{"id":6208,"date":"2004-04-27T07:48:28","date_gmt":"2004-04-27T14:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/04\/27\/irksome-2.html"},"modified":"2004-04-27T07:48:28","modified_gmt":"2004-04-27T14:48:28","slug":"irksome_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/04\/27\/irksome_2.html","title":{"rendered":"Irksome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><small>[I actually wrote this up last night, but between experiments with various blogging clients, it vanished softly and silently away.  Drat.]<\/small><\/p>\n<p>Checking back in with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.factcheck.org\">FactCheck<\/a>, which reviews presidential candidate ads for accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>On the Kerry side, we have a critique of the claim that the Supreme Court is &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.factcheck.org\/article.aspx?docID=176\" title=\"Kerry Ad on Abortion: Fuzzy Math\">just one vote away<\/a>&#8221; from outlawing abortion.  As the article notes, six of the nine sitting justices on the court have supported the &#8220;right to choose&#8221; in <i>Roe v. Wade<\/i>.  Justice Kennedy, who dissented in 5-4 <i>Stenberg v. Carhart <\/i>(the 2000 decision that threw out Nebraska&#8217;s law restricting D&#038;X abortions), went to pains in his separate dissent to support the 1992 <i>Casey <\/i>decision, which upheld <i>Roe<\/i>.  <\/p>\n<p>Arguably, that means the court is one vote away from banning certain abortion procedures, but it appears to be at least two votes away from allowing the government to ban abortion.  Some folks might consider that the same thing, perhaps, and certainly the next president may be able to appoint two or more justices &#8212; but arguing that &#8220;The Supreme Court is just one vote away from outlawing a woman&#8217;s right to choose&#8221; seems a bit of an oversimplification.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of which, we have the most recent Bush ads that once again lambaste Kerry for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.factcheck.org\/article.aspx?docID=177\" title=\"More Bush Distortions of Kerry Defense Record\">voting against critical Defense spending<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p>But this is the oldest trick in the legislative record book &#8212; identifying a vote for (or against) a large multi-billion dollar bill as being for or against a particular provision of it.  Which, given how such bills tend to grow like Topsy, is also more than a bit of an oversimplification.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kerry voted against three DoD funding bills out of the sixteen that have come before him as senator. Arguably, that means he&#8217;s voted for such bills thirteen out of sixteen times.\n<li>Kerry&#8217;s vote against the $87 billion Iraq\/Afghanistan supplemental spending bill last year was not explicitly a vote against body armor for the troops (which was 1\/3% of the expenditure), but (as I recall) a vote against writing a &#8220;blank check&#8221; for the Pentagon.\n<li>Kerry&#8217;s campaigning against the AH-46 Apache helicopter in 1984 foreshadowed a future Secretary of Defense who would argue the program should be cut off in 1989 &#8212; Dick Cheney, serving under George Bush the Elder.<\/ul>\n<p>You can argue the particular wisdom of each of those votes and positions, and the stated reasons for them.  But to simply say that the votes <i>per se <\/i>show Kerry to be weak on defense is as silly a tactic now as it is when it&#8217;s used against any other legislator, by either party.<\/p>\n<p>Surely there are enough substantive criticisms that could be made of both sides&#8217; opposition (or, better yet, substantive reasons to support the candidates themselves) that these sorts of cheap rhetorical tricks and distortions are unnecessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[I actually wrote this up last night, but between experiments with various blogging clients, it vanished softly and silently away. Drat.] Checking back in with FactCheck, which reviews presidential candidate&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":32261,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/01\/21\/roe-v-wade-and-popular-support.html","url_meta":{"origin":6208,"position":0},"title":"Roe v. Wade and Popular Support","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 21-Jan-13 6:01pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So the largest margin yet (70-24%) support Roe v. Wade -- or, at least, do not want to see it (completely) overturned. \u00a0That's an ironic positive, as more states ramp up restrictions on access to legal abortion. (That ramping up -- and the publicizing of same -- may be part\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30949,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/30\/so-which-group-is-he-lying-to.html","url_meta":{"origin":6208,"position":1},"title":"So which group is he lying to?","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Oct-12 10:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"Because during the GOP primaries and before various appreciative audiences since then, Romney's been staunchly anti-abortion and all gung-ho to overturn Roe v. Wade. \u00a0But now he's all, \"Well, heck, nothing I can do about it, it's not on my agenda, so don't worry your pretty little heads\" on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13343,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/01\/16\/i_dont_think_that_word_me.html","url_meta":{"origin":6208,"position":2},"title":"&#8220;I don&#8217;t think that word means what you think it means&#8221;","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 16-Jan-09 4:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I am irked greatly, as the anti-abortion movement has not only co-opted the word \"Life\" to represent their policies (such that a license plate that says \"Respect Life\" can't be...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Writing and Language&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Writing and Language","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/writing-and-language"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8796,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/04\/13\/aha_the_root_ca.html","url_meta":{"origin":6208,"position":3},"title":"Aha!  The root cause of the immigration problem is &#8230;","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Apr-06 5:28pm","format":false,"excerpt":"... abortion! That's right! Never mind that Roe v. Wade is only 30 years old, and immigration from south of the border has been around for a lot longer. No,...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Geopolitical Brouhaha&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9707,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/05\/contraception_i.html","url_meta":{"origin":6208,"position":4},"title":"Contraception in the News!","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 5-May-06 8:08pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Item the First: Abortion rates, which have been in decline since their immedate-post-Roe peaks, have begun to level out. The reason seems to be reduced contraception use, especially among poorer...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Health&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/health"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131842,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/20\/a-tale-of-two-issues.html","url_meta":{"origin":6208,"position":5},"title":"A Tale of Two Issues","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 20-Oct-16 7:37am","format":false,"excerpt":"There wasn't a lot new in the debate last night between Clinton and Trump. The only thing that was different was that we actually got some discussion of what usually come up as major political issues. No surprises there, except that they happened.On gun control, Clinton tried to portray herself\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/161020014819-clinton-trump-debate-one-liners-origwx-cs-00012310-large-1695B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}