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iLike.

Well, I’ll get an iPad. Even­tu­ally. Not this year, but maybe next, when the hard drive gets big­ger and the price drops and I start doing all my work in cof­fee shops. If noth­ing else, it seems to be the e-reader that might tip me into e-reader ter­ri­tory, not that I’ve been wait­ing for one. But, you know, I like to keep up. And if the iPad and other tablet devices throw a life­line to news­pa­pers, then I’ll feel oblig­ated.

You have to be care­ful, though. I some­times call my iPod my musi­cal id, because when I started buy­ing music online, I flocked to the shame­ful hit sin­gles I’d been turn­ing up on the radio all these years, but only when I was alone in the car. Songs I was too cool to like, or songs that were the one decent track made by Dis­ap­point­ing Artist X. I wouldn’t buy DAX’s album, but 99 cents seemed to be the right price point to buy the one or two Madonna songs I enjoy (“Don’t Tell Me,” “Ray of Light”), or Lou Gramm’s “Mid­night Blue.” You have ear­buds in all the time any­way, so it’s not like any­one knows you’re a secret Eminem fan.

And then dig­i­tal music became the only music to buy, you hook the iPod to your stereo now, and so I have an iPod clut­tered with crap, and more than 1,000 songs to sort into “ear­buds only” playlists, lest one pop up at a din­ner party and embar­rass me. (I down­loaded Chakakas’ “Jun­gle Fever” after watch­ing “Boo­gie Nights,” OK? And I regret it! I always fast-forward past it!)

I don’t want the same thing to hap­pen with my e-reader. Yes­ter­day I asked Laura Lipp­man what’s bet­ter for her, as an author — ink on paper or pix­els on a screen — and she men­tioned the obvi­ous use for Kin­dles, et al:

I use it pri­mar­ily for travel and I stock it with B-reads, things I don’t care about own­ing in hard­cover for­mat.

In other words, pretty much the way I used my iPod at first.

I also asked Hank Stuever about this, and he got his own blog post out of it, and you should go read that, too.

It’s the news­pa­per model I’ll be watch­ing most closely, of course. These are my peo­ple, they pro­vide my health insur­ance, and I have a stake in see­ing them sur­vive. Late in Hank’s post, he quotes a lovely para­graph from another essay about news­pa­pers, about the authen­tic expe­ri­ence of actu­ally hold­ing and touch­ing your authen­tic expe­ri­ences. I keep com­ing back to the 3A Tiffany’s ad, run­ning daily in the New York Times and Wall Street Jour­nal, upper right-hand cor­ner of the page since for­ever, and how much I look for­ward to see­ing it every day. The other day it was the engagement-ring ad, four big Tiffany soli­taires tum­bled in a row. I always take a minute and appre­ci­ate it. I will never own a Tiffany’s soli­taire. I don’t par­tic­u­larly want one. But it’s a beau­ti­ful photo, and I allow myself a few sec­onds of mild envy, the way if you were walk­ing past Tiffany’s in New York, you might stop to look in the win­dows, like Audrey Hep­burn.

Over to Face­book. Upper-right-hand cor­ner: If you are a 52-year-old dri­ver from Michi­gan, your car insur­ance rates can be as low as $14.98 a month. Click to learn more. Ear­lier today, it told me 52-year-old women could get a free pair of Uggs for par­tic­i­pa­tion. Click to learn more. I’ve asked this ques­tion a thou­sand times, and no one can give me a good answer: If all the college-educated eye­balls are online, if the smartest and the wealth­i­est peo­ple are look­ing at com­puter screens all day and most of the night, why are the ads the equiv­a­lent of the free Amish fire­place?

Oh, and as to the name of the iPad: Are all you peo­ple chil­dren? When did Beavis and Butthead join the focus group? Do you snicker when you hear “heli­copter pad” or “note pad” or “pad Thai?” Maybe because I was always a tam­pon girl, and grew up in the era when men­strual pads were called “san­i­tary nap­kins,” one of the great euphemisms of its day, I don’t imme­di­ately asso­ciate the word “pad” with men­stru­a­tion. Grow up.

I also thought Barry’s speech last night was pretty damn good. I liked how he called out the party of No. Fuck you, Sammy Alito, you smug piece of shit. And great job on that GOP response — find the XY equiv­a­lent of Martha Coak­ley, flank him with a black woman and an Asian man, and have them nod and clap on cue. Way to bring it, you soul­less toads. I’m stick­ing with Barry.

OK, then: Yesterday’s work spilled over into today, so I’d best hop to it.

Posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 9:47 am in Uncategorized. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


71 responses to
“iLike.”

  1. Hexdecimal said on January 28th, 2010 at 9:57 am

    I”m going to wait for the Maxi iPad. I hear it has wings.

  2. Deborah said on January 28th, 2010 at 9:59 am

    I’m with you on Obama’s speech last night. I missed the begin­ning but thought the 3/4 I saw was excel­lent, espe­cially the last part. He didn’t mince words when he talked about how dis­ap­pointed we the cit­i­zens are with Washington’s inabil­ity to gov­ern.

    I am intrigued by the ipad, but it looks clunky, like an over­grown iphone. Some things shouldn’t be enlarged, the pro­por­tions are all off for the scale. But really what does it mat­ter? If it works that’s the impor­tant part. Right?

  3. Peter said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:06 am

    I con­cur on Barry’s speech – heck, I’m a fallen Repub­li­can, and I thought it was great that he called out the court and the oppo­si­tion.

    I may regret say­ing this, but me likey the iPad. I’m think­ing that this might be worth giv­ing to the par­ents with the poor eye­sight and no com­puter skills.

  4. 4dbirds said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:08 am

    Does any­one else get web-ads fea­tur­ing bizarre look­ing peo­ple (cave­men, home­less) who need mort­gages and insur­ance?

    Didn’t watch the speech. I’m so down I refuse to be Char­lie Brown attempt­ing to kick the foot­ball. When they Pass.the.damn.bill I’ll know they’re seri­ous.

  5. Deborah said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:16 am

    Yeah 4dbirds I hear you. I made a pact with myself not to watch the news for awhile and espe­cially not to watch any­thing polit­i­cal it is so depress­ing, but I couldn’t resist watch­ing the speech and I’m so glad I did. It made me feel bet­ter.

  6. Bob (not Greene) said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:16 am

    Nance,

    I, too, missed the begin­ning of the speech (Plan Com­mis­sion meet­ing any­one?), but liked what I heard, espe­cially regard­ing var­i­ous higher education-related issues (“No one in Amer­ica should be broke because they chose to go to col­lege”), get­ting the hell out if Iraq, call­ing for the end of don’t-ask-don’t-tell and the fact that he’s not let­ting the GOP get away with dump­ing this crappy econ­omy on his shoul­ders.

    They imme­di­ately cut to a smirk­ing John McCain, who clearly mouthed “Blame it on Bush” to the guy next to him. Yeah, John, well, we can blame you too. The eight years before Obama were a com­plete train wreck, sorry. You can pre­tend it’s all old Barry’s fault now that he’s had to spend a boat­load of money to avert a depres­sion, but you just don’t get a pass.

