Posted by
Lisa on Thursday, July 03, 2008 11:34:02 PM
In case we have forgotten about the severe left-ward bent of the New
York Times, a new editorial puts in all back into focus. In "A Supreme
Court on the Brink" they worry about the future direction of the Supreme Court,
specifically that a McCain administration could undo all the liberal
decisions the Supremes have made over the years, including Roe V.
Wade. This is a needless fear. Not even Reagan managed to accomplish
that goal, and McCain can hardly be accused of such extreme
conservatism. McCain will keep his word on this, if not on anything
else, but conservatives shouldn't get their hopes up that McCain could
get a Samuel Alito or John Roberts through the expected Democratic
majority in Congress. Unless the Democrats inexplicably cave in,
there's no way this will happen. A more plausible scenario is that
McCain attempts to put through judges the base approves of, and he is
brutally rebuffed by the Democrats. Then he gives in and nominates
someone like Harriet Miers. Yikes. Of course this all assumes McCain
beats Barack Obama. Is the New York Times worried about their golden
boy's chances in November? Say it ain't so guys.
Some of the Court's rulings were questionable, and the assessment of
their overall record this year as "muddled" is a fair way of describing
it. Even so, I shouldn't be surprised that the New York Times wants to
be on the record supporting the Court's decision denying the death
penalty to the child rapist. The ruling was misguided to say the
least. If we are going to have the death penalty as a punishment for
crime, not too many crimes are worse than child rape. The child will
be scarred for life. I'm not sure that life in prison is a sufficient
punishment for what the child went through at the hands of this
monster. Then there's the more well-known decision to give habeas
corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees who -- may I remind everyone --
are not American citizens. It's a bad idea to give foreigners access
to American courts, and I still haven't heard a great explanation of
why Constitutional rights and protections can be given to
non-citizens. At least the New York Times is consistent in their
worldview and we know what to expect from the majority of their
columnists and their op-eds.
Those of us on the right always point to stuff like this as a
example of how out of touch the mainstream media is (and the New York
Times usually provides most of the ammunition for these critiques). If
we spent half as much time focusing on what we can do to fix what the
Republican politicians have broken, we might have more of a reason for
confidence going into November. As it stands now, we have an uphill
climb ahead of us.