That's amazing. I didn't see the rest of the interview with the part regarding right to privacy. If she said that immediately after criticizing Roe...with no distinction...then it shows she hasn't a clue about what the only case she knew enough to criticize was even centered on. Republican friends here....seriously??? This doesn't freak you out? This doesn't AT LEAST give you pause?? Are you questioning McCain's judgment on this choice at all?
I got the sense from watching it that she thought that Couric was going on to a totally new topic, she didn't get that roe v wade and privacy were linked in any way.
She said exactly that - she thinks the states should be able to legislate the issue of abortion, and then immediately said she supports the constitutional right of privacy and that it should be left up to the states - which of course means that she does not support a federally-protected right to privacy - since Griswold, Roe etc established a barrier around privacy where the states could not intervene.
I don't see why that would be. You could have a federal constitutional right to privacy and have the court poke a hole in it to allow states to legislate the protection of fetuses without constitutional challenge. You'd essentially just be tweaking what "privacy" is.
I hate to find myself defending this abomination of an interview in any way, but why not? Is it hard to believe that she believes in a right to privacy but does not believe that abortion falls into the category of what is consider private?
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/X3AZqoSXUhU&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/X3AZqoSXUhU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
This right to privacy issue was CENTRAL to Roe. It's really the heart of it. That you would finish one answer talking about how you disagree with Roe...and then come back and talk about how you agreed with federal privacy rights...while not qualifying it with regard to Roe....is hardly believable to me...or i should say it's hardly believeable to me she would answer that way if she knew what Roe were about. It was said that the court in Roe was "creating rights."
Not according to most of the standard conservative opposition to Roe, which goes something like: Roe is entirely wrong because Griswold is wrong. Griswold is wrong because it made up a right to privacy not in the constitution. The thought of a discretionary carve-out/exception for Roe is an absolute anathema to the jurisprudential framework proposed by Scalia etc, the heroes of the pro-life movement - which is purports to be all about consistent rules that can be applied across the board, without exception. This really doesn't fly at all in that context. Also - what Mad Max said - Do you honestly think she is engaged in this type of high-level jurisprudential thinking? I sincerely sincerely sincerely doubt it. This reminds me of the excuse when, at a softball, campaign-staged town hall Q&A, Palin said the AIG bailout was necessary due to its "construction bonds." Her defenders claimed this was on purpose. Now while it is indeed true that AIG, being such an incredibly massive organization, does in fact underwrite construction bond insurance. However it controls only a tiny part of a very diverse market for that type of insurance (14th biggest provider or something -the failure of AIG's construction bond business would be absolutely, completely inconsequential to the larger economy AIG's failure would be problematic for reasons completely unrelated to construction bonds. So why even pretend to give her the benefit of the doubt when the most rational, simplest explanation indicates otherwise.
here's some thoughtful commentary on both palin's and biden's answers form Volokh Conspiracy: [rquoter]The VP Candidates on Roe & Federalism: I am puzzled by a few things about the Sarah Palin's and Joseph Biden's responses to Katie Couric's questions about Roe v. Wade and federalism. I found it odd that Palin could not name another Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed. After all, we know that she is aware of at least one Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade with which she disagrees. Just over a month ago she criticized the Supreme Court's decision in the Exxon Valdez case, slashing the punitive damages awarded by the trial court. So did she simply freeze up and forget? Was she afraid of a 'gotcha' comeback if she named a specific case? Or is she that much of a knucklehead that she can't even remember what she thought of the Court several weeks ago? My read of the video is that the first is most likely, but I'm sure others will disagree. Biden, the constitutional law scholar and former Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke more smoothly and authoritatively on the issue. Yet while his defense of Roe may have sounded thoughtful at a superficial level, it was actually quite incoherent. Instead of saying that he thinks the abortion right is a fundamental liberty that deserves constitutional protection — which he only hinted at later, and would be a more straightforward way to defend Roe and an abortion right under the Constitution — Biden explained that the Court's decision is "as close to a consensus that can exist in a society as heterogeneous as ours." Setting aside his focus on Roe, and his description of Roe's initial holding as if it were still the law of the land and had not been supplanted by Casey's "undue burden" test, his rationale is problematic on several levels, particularly for someone who holds himself out as an expert on constitutional law. First, if the aim is a rule that embodies or approximates a national "consensus" on an issue, there is no reason to believe that the imposition of a uniform constitutional