    I also liked the “That’s how bud­get­ing works” crack. If the GOP is going to make every pres­i­den­tial speech Prime Minister’s Ques­tion Time, then they’re going to have to learn how to take return fire.

    That said, despite all the calls for bi-partisanship, I think last night was another clear exam­ple that while it’s a nice thought, it ain’t hap­pen­ing.

  7. Jeff Borden said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:34 am

    I am the son and grand­son of Repub­li­cans. Both sets of grand­par­ents loathed FDR and his poli­cies. My folks voted for Ike, Nixon, Ford, Rea­gan, Bush I. My dad even admit­ted to throw­ing his bal­lot to Barry Gold­wa­ter back in 1964, while my mom admit­ted he was scary enough to her that she pulled for LBJ.

    My point is that I come from the kind of fam­ily that gen­er­ally adhered to Repub­li­can prin­ci­ples as they were embod­ied by most of the above names. There’s a lot of GOP in my DNA.

    Today, I look at that party and won­der what in God’s name would ever cause me to sup­port it on a national basis. The hijack­ing of the GOP by the evan­gel­i­cals, the social con­ser­v­a­tives, the for­eign pol­icy inter­ven­tion­ists, fringe nuts like Birthers and Tea Partiers (even if those stu­pid mopes are con­trolled by big money cor­po­rate inter­ests) is com­plete. I look at the bunch of them in Con­gress and I want to pro­jec­tile vomit as they stand squarely in the way of a man elected to clean up the shit they broke over an eight-year period of gov­ern­ing so insane it will appall and amaze his­to­ri­ans for decades to come.

    I com­fort myself with the knowl­edge that the GOP is on the wrong side of his­tory and demo­graph­ics. It is the party of older white men ter­ri­fied by the onrush of change to their world order. But it is cold com­fort right now, when our coun­try faces so many daunt­ing chal­lenges that require hard work and sac­ri­fice. I fear we are wast­ing time we can­not afford to lose.

  8. Bob (not Greene) said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:52 am

    Oh, and Sam Alito, take your cue from the Joint Chiefs (who sat in stony silence as Obama asked Con­gress to allow gays to serve in the mil­i­tary), and just sit down and shut up. You want proof that the Supreme Court major­ity is an activist one? Directly con­tra­dict­ing the pres­i­dent DURING the SOTU address should give you an idea of what this court is all about. They deserved to get called out. Sam, your thin skin is show­ing.

  9. Jeff Borden said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:01 am

    C’mon, Bob NG, cor­po­ra­tions need some love, too. How dare the pres­i­dent pick on poor “Strip Search” Sammy Alito and his merry band of con­ser­v­a­tive judi­cial activists.

  10. john c said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:11 am

    My gut feel­ing is the Ipad will save mag­a­zines, and may save news­pa­pers. As for the Kin­dle, I won­der how Laura Lipp­man will feel about hers a year or so from now, when her income slows to a trickle as a large major­ity of her books are read by peo­ple who’ve down­loaded (aka stolen) them off sites that are already out there, offer­ing them for noth­ing. (The only thing that tells me this might not hap­pen is that, unlike music, most books are bought be folks a lit­tle bit older and a lit­tle more hon­or­able.)

  11. Sue said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:13 am

    I have called and emailed every­one I can think of, includ­ing the DNC and the White House, to let them know that a whole bun­cha vot­ers are fig­ur­ing out that their votes don’t mat­ter, what with the Supreme Court deci­sion and Nancy Pelosi kind of throw­ing up her hands and say­ing “can’t do it, folks, don’t have the votes for health care and not will­ing to make my fel­low reps go on record by sched­ul­ing a vote”. A few of the more ener­gized DFH blogs have been telling their read­ers to call their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, so I’m think­ing this past week or so our elected offi­cials have been hear­ing from peo­ple other than tea partiers, and might have been some­what sur­prised by the hos­til­ity of vot­ers they thought they could count on (or should I say dis­miss). Dis­rup­tive Town-Hallers car­ry­ing mis­spelled signs are not the only ones who’ve had it, and a voter who doesn’t see a rea­son to show up on elec­tion day does as much dam­age as a voter who votes for the oppo­si­tion. Repeat­edly shoot­ing your­self in the foot means even­tu­ally you can’t move for­ward, and Barry and Co. can’t start soon enough to repair this self-created public-relations dis­as­ter.
    Bob (not Greene), I couldn’t bring myself to watch the SOTU last night, what with all the advance word about the freeze on domes­tic spend­ing. What hap­pened with the direct con­tra­dic­tion?

  12. nancy said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:24 am

    Laura said more than that one thing about the Kin­dle, and in gen­eral, I think it’s fair to say she’s not a fan, just some­one who sees the occa­sional util­ity of an e-reading device.

    But I’m sure she’d agree with you, John, as I do, that there has to be a big, BIG push­back on copy­right issues and intel­lec­tual prop­erty in gen­eral. One of these days I’m going to read the new Ken Auletta book about Google, if only because, unlike Jeff Jarvis on the same sub­ject, he doesn’t strap on the kneepads for the big G quite so enthu­si­as­ti­cally. One of the reviews I read said it does a good job in cap­tur­ing the essen­tial vibe at Google, which is very much that of the engi­neer, always ask­ing, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could…” and wav­ing their hand at the ques­tion of so-called “con­tent.”

    I think the NYT had a story ear­lier in the week about the ques­tion of free down­loads of books. Ama­zon offers a lot of public-domain clas­sics free as an entice­ment to buy the device, but I can’t be the only one who says, “Should we be train­ing peo­ple to expect even more stuff free online?” I’m a con­tent provider. I’m real, real fuck­ing sick of hear­ing peo­ple talk about long tails and mul­ti­ple income streams and all the rest of it. I don’t like work­ing for noth­ing. Why is that so wrong?

  13. Rana said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:40 am

    Yeah, the ads on Face­book are a level of tacky below those inserts you see in the Parade sec­tion of the paper, along­side the ads for poly­ester stretch pants, foam slip­pers and spray-painted china. I think that they’re gam­bling on suck­ing in young adults who don’t have much sense about scams as yet, and clue­less new­bies who are only on Face­book because the grand­kids told them it would be a good idea. I’ve taken great plea­sure in mark­ing so many of them “unin­ter­est­ing” or “irrel­e­vant” – now I mostly just get ads about writ­ing or pho­tog­ra­phy, which, while still tacky and unper­sua­sive, are less offen­sive.

    I was dis­ap­pointed by the speech, and only kept myself inter­ested through most of it by live-tweeting it (and ended up exceed­ing my twit­ter limit, some­thing I didn’t know existed). The two things that struck me were how tone-deaf he was when it came to “per­suad­ing” the folks on the GOP side of the aisle to stop con­tribut­ing to voter cyn­i­cism and dis­cour­age­ment, and to do the decent thing and to get things done. I put “per­suad­ing” in scare quotes, because to me it came off as a teacher scold­ing chil­dren into play­ing fair, and I could see that this wasn’t going over well. It is also rather naive, in that a lot of those folks got into office by trad­ing off of voter anx­i­ety and cyn­i­cism, and it would cost their jobs to change what they’re doing mid­stream. Sorry, Barry, they don’t like you – or trust you – enough to take that gam­ble.

