Posted on 03/20/2017 2:22:21 PM PDT by NYer
During the hearing today in the Senate Judiciary Committee over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, pro-abortion Democrat Dianne Feinstein slammed the potential High Court pick.
Feinstein drew on the issue of abortion for her criticism — saying that she probably will oppose Gorsuch because he believes “the intentional taking of a human life by private persons is always wrong.”
“President Trump repeatedly promised that his judicial nominees would be pro-life, and automatically overturn Roe v. Wade,” she said. “Judge Gorsuch has not had occasion to rule directly on a case involving Roe. However, his writings do raise questions. Specifically, he wrote that he believes there are no exceptions to the principle that ‘the intentional taking of a human life by private persons is always wrong.’ This language has been interpreted by both pro-life and pro-choice organizations to mean he would overturn Roe.”
“President Trump repeatedly promised to appoint someone in the mold of Justice Scalia and said that the nomination of Judge Gorsuch illustrates he’s a man of his word,” said Feinstein. “The Supreme Court has the final say on whether a woman will continue to have control over her own body or whether decisions about her healthcare will be determined by politicians and the government.”
Feinstein then described a 21-week abortion as the kind of abortion at stake if Gorsuch’s nomination is confirmed.
Brian Burch of CatholicVote responded to the attacks.
“Already, Democratic Senators are on the attack. They understand the historic nature of this nomination. Left-wing groups have used the courts and reckless judicial decisions to impose their agenda on the people. But that could all end soon,” he said. “Judge Gorsuch has pledged to obey the Constitution and to respect the limited role of judges. Judges are not policy makers. Judges are not politicians. And when the Supreme Court restrains itself, the Left typically loses.”
“Today, Senators presented their opening statements. Tomorrow, the real fireworks begin with 30-minute Q & A exchanges between Judge Gorsuch and individual Senators on the Judiciary Committee — for 10 hours not counting breaks,” he added.
SIGN THE PETITION! Vote to Confirm Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch
President Donald Trump nominated the federal appeals Court Judge with strong support from pro-life organizations that point to his track record as supporting religious freedom for pro-life organizations refusing to be forced to pay for abortions. They also noted his opposition to assisted suicide and his support for a state fighting to defund Planned Parenthood abortion business.
The Planned Parenthood abortion business was also quick toblast Judge Gorsuch as well.
The abortion giant slammed Gorsuch for supporting Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor in their bids to not be forced to pay for abortion-causing drugs in their employee health care plans.
“Gorsuch has also worked to undermine access to essential health care — ruling that bosses should be able to deny women birth control coverage. His record shows a disturbing willingness to let ideology overrule his constitutional duty to uphold and respect clearly established precedent protecting our fundamental liberties, including Roe v. Wade and Whole Woman’s Health,” Planned Parenthood said.
The 49-year-old Judge Gorsuch, if confirmed, would replace pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia – who supporting overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to once again provide legal protection for unborn children.
Justice Gorsuch is currently a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which includes the districts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, as well as the Eastern, Northern and Western districts of Oklahoma. He has served as a federal judge since August 2006 and was appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the Senate.
The pro-life legal scholars who know him best say he is a strong originalist, believing that the Constitution should only be interpreted as the Founding Fathers intended. That would him squarely in the legal camp of Justice Scalia.
One of the biggest problems pro-life advocates have with the Supreme Court is that it invented a so-called right to abortion in Roe v. Wade. But Gorsuch’s writings indicate he opposes that kind of thinking. In a 2005 National Review article, Gorsuch wrote that liberals rely on the courts too much to made social policy.
This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. In the legislative arena, especially when the country is closely divided, compromises tend to be the rule the day. But when judges rule this or that policy unconstitutional, there’s little room for compromise: One side must win, the other must lose. In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs–real-world laboratories in which ideas can be assessed on the results they produce–are not possible. Ideas are tested only in the abstract world of legal briefs and lawyers arguments. As a society, we lose the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide.
He said liberal activists rely on the judicial system “as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education.”
On direct pro-life matters, Gorsuch sided with the state of Utah in its attempt to defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
Gorsuch sided with pro-life Utah Governor Gary Herbert’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood. After his decision, the 10th Circuit Court decided against re-hearing Planned Parenthood v. Gary Herbert, after the court previously ordered Utah to fund Planned Parenthood. Gorsch dissented in the case and wrote:
Respectfully, this case warrants rehearing. As it stands, the panel opinion leaves litigants in preliminary injunction disputes reason to worry that this court will sometimes deny deference to district court factual findings; relax the burden of proof by favoring attenuated causal claims our precedent disfavors; and invoke arguments for reversal untested by the parties, unsupported by the record, and inconsistent with principles of comity. Preliminary injunction disputes like this one recur regularly and ensuring certainty in the rules governing them, and demonstrating that we will apply those rules consistently to all matters that come before us, is of exceptional importance to the law, litigants, lower courts, and future panels alike. I respectfully dissent.
