church that takes an anti-abortion and anti-contraception stance. We have no evidence that would lead us to believe she would favor reproductive choice in rulings, other than her affiliation with social causes that are ofen championed by those with pro-choice views.

The reproductive choice questions need to be asked at the confirmation hearings, and if she does not support a woman’s right to choose, this may be a tiime when congress needs to ask Obama to “go back to the well” for a different candidate. We know that this may be the only chance to counterbalance the antidiluvian-right stance of some sitting justices, and I tend to wish (in vain, probably) that we could have, at very least, a strong all-around progressive justice to replace Souter.

We had high hopes for the credit card reform legislation now being considered in Congress (e.g. http://washingtonindependent.com/42475/populist-angst-fuels-senate-credit-card-compromise). Maybe the old concept of “usury” would be put back in effect, and debts taken on at a specific agreed-upon interest rate could be repaid at that rate. That’s not what’s happening in Washington, though. Lobbyists for the financial industry seem to own congress completely, because the bill that has emerged will do nothing more than encourage credit card companies to print their insidious gobbledegook in larger type and give victims a few more days’ notice. They will still be capable of raising rates with little or no notice on balances that were undertaken in the past. They will still be able to engage in the monopolistic practice of “universal default”, and interest and fees will remain uncapped.

To add insult to injury, other powerful lobbies are having their way with the bill. The Senate version now includes a provision to allow the carrying of concealed weapons in national parks. 67 senators voted in favor of that ammendment! What does this have to do with the fact that banks have driven many honest consumers into unpayable debt, bankruptcy and suicide?

The media this evening were falling all over themselves to congratulate the Obama administration for inviting the lobbyists of the pharma, insurance and medical administration industries to the the “table” where health care reform will be negotiated. Those lobbyists were also being congratulated for promising to