mandate by the Supreme Court is more likely to embody such a consensus than will the action of the legislature. Not only is the Court less responsive to popular opinion than the legislature, Supreme Court decisions are also more difficult to change than statutory enactments. Thus, even if a the Court gets it right at a given point in time, it is exceedingly unlikely that the Court's unaltered judgment will reflect a social consensus over time. If, as Biden claims, the aim is to embody or approximate the social consensus, one has to take into account the fact that popular opinion shifts, but Roe does not. Second, if the aim is to have abortion laws that come as close as possible to embodying public values and preferences, any nationally uniform rule, whether permissive or restrictive, is less optimal than leaving the matter to the separate states. Allowing individual states to adopt their own rules will result in a greater percentage of the public living within a jurisdiction that imposes abortion rules with which they agree. To illustrate, consider a hypothetical nation with two states of equal populations. The national preference in favor of permissive abortion rules is 60% to 40%. But in State A the preference of permissive rules is 75% to 25% and in State B the preference for more restrictive abortion rules runs 55% to 45%. With a national rule reflecting popular opinion, 60% of the people live under a rule they support. Allowing each state to adopt its own rules, however, results, in 65% of the people ((75+55)/2) living under a rule they support. So, if the aim is a set of rules that reflects "consensus" within a heterogeneous society — and this is the premise that Biden himself provided in the interview — then the federalist approach is superior to a national rule, such as that embodied in Roe (or, for that matter, a national rule embodied in a constitutional amendment, such as the proposed "Right-to-Life Amendment.") My point is not that Biden is wrong to defend Roe. It may be difficult to defend the reasoning of Justice Blackmun's opinion, but reasonable people can and do disagree over whether the Constitution should be read to protect an abortion right, as well as on the question of whether Roe should be upheld on precedential grounds. Rather my point is to show that the basis upon which Biden chose to defend Roe — the desire to approximate "consensus" in a heterogeneous society — cannot justify the outcome he seeks to defend, and reflects a poor understanding of our constitutional system (particularly for someone of his background). While Biden speaks about these issues with in an authoritative manner, and has substantial experience discussing and debating constitutional questions, the substance was sorely lacking in this interview. UPDATE: Brian Kalt has more thoughts on the interviews here. His conclusion: I would have been much happier if Palin had given better answers to Couric. But her lack of knowledge of constitutional law would assumedly lead her to rely on others for advice on such matters. She doesn't know, but surely she realizes it. Biden, by contrast, has the smooth confidence of someone who has been immersed in these issues for decades. But he's wrong. To me, that's actually scarier.[/rquoter]
I'm not trying to say she understands Roe v Wade (or anything beyond Looney Tunes for that matter) only offering up the reality that many people just plain don't think of this as a privacy issue.
right...but if you disagree with Roe v. Wade then you might want to know what it's based on. particularly if you're running for VP and someone asks. that she is pro-life is certain...but one can be pro-choice and still find Roe v. Wade to be a poor opinion....like my very liberal Constitutional Law professor who thought the opinion was very poor, though she supported a woman's right to choice.
We aren't disagreeing in any way, I hope you see that. I think she failed miserably in this interview and seems to be a total failure as a candidate. All that said, I think you can believe in a fundamental right to privacy and just not think abortion fits into the parameters of that right. I think it's very possible she may believe that way, because as staunchly pro-life as she is, I doubt it has anything to do with the law but entirely to do with the value she places on life and when she believes life begins. None of that makes her interview any better, just that one snippet that this guy that was quoted is pointing isn't the biggest failing in the interview in my opinion.
Yeah, i get what you're saying. I just think it's not at all what she's saying...because it would appear she has no idea what she's saying. At least in this interview.
Not sure how you can make this claim with a straight face and then take Biden to task for not recognizing how the holding in Roe has been modified by Casey earlier on in the same essay.....
Wow...now Palin is interviewing with some dude on Fox claiming that she wasn't stumped by Couric's questions....just annoyed that she was actually asking her some of those questions (i.e. about what she reads). She also now has supreme court cases to speak on. She will do a better job of not letting the media annoy her. So again, it's not like she didn't know...she was annoyed.
priceless... wonder how many takes it took? <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/P3r9YnOvSJw&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/P3r9YnOvSJw&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
Good of Fox News to give her a do-over on the Supreme Court Cases question as well as finding out what she reads to stay up to date. I'm pretty impressed that it only took her a week to get the answers memorized so that she could nail such difficult questions on the second try.