    I was also quite furi­ous about his energy pol­icy pro­pos­als – and the bipar­ti­san enthu­si­asm with which they were greeted. More nuclear plants, really? When we haven’t solved the waste dis­posal prob­lems and secu­rity prob­lems of the ones we have? “Clean” coal is any­thing but, and sav­ages com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems in the process of extrac­tion (ditto nuclear fuel ores). And more off-shore drilling? Good gad, man, the solu­tion is not to ramp up resource extrac­tion, but to reduce our need for it! It’s like he’s telling us that we can con­tinue on our merry waste­ful way, pol­lut­ing as we go, just so long as the pol­lu­tion doesn’t affect the cli­mate. It aggra­vates me.

    On envi­ron­men­tal issues, he is decid­edly NOT a pro­gres­sive. (I won’t go into the lack of inter­est in things like bio­di­ver­sity, habi­tat pro­tec­tion, etc.)

    To me, the speech came off as a lot of advice falling on deaf ears, cou­pled with a lot of fling­ing things at the wall to see if they’d stick. I’m no longer impressed, even by the ora­tory. *grumpy*

  14. adrianne said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:43 am

    Amen, Nancy. Work­ing for nuthin’ ain’t a long-term busi­ness model, right? I, too, am enthused about iPad giv­ing a life­line to news­pa­pers who are floun­der­ing around in the brave new world.

  15. Bob (not Greene) said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:43 am

    Sue,

    It’s here.

    It’s not exactly Joe Wil­son, but he clearly shakes his head and mouths the words “that’s not true” while sit­ting 10 feet away from the pres­i­dent. Maybe it’s not that big a deal to oth­ers, but I just think this is inap­pro­pri­ate and Alito ought to know bet­ter. Cer­tainly the rest of his col­leagues on the court knew bet­ter.

  16. alex said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:53 am

    Does any­one else get web-ads fea­tur­ing bizarre look­ing peo­ple (cave­men, home­less) who need mort­gages and insur­ance?

    Yes, 4DB, I’ve noted those also. Absolutely grotesque, but eye-catching in an oth­er­wise bland sea of adver­tis­ing, and even more mem­o­rable than any ani­mated stuff I’ve seen.

    I thought last night’s speech was okay, but I doubt it’s going to inspire much con­fi­dence in the sheeples in this part of the world. Any­one notice the expres­sions on John Boehner’s face? What a rep­re­hen­si­ble schmuck, even when he isn’t open­ing his mouth.

    On Edit: Oh, and the rebut­tal with the empty par­ti­san plat­i­tudes and strate­gi­cally placed Uncle Tom lady smil­ing over the guy’s right shoul­der struck me as utterly macabre.

  17. James said on January 28th, 2010 at 12:17 pm

    Here’s my take on the iPad.

    I want one.

    I want one to read books on, and to browse the web, and to watch tv on. I want one to… read comic­books on (the true killer app for this device). I want one to take to school, and edit my class plans on the fly, while keep­ing up with my email.

    Now for my ques­tions:

    1. How do you get the (open stan­dards) epub files onto the machine? if it’s only through the iBook store, that would suck.

    2. Can you read stan­dard PDFs in the iBook app? I don’t think so, but I want to.

    3. How do you trans­fer files to the iPad? Only through iTunes? I hope not. What about iWork files?

    4. Will they ever get Flash files work­ing on the OS? I don’t want to see bro­ken plu­gin icons in the mid­dle of my NYTimes page.

    5. How much are books in their store?

    6. Can I draw on it with a sty­lus? I want to use it as a sketch­book.

    I’m sure I’ll think of more later.

  18. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 28th, 2010 at 12:35 pm

    Alito, unlike Wil­son, was being told per­son­ally that he’d done some­thing — allow for­eign cor­po­ra­tions to spend money on polit­i­cal cam­paigns — that he knew quite well he hadn’t done. “Not true.” It wasn’t a broad polit­i­cal point, it was what the Pres­i­dent said about twenty feet from his face: you did “x.”

    That’s not what the Cit­i­zens United deci­sion did, and that’s specif­i­cally what Alito reacted to. If you want to say the Supreme Court shouldn’t even sit in the room, OK, but to com­pare his shocked reac­tion to Wilson’s juve­nile vocal pos­tur­ing? Nope, “not true.”

    Alex, by Uncle Tom, do you mean the sol­dier who served in the squad with McDonnell’s daugh­ter in Iraq?

    Any­how, if I can’t type smoothly on the touch screen, I can’t image shift­ing off of a lap­top. A Mac­Book Air, maybe, but not the iPad . . . but if I can type eas­ily on it, that’ll be next for me. I like the idea of get­ting a set price for a print Sunday/weekend slab of actual paper, and the online/iPad/Kindle ver­sion the rest of the week. But if the creepy guy’s face for auto insur­ance fol­lows . . . hmmm.

  19. beb said on January 28th, 2010 at 12:38 pm

    The thing you can do with a book that you can’t do with a Kin­dle is loan it out again and again until some­one for­gets to erturn it. None of the peo­ple you’re loan­ing the book to are peo­ple who were plan­ning to buy the book any­way so there’s no loss of money to the writ­ers. But among the peo­ple you loan a book out to there might be a few who will like the story enough to buy a copy for them­selves or at least will pick up the next book the author writes. This is grass­roots adver­tiz­ing of the best kind. You can’t do that with a kin­dle because the dig­i­tal rights man­age­ment of the files won’t allow you to copy it to some­one else’s device. So, while books will help an author mar­gin­ally around the edges an ebook won’t.

    Mak­ing money off of writ­ing on the inter­net? That’s a fool’s quest, much like mak­ing money by writ­ing books. A few lucky duckie can, most writ­ers never earn out their advance. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and most peo­ple have got T-bone writ­ten all over their face.

    What you, Nancy, say there needs to be push­back on copy­right issues, do you mean push­back on tra­di­tional mean­ings of fair use and pub­lic domain, or do you mean push­back on the largely secret Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty that’s going to force DRM on every­body for every­thing? In Egn­land one arm of the gov­ern­ment wants to have all taxes paid on-line, another branch, work­ing on ACTA wants to per­ma­nently barr whole fam­ily from the Inter­net for steal­ing con­tent. If you want the nation to con­duct all busi­ness on-line you can’t afford to cut them off. The peo­ple push­ing copy­right law are the pub­lish­ers who have tra­di­tion­ally had their liv­ing by rip­ping off the art­sts they rep­re­sent. The only copy­right reform we’ve seen has been bad for the peo­ple.

    Well, it’s time to wipe the foam off my lips and fin­ish lunch….

