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Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I guess I'm asking you to accept ownership of the consequences of the GOP's platform. It's all well and good to overturn RvW because it's bad law, but to get there you said abortion is a matter on which the constitution is silent and thus it is inappropriate for federal judicial regulation. Now that the GOP Congress has made it clear that fetus personhood is a matter it thinks appropriate for federal legislative regulation, where do you stand on the constitutional issue?
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I have to defer this to part two, below, because I can't see this new Act passing constitutional muster any more than I see RvW doing so, so it becomes a moot point in this discussion.
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Keep in mind that the fetus holocaust does not support an answer either way, making the "NARAL=KKK" argument a non-sequitur.
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Not quite a non-sequitar, as I was raising it (and I think I said this) not as a point specifically in support of the states-rights discussion, but simply as a related but tangential thought I had been noodling on. And, I can understand why you would want to dismiss it. It's not comfortable.
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I think the act would be constitutional to the extent it applies only to attacks on exclusive federal jurisdictions and enclaves, like federal reservations (military bases, federal parks and the like). However, even then it would be largely redundant of existing state law in many cases because of 18 U.S.C. § 13, the Assimilative Crimes Act. This "across state lines" bullshit is rediculous, unless I shoot a pregnant woman in Arizona while standing in Nevada, in which case I've already committed a crime in two states, either one of which could prosecute.
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Agreed and agreed. So, this attempt doesn't represent any new ground really. As I stated earlier, originally, various people are going to keep trying to get their way federally. It won't work here, it shouldn't have worked in RvW, and when this becomes clear, it will then enter that stage I predicted, of lowered national passions, and a possibility of compromise.
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The GOP is flogging the Laci Peterson case to the detriment of its principles. I'm not surprised, but you should be.
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Why? Because I'm not aware of the predilictions of some of my cellmates? Not hardly.
