Guy, the Grassley option has some good potential and I applaud your tactical thinking on it, but I'm not convinced it is optimal to focus on it.
I suggest two things:
1) The pressure belongs on Frist every bit as much as Grassley. Senate rules also need not be changed if Specter's committee assignments do not include Judiciary, and Frist decides that. Let's not put all our eggs in the basket of convincing Grassley to abandon Finance.
2) Don't wave a red bandana in front of the media and the RINOs in Pennsylvania by labeling your petition Pro Life. If the PA RINOs tell Specter to fight, he will, and he has a ton of seniority. Better we leave it unlabelled and talk about his failure to vote Clinton out. The rest of us know the real score.
Agree 100%. Why focus on one item? What we really want are judges who UPHOLD written law - not make law from the bench.
Good point. Not my petition, but fellow freeper cpforlife.org. We need to make the case more savvy with broader appeal.
The issue is getting judges that will apply the literal language of the Constitution together with the actual body of documentary history that spells out the original intent of the framers. If the people want to amend the constitution to provide that murder by the mother is ok, they are free to do that and if they can get such an amendment enacted, it is the law of the land. (Immoral under God's Law, but the law of the US.) Think they would have some trouble doing this.
Roe v. Wade was decided on the facts of that case which included the state of science on the fetus at the time the case was argued. Science has advanced--we now know that as a scientific proposition, life begins, even for the tumor in the mother's stomach analysts, at a very early date in the process. So a Constitutional judge who is applying the literal law ought to decide that abortion deprives a "person" of life without due process at a very early state in the pregnancy, whatever his personal view about the rights of woman--unless and until the Constitution is amended.
The kind of judges that are literal language Constitutional judges are also the kind of men and women that are likely to overrule Roe v. Wade, perhaps in stages. They are also the kind of judges we need to be sure we get a level playing field on other fronts.
You can't have a liberal state Supreme Court like Florida deciding it is unconsitutional to count votes except for those cast for Al Gore because the issue is local law--if you don't get level playing field judges, you will never have the opportunity to convert ballot victories to reversal of Roe or anything else.