  20. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 28th, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    Beb, I think I dis­cern an area where we have com­plete agree­ment! Foam away . . . like Repub­li­cans using “small fam­ily farms” to argue for Archer-Daniels-Midland inter­ests, I can already hear sock pup­pets using “save jour­nal­ists” to actu­ally hose media con­sumers and cut even more ground out from under media/news organzi­a­tions to send all the money to Mur­doch et alia, while allow­ing us to read once, link never, and search within ever nar­rower open data­bases.

  21. alex said on January 28th, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    Jtmmo–

    I was refer­ring to the woman who was smil­ing and cheer­ing from imme­di­ately behind O’Donnell’s right shoul­der (or behind and left of O’Donnell as he faced us).

  22. moe99 said on January 28th, 2010 at 12:56 pm

    Jeff tmmo, On my lawyers’ blog there is wide agree­ment that the SCT in Citizen’s United has opened the door to for­eign cor­po­ra­tions’ financ­ing of polit­i­cal cam­paigns. Sim­ply say­ing in the major­ity deci­sion that they are not address­ing that par­tic­u­lar ques­tion sim­ply means that it can be done unless Con­gress bars it and they get the chance to speci­fi­ally rule on the issue. Silence may not beto­ken con­sent, ala Thomas More, but it cer­tainly does not sig­nify pro­hi­bi­tion. Those on the SCT are pre­sum­ably smart enough to under­stand this. Which is why Alito’s wag­ging head and tongue were so stu­pid on myr­iad lev­els.

  23. Scout said on January 28th, 2010 at 1:13 pm

    Even know­ing that Nancy will deem it juve­nile I can­not resist a bit of a smile for this:

    “So, it finally got around to that time of the month for the product’s launch, and it turns out that the iPad can’t han­dle peri­od­i­cals. I guess the folks who had hoped it could cope with their 24-hour news cycle are espe­cially dis­ap­pointed,” – a com­menter at Gawker.

    I thought Barry did a good job last night. Even if I don’t agree with every sin­gle pol­icy pro­posal (clean coal comes to mind) he is still buzz lightyears ahead of the Affir­ma­tive Action Lega­cyPrez that drunk drove this coun­try into a ditch. Now I want him to take the bull by the horns, twist some wimpy Dem arms and Get. The. Damn. Bill. Passed. He might finally get it that when Repub­li­cans cry for bi-partisanship it only goes in one direc­tion.

  24. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 28th, 2010 at 1:16 pm

    That’s McDonnell’s sec­re­tary of admin­is­tra­tion. But wouldn’t she be an Aunt Thomasina?

    If a lawyer’s blog dis­agrees with me and Alito, then who am I to resist? It’s just all sideshow stuff: will they pass some build­ing blocks of health care reform or not? And I hope the GOP side gets it that “no-only” isn’t enough, and that the Dems don’t see pass­ing any­thing short of the whole tamale as giv­ing a win to the right, which I think their spin machine is more than capa­ble of refut­ing. (Before some­one objects, I say that in the full cer­tainty that both sides of the aisle have well-oiled, thor­oughly tuned-up spin machines.)

    But I have to add this – http://​opin​ion​a​tor​.blogs​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​0​1​/​2​7​/​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​-​a​l​i​t​o​s​-​r​e​a​ction/

  25. Sue said on January 28th, 2010 at 1:17 pm

    Glen Green­wald is obvi­ously not a non­par­ti­san voice, but he seems to make a good point here:
    “There’s a rea­son that Supreme Court Jus­tices — along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff — never applaud or oth­er­wise express any reac­tion at a State of the Union address. It’s vital — both as a mat­ter of per­cep­tion and real­ity — that those insti­tu­tions remain apo­lit­i­cal, sep­a­rate and detached from par­ti­san wars. The Court’s pro­nounce­ments on (and res­o­lu­tions of) the most inflam­ma­tory and pas­sion­ate polit­i­cal dis­putes retain legit­i­macy only if they pos­sess a cred­i­ble claim to being objec­tively grounded in law and the Con­sti­tu­tion, not polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions.”

  26. Lex said on January 28th, 2010 at 1:51 pm

    And great job on that GOP response — find the XY equiv­a­lent of Martha Coak­ley, flank him with a black woman and an Asian man, and have them nod and clap on cue IN THE HALL WHERE JEFFERSON DAVIS WAS INAUGURATED.

    Fixed. :-)

  27. Jen said on January 28th, 2010 at 2:10 pm

    I like the iPad, but I am going to be wait­ing to see what peo­ple say about it as they start using it before I decide if I’m going to sink $500 into one. But I really, really want one. So pretty!

    In light of the iPad and other tech­nol­ogy stuff com­ing out lately, my sis­ter (a tech­ni­cal librar­ian) and I (the news­pa­per reporter) have been dis­cussing where all of this tech­nol­ogy stuff is going. Her job is very tech-based and has a lot to do with keep­ing the library on the cut­ting edge of tech­nol­ogy, and I have pushed myself into as much technology/Web-based stuff at our news­pa­per as I can (I have the only blog that gets updated, for exam­ple, and I babysit on our online forums). I’m hop­ing that we jump on the iPad/Kindle/ereader thing soon, though I’ll admit I don’t know any­body with an ereader around these here parts yet.

    My sis­ter, by the way, is unim­pressed by the iPad, but she hates Apple prod­ucts so I’ll take her crit­i­cism with a grain of salt.

  28. moe99 said on January 28th, 2010 at 2:27 pm

    You may find this offen­sive, Jeff tmmo, but I think the point is well taken. From Digby on Alito:

    “I think that any jus­tice who thinks that unreg­u­lated free speech for cor­po­ra­tions is sacred while the speech of some kid with a sign that says “bong hits 4 Jesus” can be sup­pressed has already amply embar­rassed him­self.”

  29. Jeff Borden said on January 28th, 2010 at 2:38 pm

    Wasn’t Alito also the only jus­tice who refused to shake hands with Obama last year because Obama, wisely, opposed his appoint­ment to SCOTUS? You’d think a man with a life­time job and a green light to tilt the play­ing field in favor of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment to which he owes so much would have some­what thicker skin.

    At the very least, I hope we can finally put an end to the con­stant whin­ing from the right about “activist judges.” Our Supreme Court is now offi­cially an activist con­ser­v­a­tive court with a predilec­tion to find in favor of the most pow­er­ful enti­ties. And God help us, they are going to be a force for the next sev­eral decades, a lit­tle gift from W. and his pals that keeps on giv­ing.

  30. Sue said on January 28th, 2010 at 2:43 pm

    Roe v. Wade, here we come.

  31. Jeff Borden said on January 28th, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    I would not be overly sur­prised, Sue, not at all. Per­haps some of the legal eagles at NN.C can enlighten us as to whether there are cases in lower courts regard­ing this issue that might even­tu­ally get to SCOTUS.

