Katie Couric continued her very own catch and release program with Governor Sarah Palin tonight on the CBS evening news. The interview tonight, in which she also spoke independantly with Senator Joe Biden, dealt with Roe v. Wade. After the views of both candidates on that landmark ruling were sought, Couric asked for a Supreme Court ruling other than Roe with which the candidate disagreed.
Biden dealt with an unnamed case in which the Court overturned part of a federal law that made it permissible for a battered woman to sue her attacker in federal court. While I can sympathize with Biden's motives, the court got this ruling right. There simply is no jurisdiction for federal courts on this issue. Still, I can admire him taking a stand.
Palin, on the other hand, couldn't actually name another Supreme Court decision. She noted that the court hadn't always been infallable. She just couldn't come up with any examples. Instead, she fell back into a "states rights" shuck and jive that the Right likes to pull. This was especially sad after she agreed that the US Constitution provides for a right of privacy... and then said it was the states alone that should uphold this right. That is simply ludicrous on its face.
It is a poor reflection on the Governor, a poor reflection on Alaskan schools, and a poor reflection on the United States. When word of this interview began to spread, I was incredulous. I shouted at the television: Plessy v. Ferguson, Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education, and -- you're a friggin Republican governor for crying out loud -- Bush v. Gore! I could have kept going -- I did go to law school after all -- but by that time I was out of breath, my wife was laughing at me, and I was starting to scare my cats.
One would have thought that Plessy would stick in anyone's mind as a case the Court got wrong, considering that it upheld the constitutionality of racial segrigation, even in public places. And that Court can take "separate but equal" and stick it in their collective asses.
This did prove one thing. Joe Biden and Sarah Palin are definitely separate and unequal.
1 October 2008
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