  32. Sue said on January 28th, 2010 at 3:00 pm

    I wasn’t just spec­u­lat­ing, Jeff Bor­den, it’s expected, and pretty much being openly dis­cussed:
    http://​www​.news​max​.com/​I​n​s​i​d​e​C​o​v​e​r​/​j​o​h​n​r​o​b​e​r​t​s​-​s​u​p​r​e​m​e​c​o​u​r​t​-​a​b​o​r​t​i​o​n​-​r​o​e​v​-​w​a​d​e​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​1​/​2​4​/​i​d​/​347808

  33. moe99 said on January 28th, 2010 at 3:09 pm

    two things. Jef­frey Toobin’s take on Alito and the per­sonal antipa­thy he feels for Obama:
    http://​www​.newyorker​.com/​o​n​l​i​n​e​/​b​l​o​g​s​/​n​e​w​s​d​e​s​k​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​1​/​a​l​i​t​o​s​-​f​a​c​e.html

    And this dis­cus­sion why Roe v. Wade is next up for rever­sal by the Supremes comes from a con law pro­fes­sor I know who is also an ACLU Board mem­ber and con­firms Theodore Ket­tle in your news­max cite, Sue:

    There’s a fair amount of com­men­tary on the web already about the prospects for for­eign money work­ing its way into (and in the case of China, dom­i­nat­ing) U.S. pol­i­tics. As you note, Kennedy noted but ducked the ques­tion.

    Roe v. Wade may be next to go if a case offers the oppor­tu­nity to over­rule it. See this pas­sage from Roberts’ con­cur­ring opin­ion explain­ing when stare deci­sis loses its force:

    Stare deci­sis is instead a “prin­ci­ple of pol­icy.” Helver­ing , supra , at 119. When con­sid­er­ing whether to reex­am­ine a prior erro­neous hold­ing, we must bal­ance the impor­tance of hav­ing con­sti­tu­tional ques­tions decided against the impor­tance of hav­ing them decided right . As Jus­tice Jack­son explained, this requires a “sober appraisal of the dis­ad­van­tages of the inno­va­tion as well as those of the ques­tioned case, a weigh­ing of prac­ti­cal effects of one against the other.” Jack­son, Deci­sional Law and Stare Deci­sis , 30 A. B. A. J. 334 (1944).
    In con­duct­ing this bal­anc­ing, we must keep in mind that stare deci­sis is not an end in itself. It is instead “the means by which we ensure that the law will not merely change errat­i­cally, but will develop in a prin­ci­pled and intel­li­gi­ble fash­ion.” Vasquez v. Hillery , 474 U. S. 254, 265 (1986) . Its great­est pur­pose is to serve a con­sti­tu­tional ideal—the rule of law. It fol­lows that in the unusual cir­cum­stance when fidelity to any par­tic­u­lar prece­dent does more to dam­age this con­sti­tu­tional ideal than to advance it, we must be more will­ing to depart from that prece­dent.

    Thus, for exam­ple, if the prece­dent under con­sid­er­a­tion itself departed from the Court’s jurispru­dence, return­ing to the “ ‘intrin­si­cally sounder’ doc­trine estab­lished in prior cases” may “bet­ter serv[e] the val­ues of stare deci­sis than would fol­low­ing [the] more recently decided case incon­sis­tent with the deci­sions that came before it.” Adarand Con­struc­tors, Inc. v. PeÅ„a , 515 U. S. 200, 231 (1995) ; see also Helver­ing , supra , at 119; Ran­dall , supra , at 274 ( Stevens , J., dis­sent­ing). Abro­gat­ing the errant prece­dent, rather than reaf­firm­ing or extend­ing it, might bet­ter pre­serve the law’s coher­ence and cur­tail the precedent’s dis­rup­tive effects.

    Like­wise, if adher­ence to a prece­dent actu­ally impedes the sta­ble and orderly adju­di­ca­tion of future cases, its stare deci­sis effect is also dimin­ished. This can hap­pen in a num­ber of cir­cum­stances, such as when the precedent’s valid­ity is so hotly con­tested that it can­not reli­ably func­tion as a basis for deci­sion in future cases, when its ratio­nale threat­ens to upend our set­tled jurispru­dence in related areas of law, and when the precedent’s under­ly­ing rea­son­ing has become so dis­cred­ited that the Court can­not keep the prece­dent alive with­out jury-rigging new and dif­fer­ent jus­ti­fi­ca­tions to shore up the orig­i­nal mis­take. See, e.g., Pear­son v. Calla­han, 555 U. S. ___, ___ (2009) (slip op., at 10); Mon­tejo v. Louisiana, 556 U. S. ___, ___ (2009) (slip op., at 13) ( stare deci­sis does not con­trol when adher­ence to the prior deci­sion requires “fun­da­men­tally revis­ing its the­o­ret­i­cal basis”).

  34. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 28th, 2010 at 3:16 pm

    Why would I find it offen­sive? I just dis­agree . . . but I might dis­agree with restrict­ing “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”, too, if I knew any­thing about the case. I’ll look it up between 4 and 6, since I’m just stuck here wait­ing for some folks ’til then.

    I’m mainly just offended by sui­cide humor, and not offended, but put off by an over-reliance on poop jokes. (But if you’ve never seen the “Employee Train­ing Video” on Sponge­Bob — now that’s funny.)

    Roe v. Wade is dead law walk­ing — Black­mun based it on sci­ence that’s moved on, so the prece­dent is no longer ter­ri­bly use­ful. It doesn’t take a con­ser­v­a­tive jihad to see Roe as out­dated and unhelp­ful. What to replace it with, that’s the ques­tion. And most on the left would rather keep Roe rather than grap­ple directly with devel­op­ing a new legal frame­work. But it’s gonna hap­pen, sooner rather than later.

  35. brian stouder said on January 28th, 2010 at 3:17 pm

    Roe v. Wade, here we come

    But see, THAT’s the beaut­ful part of this par­tic­u­lar “con­ser­v­a­tive” con job. The Repub­li­cans have reaped who-knows-how-many mil­lions of votes from the single-issue “pro-life” folks across the coun­try for the past 40 years; they’ve won con­trol of both houses of con­gress and repeat­edly they’ve won the White House….and yet, Roe v Wade is the one issue that they (the elected offi­cials) absolutely will not touch.

    If they (the elected offi­cials) were sin­cere, they’d at least pro­pose and try to pass a law flatly ban­ning abor­tion, period. They could put their money and careers where their big fat mouths are – and chal­lenge the US Supreme Court to strike it down. And if the Supreme Court DID strike such a law down, then they (the con­gress) could pass another, and chal­lenge the Court again.

    But not only they haven’t passed any­thing, they haven’t even tried. I think they know that such a law would be an unwork­able train wreck (who goes to jail? Mom? Dad? The doc­tors and nurses?), and that such a law would abort their golden-egg lay­ing pub­lic pol­icy goose (the true-believer pro-life zealots).

    Nope – as hor­ri­ble (and activist and com­mie and evil) as the flying-monkies of the Right think that the Demo­c­ra­tic con­gres­sional major­ity and pres­i­dent is, I think they not-so-secretly admire them.

    Because no mat­ter how halt­ing and ten­ta­tive one might think that Pres­i­dent Obama and the Demo­c­ra­tic House and Sen­ate has been, with regard to Health Care Reform and the rest – com­pared to the all-hat-and-no-cattle Repub­li­cans, the Democ­rats look like real-live leg­is­la­tors.

    And if the SCOTUS strikes down Roe v Wade, I think the effect will be a late-term abor­tion of the Repub­li­can party (and prob­a­bly an ammend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion, after the purge)

  36. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 28th, 2010 at 3:20 pm

    Many, maybe even most of us in the gen­eral pro-life side do NOT want all abor­tion out­lawed, or as you say, that might have gone up for a vote by now. That’s not where most of us are.

  37. Dexter said on January 28th, 2010 at 3:28 pm

    “Fuck you, Sammy Alito, you smug piece of shit.”

    Ah yes! The only thing I would do here is “insert the name of your per­sonal smug piece of shit”—and my choice is clear as an azure sky, and that name is Eric Can­tor of Vir­ginia. Worth­less fuck­ing piece of shit. Get a gan­der at and take a lis­ten to this prick:
    http://​www​.thetake​away​.org/​2​0​1​0​/​j​a​n​/​2​8​/​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​-​w​h​i​p​s​-​t​a​k​e​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​union/

  38. brian stouder said on January 28th, 2010 at 3:51 pm

    Many, maybe even most of us in the gen­eral pro-life side do NOT want all abor­tion out­lawed, or as you say, that might have gone up for a vote by now. That’s not where most of us are.

    Fair enough, Jeff. But if the Court strikes down Roe V. Wade, then indeed, depend­ing on what state you live in, abor­tion might be com­pletely legal, or com­pletely banned (includ­ing in cases of rape), or some­where in between.

    And in that case, Jus­tice Allito would (no doubt) shake his head “no” when somone has the gall to say HIS actions lead to the death of a 17 year old in a South Car­olina alley, etc – even though they did

  39. Bill said on January 28th, 2010 at 4:32 pm

    com­ment deleted

  40. alex said on January 28th, 2010 at 4:46 pm

    Dwight try­ing out new noms de plume again?

    On Edit: Would that be noms des plumes? Two years of col­lege French and I still don’t know.

  41. coozledad said on January 28th, 2010 at 4:56 pm

    Plus de Fours.

  42. jcburns

    jcburns said on January 28th, 2010 at 5:24 pm

    James to answer your ques­tion yes you can read PDFs on the iPad…in fact you can read Excel spread­sheets, word doc­u­ments all man­ner of things, just as you can on the iPhone or on your very own IPod touch.

  43. jcburns

    jcburns said on January 28th, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    By the way I just dic­tated that com­ment and this one using the Dragon dic­ta­tion app on my iPhone…you guessed it.

  44. Sue said on January 28th, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    Orly’s back!
    http://​tpm​muck​raker​.talk​ing​pointsmemo​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​0​1​/​b​i​r​t​h​e​r​_​q​u​e​e​n​_​f​i​l​e​s​_​o​r​l​y​_​t​a​i​t​z​_​v​_​b​a​r​a​c​k​_​h​u​s​s​e​i​n​_​o​b​.​p​h​p​?​r​ef=fpb

  45. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 28th, 2010 at 5:31 pm

    So, other than size, what really is the diff btw iPod Touch and an iPad?

  46. Jeff Borden said on January 28th, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    I’ll believe con­ser­v­a­tives are seri­ous about end­ing abor­tions when they address the log­i­cal way to do that, which is to reduce unwanted preg­nan­cies with con­tra­cep­tion. It con­tin­ues to bog­gle me that those who yell the loud­est about the scourge of abor­tion are often those who yell the loud­est against any kind of com­pre­hen­sive sex edu­ca­tion and a wider avail­abil­ity of con­tra­cep­tive devices.

    Instead, we con­tinue to pour mil­lions down the drain on absti­nence edu­ca­tion and other tom­foo­leries.

    I believe it was on the Tom Hart­man show, but I heard some­where in the past few days how many hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars have been raised by con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians from anti-abortion forces. Maybe Repub­li­cans aren’t all that aggres­sive in try­ing to end abor­tion because it is a cash cow. (And, yes, the Democ­rats also pocket plenty from pro-choice groups, so it’s a fund-raising bonanza for every­one.)

  47. Deborah said on January 28th, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    RIP JD Salinger

  48. alex said on January 28th, 2010 at 8:19 pm

    Jtmmo—

    What floors me about the abor­tion debate is that the pro-life move­ment hardly seems to rec­og­nize its own suc­cesses. The prac­tice has become so stig­ma­tized that few doc­tors are will­ing to risk their lives or rep­u­ta­tions per­form­ing the pro­ce­dure and almost no woman would be will­ing to admit hav­ing under­gone the pro­ce­dure or that she might be con­sid­er­ing it. In many places in this coun­try it is sim­ply impos­si­ble to obtain an abor­tion if you don’t pos­sess extra­or­di­nary means. Elec­tive abor­tion is becom­ing increas­ingly uncom­mon. And yet this vic­tory isn’t good enough for them.

    The stigma­ti­za­tion of abor­tion has resulted in the wide­spread des­tigma­ti­za­tion of teen preg­nancy and sin­gle moth­er­hood, which of course have risen dra­mat­i­cally in this atmos­phere, but the moral­ists don’t like this either. They are unwill­ing to accept that you can­not have it both ways. Unfor­tu­nately they’re the pub­lic face and voice of the move­ment and that’s why they do not have my sym­pa­thy or sup­port to any extent.

    I think it would be sad if Roe were over­turned because I fear that late-term abortions—the ones that are the most vil­li­fied and yet almost with­out excep­tion med­ically necessary—could become the casu­alty of cow­ardly politi­cians if this becomes a voter’s issue on the local or state level. I frankly don’t think these peo­ple have any more busi­ness mak­ing med­ical deci­sions for oth­ers than they do mak­ing mar­i­tal deci­sions for me, and I am cer­tain that they’re exactly the same peo­ple.

    Why isn’t there a group of middle-grounders on abor­tion talk­ing some sense? Is it really about gen­uine con­cern for the sanc­tity of life? Or is it sanc­ti­mo­nious win­dow dress­ing for con­cern about the ero­sion of white male author­ity?

  49. Joe Kobiela said on January 28th, 2010 at 8:22 pm

    Ok,
    Sit­ting here watch­ing O’Rielly dis­ect­ing the pres­i­dents speech. Could some of you take the time and record or watch the repeat at 11pm and tell me what you all think of at least his talk­ing points. I think it was fair and bal­anced. I’m on the road to Lex­ing­ton tomor­row but will be able to check in from time to time. The pres say’s we should all get along so do me this favor and tell me where I’m wrong.
    Pilot Joe

  50. 4dbirds said on January 28th, 2010 at 8:48 pm

    Joe K.,

    Since I didn’t watch the speech, I can’t give you a fair analy­sis of my take.

  51. coozledad said on January 28th, 2010 at 9:07 pm

    Alex: When in doubt, con­sider it sanc­ti­mo­nious win­dow dress­ing. Always a safe bet. Don’t for­get the knee­jerk misog­y­nist cant brought on by the spec­tre of the vagina as an insa­tiably car­niv­o­rous free agent.
    I even got a fundrais­ing let­ter from McCain bewail­ing encroach­ing fem­i­nism. The lot of them must spend an inor­di­nate amount of time try­ing to pro­tect their balls.

  52. joodyb said on January 28th, 2010 at 9:22 pm

    here you go, nance. best i could do:

    http://​www​.forbes​.com/​f​e​e​d​s​/​a​p​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​1​/​2​8​/​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​m​e​n​t​-​u​s​-​o​b​i​t​-​s​a​l​i​n​g​e​r​_​7​313423

  53. nancy said on January 28th, 2010 at 9:42 pm

    Alex, they won’t be happy until abor­tion is thor­oughly crim­i­nal­ized, not a sin­gle embry­onic stem cell lives in a lab any­where in the U.S., any whack-job Catholic or Mor­mon phar­ma­cist is per­mit­ted to snatch the birth-control pre­scrip­tion from any teenager’s hand — if, in fact, birth con­trol is still legal — and at least one abortion-doctor killer is par­doned and has his own talk show.

    That’s what peo­ple on the choice side don’t under­stand: There IS no com­pro­mise for these folks. There IS no mid­dle ground.

  54. brian stouder said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:29 pm

    Joe – I’ll give Billo 5 min­utes, and report back to you.

    And as a bonus, I promise to be seri­ous and fair-minded.

  55. moe99 said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:53 pm

    Nancy, wel­come to the fanatic side of my Catholic fam­ily. My mother and 2 sis­ters are all anti abor­tion, can’t sup­port Democ­rats because of this. My mid­dle sis­ter was in DC last Fri­day protest­ing Roe v. Wade. And she’s a vet­eri­nar­ian! I just don’t respond when they bring it up. What would be the use? There is no mid­dle ground.

  56. beb said on January 28th, 2010 at 10:57 pm

    What Nancy said at 53.

  57. Kirk said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:10 pm

    And remem­ber: If you can in any way jus­tify abor­tion, you’re “ANTI-LIFE”!!!

  58. brian stouder said on January 28th, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    OK Joe, I watched Bill’s ‘talk­ing points’, and if we grade on a curve I’ll give him an A+, because he’s the one major right-wing guy I’ve heard who really did make an effort to give some credit where it’s due.

    I dis­agree with his crit­i­cism of the Health Care Reform effort, espe­cially because he specif­i­cally pointed to Medicare as an exam­ple of why we don’t need Health Care reform, which is exactly back­ward (money will be saved over the long term, ver­sus leav­ing things as they are); plus Bill said we should let the insur­ance com­pa­nies com­pete over state-lines (appar­ently he doesn’t real­ize that that reform is already IN the Health Care Reform bill)

    So at the end of his alto­gether rea­son­able ‘Talk­ing Points’, up popped a pic­ture of Frank Luntz, and I knew it was time to pull the “eject” lever. I had seen a tease show­ing some blonde news-babe attack­ing the pres­i­dent for dar­ing to crit­i­cize the United States Supreme Court, and knew that the road ahead was all down­hill.

    By the way, and in all hon­esty, in response to McCain’s irri­ta­tion at Pres­i­dent Obama’s reg­u­lar reminders about the mess he inher­ited from Pres­i­dent Bush – let me just say that in 1980 I voted for my very first pres­i­dent (Rea­gan) – and he trashed Jimmy Carter and the mess he inher­ited again and again and again. Eight years later, George Her­bert Walker Bush was STILL (and successfully)running against Jimmy Carter.

    By way of say­ing, Fox News and their info-babes need to quit pout­ing about the plain fact that the mess we’re in (and the much big­ger one that we averted) came from Pres­i­dent Bush and the for­merly Repub­li­can con­gress.

    Fur­ther, in bad eco­nomic times, gov­ern­ment spend­ing (and con­se­quently gov­ern­ment debt) beats the absolute hell out of gov­ern­ment aus­ter­ity (and con­se­quently depression/collapse/hunger/unrest), as we learned (or should have learned) in 1931

  59. Little Bird said on January 29th, 2010 at 12:12 am

    Ever notice how many anti-abortionists are pro-death penalty? Just a thought.

  60. Denice B. said on January 29th, 2010 at 12:29 am

    Reminds me of the old Kotex tam­pon ads that said you can go swim­ming and horse­back rid­ing while wear­ing one. I asked my mom to buy them so I could go horse­back rid­ing!! I was 8. And innocent….(old school joke)

  61. Rana said on January 29th, 2010 at 1:01 am

    Well, Lit­tle Bird, what both posi­tions have in com­mon is a belief that the gov­ern­ment has a right to make life or death deci­sion regard­ing the bod­ies of its cit­i­zens, regard­less of what those cit­i­zens them­selves might want. This is espe­cially the case when the cit­i­zens in ques­tion are deemed immoral, as pris­on­ers and women seek­ing to end preg­nan­cies are framed in this sce­nario. These folks are also com­fort­able with tor­tur­ing ter­ror sus­pects, for the same rea­sons.

  62. Mosef said on January 29th, 2010 at 2:33 am

    I sup­port nei­ther the death penalty nor abor­tion, but it is easy to see why one could sup­port the death penalty but not abor­tion. First, there is the mat­ter of scale. Abor­tion is geno­cide – 45 mil­lion human beings killed in the United States from 1973 to 2005. For the same time period, there were less than 1,100 pub­lic exe­cu­tions. Yes, all life is pre­cious, etc, but obvi­ously, abor­tion is in a totally dif­fer­ent death league. Sec­ond, and while it is no tremen­dous insight, abor­tion is always and for­ever the tak­ing of an inno­cent life. Yes, inno­cent peo­ple have been exe­cuted, but such cases rep­re­sent a very small frac­tion. Is the death penalty wrong? Yes, in my opin­ion, but it doesn’t even begin to match the evil that is abor­tion. It isn’t hypocrisy that leads to the divided opin­ion – just an clear-eyed assess­ment that all wrongs are not equal and deserv­ing of the same out­rage and reme­di­a­tion. Please don’t go all postal on me dear read­ers – I have heard it all before.

    What makes me crazy about the abor­tion war is the fail­ure to speak the truth about what is really hap­pen­ing. I can’t respect peo­ple who do not have the courage to state their posi­tion hon­estly. The sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy of today mades it very, very clear that it is a human being that is killed as a result of the abor­tion. Now one could argue that there is a con­tinuium of human life and that not all stages of human life are equally deserv­ing of the state’s pro­tec­tion of life and lib­erty. That early forms of life are infe­rior to fully autonomous per­sons and are thus not enti­tled to pro­tec­tion under the law. Make your case, but advance it on the premise that one human being has the right to ter­mi­nate another human life. State that fact and then argue why.

    Last, who­ever said that the explo­sion in teenage preg­nancy is due to abor­tion stigma is sim­ply talk­ing out of their behind, with absolutely no emper­i­cal research to sup­port that find­ing. (This would be impos­si­ble to find since the two are not causally related.)

  63. beb said on January 29th, 2010 at 7:43 am

    Mosef wrte; “Abor­tion is geno­cide — 45 mil­lion human beings killed in the United States from 1973 to 2005.”

    Earth to Mosef, the pop­u­la­tion of the USA today is higher than it was in 1973. How can abor­tion be geno­cide when the pop­u­la­tion keeps grow­ing? When geno­cide struck Thai­land or Rwanda whole com­mu­ni­ties dis­ap­peared. Noth­ing like that is hap­pen­ing in the US. You are, like so many abor­tion apol­o­gists – out of your frick­ing mind.

  64. alex said on January 29th, 2010 at 8:07 am

    Well, Mosef, my evi­dence about abor­tion stigma and teen preg­nancy may be anec­do­tal but I’m sure that there is empir­i­cal sup­port as well. There cer­tainly has been empir­i­cal sup­port for the idea that abstinence-only edu­ca­tion — another buga­boo of the pro-life move­ment — has been achiev­ing the unin­tended con­se­quence of fos­ter­ing rather than pre­vent­ing teen preg­nancy.

    I know first­hand of women who had chil­dren they didn’t want because of the stigma. I also know peo­ple who wanted their daugh­ters to undergo abor­tions but because the girls had already announced their preg­nan­cies to the world it was too late — they did not want to face the oppro­brium of their com­mu­ni­ties or see their daugh­ters sub­jected to it. I’m not talk­ing out of my ass, as you say. I’m speak­ing from the heart. Your side has essen­tially won on the issue of abor­tion on demand. Be happy, dammit.

  65. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 29th, 2010 at 8:22 am

    Every anti-abortion per­son I know is anti-death penalty, includ­ing myself. And as for no mid­dle ground — the extremes in both pro-life & pro-choice camps, like Sunni & Shi’a extrem­ists, make it dif­fi­cult for mod­er­ates to be heard clearly over the bang­ing of pots and clash­ing of cym­bals, but that doesn’t mean we’re not out here. Check polls, where large num­bers want less abor­tion, and do not sup­port a con­sti­tu­tional “Human Life” amend­ment. You can call us incon­sis­tent if you like, but . . .

  66. Sue said on January 29th, 2010 at 9:04 am

    Mosef, any­one who is in favor of mak­ing this ‘geno­cide’ ille­gal must be in favor of very strong social pro­grams to cover the expected after­math. Those 45 mil­lion lives must be val­ued as strongly after they are born as when they are in the womb. If the State has the right to dic­tate that a child must be born, it must also do what is nec­es­sary to make sure that child has ade­quate health care, nutri­tion and shel­ter until such time as that child’s parent(s) can cover it, even if that time doesn’t come. And if the argu­ment against that is the whole “per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity” thing, then free pro­phy­lac­tic birth con­trol and lots of edu­ca­tion in school and out on how and why to use it should be at the top of the to-do list.
    I am more inter­ested in this appar­ent dis­con­nect than the death penalty com­par­i­son.

  67. Jeff Borden said on January 29th, 2010 at 9:30 am

    There’s always some­thing of a “through the look­ing­glass” ele­ment to so much of our debates on abor­tion.

    Take the sanc­ti­mo­nious sack of shit Andre Brauer, who is seek­ing to replace another sanc­ti­mo­nious sack of shit, Mark San­ford, as gov­er­nor of our most laugh­able state (sorry, Texas), South Car­olina. Mr. Brauer, of course, is vehe­mently pro-life, which is fine, but a few days ago he equated gov­ern­ment assis­tance to the poor with feed­ing stray ani­mals. This in a state where the unem­ploy­ment rate is near 12% and almost 60% of kids receive sub­si­dized school lunches.

    How can you square being pro-life with such a cold-hearted cal­cu­la­tion that says, in essence, go away and starve?

  68. Sue said on January 29th, 2010 at 9:39 am

    You know who could have knocked us all flat on this? Ash­ley Mor­ris, he whose sis­ter turned out to be his mother; he who came from a less-than-stellar fam­ily and became a col­lege pro­fes­sor. Won­der what f-bomb-laden com­ment he would make on this?

  69. coozledad said on January 29th, 2010 at 9:43 am

    “The death penalty doesn’t even begin to match the evil that is abor­tion” This is their argu­ment in a nut­shell. It’s fine to kill sen­tient beings. They’re messy and they take up valu­able park­ing space at the mall. You can even whoop and cheer as your elected secre­tive farter turns a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion of Iraq (and quite a few US mil­i­tary personnel)into a hill of smok­ing meat, or applies elec­trodes to a few gen­i­tals, or pretend-drowns a few Arabs. And embryo Jesus will approve. Embryo Jesus is also fond of pro-lifers who spray them witch-churches with auto­matic weapons, or kill folks at fam­ily plan­ning clin­ics. Don’t cross embryo Jesus. He’s a killa.
    But once that baby is born, it’s a worth­less drag on tax­payin’ Amer­i­cans and it’s that damn baby’s fault for tak­ing out an adjustable rate mort­gage and siphon­ing off our hard earned wealth with food stamps or gov­ern­ment man­dated health­care.

  70. 4dbirds said on January 29th, 2010 at 10:55 am

    I had an abor­tion and thank good­ness it was legal and safe. After­ward since I wasn’t preg­nant and didn’t have a depen­dant, I was eli­gi­ble to join the army and from that ser­vice, I gained an edu­ca­tion and valu­able work expe­ri­ence that has made me a pro­duc­tive mem­ber of soci­ety ever since. Also, by hav­ing a clean, safe abor­tion my fer­til­ity was intact and I was able to have my chil­dren when I wanted them. I have never regret­ted that deci­sion, I don’t have any remorse, guilt or shame and I am not scarred men­tally or phys­i­cally from it.

  71. brettvk said on January 31st, 2010 at 4:43 am

    Mosef — I will give you the hon­esty you claim to crave. I don’t con­cur with the asser­tion that a blas­to­cyst, embryo or fetus is a human being, but even if that were true, the rights of the female adult human over her own body super­sedes any right to life that the fetal human has. Yes, even if she care­lessly or stu­pidly gets preg­nant, even if, accord­ing to you or any­one else, she can afford to go through the preg­nancy and raise the child after­wards. A person’s right over their own body is absolute; you can­not com­pel another human being to sac­ri­fice so much as a pint of blood to sup­port another human’s life. I have no oblig­a­tion to donate any part of my body for any length of time, even if my refusal costs another per­son their life. Nei­ther the state nor other peo­ple can with jus­tice com­mand a female human to donate her body as life sup­port to another human for nine months against her will. No, fetal chil­dren are not a spe­cial form of humans that have more rights than adult humans.

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