As National Review pro-life legal scholar Ed Whelan notes:
I’d like to take note of his remarkable failure to acknowledge, much less credit Gorsuch for, Gorsuch’s powerful dissent (see pp. 16-27 here) one month ago from the Tenth Circuit’s denial of rehearing en banc in Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. Herbert. As the faithful reader will recall from these posts of mine, in the aftermath of the Center for Medical Progress’s release of videos depicting various Planned Parenthood affiliates’ ugly involvement in harvesting body parts, Utah governor Gary Herbert directed state agencies “to cease acting as an intermediary for pass-through federal funds” to Planned Parenthood’s Utah affiliate. But after the district court denied Planned Parenthood’s request for a preliminary injunction against Herbert’s directive, a divided panel, on very weak reasoning, ruled that Planned Parenthood was entitled to a preliminary injunction. Gorsuch’s dissent dismantles the panel majority’s reasoning.
Would a Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch be inclined to overturn the decades-old decision fostering abortion on demand? His record suggests he is open to doing so.
As one pro-life legal scholar notes:
In the panel ruling in Games-Perez, Gorsuch did indeed regard himself as bound to abide by controlling circuit precedent, just as nearly every circuit judge not named Stephen Reinhardt also does. But Gorsuch didn’t stop there. In a 20-page opinion, he urged the en banc Tenth Circuit to reconsider and overrule the wrong precedent.
Gorsuch also has made pro-life comments about abortion and strongly opposes assisted suicide. He has written a book, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, which (as Princeton University Press puts it) “builds a nuanced, novel, and powerful moral and legal argument against legalization [of assisted suicide and euthanasia], one based on a principle that, surprisingly, has largely been overlooked in the debate—the idea that human life is intrinsically valuable and that intentional killing is always wrong.”
Meanwhile, as National Review reports, “Gorsuch wrote a powerful dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc in a case involving funding of Planned Parenthood.” NR indicates Gorsuch has written “human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable, and that the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”
Democrats have already promised to filibuster any Supreme Court nominee.
Sen. Jeff Merkle, a pro-abortion Oregon Democrat, said in an interview on Monday morning that he will filibuster any pick other than pro-abortion Judge Merrick garland — who pro-abortion president Barack Obama named to replace pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia.
“This is a stolen seat. This is the first time a Senate majority has stolen a seat,” Merkley said in an interview. “We will use every lever in our power to stop this.”
Gorsuch is 49 years old. He and his wife, Louise, have two daughters and live in Boulder, Colorado.
I am hopeful that Gorsuch is everything we conservatives and constitutionalists want him to be, but when I read the except below, I am a little bit concerned:
“...In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs–real-world laboratories in which ideas can be assessed on the results they produce–are not possible.”
As a Christian, I am not a fan of judging right/wrong by outcomes. The meaning of the 2A does not depend on crime statistics. The desirability of limited government does not depend on whether widespread health insurance is achieved. We should leave the outcome based approach in ethics to the secular humanists (ie. the modern liberals aka socialists).
Maybe I’m just missing the point? Either way, I am looking forward to hearing how Gorsuch responds to conservatives. Here’s hoping that he gets some really good original-intent questions to test his bona fides.
“Feinstein drew on the issue of abortion for her criticism — saying that she probably will oppose Gorsuch because he believes “the intentional taking of a human life by private persons is always wrong.””
Wow. She believes you should never kill anyone who doesn’t need it, then?
In an ideal world, Feinstein’s comments would probably disqualify her from holding elected office, not because she is a D, but because respect for the right to life, liberty, property are fundamental concepts in a republican form of government.
I am becoming very skeptical of Gore Suck. We take these criminal bastard lives every day. AND WE WILL CONTINUE to do so on these rapists and cop killers and murdered of the innocent. What we care about is innocent babies being slaughtered by the millions. Criminals are not human. Watch this guy— he may be a turn coat.
Your beerface is showing. He will be confirmed.
Watch that bastard. “Human life” is criminal life. The phrase is INNOCENT HUMAN LIFE!! Is he against capital punishment? Screw that!! ( I hate beer— never touch it!)
You can scream all you want. Choose the battles wisely.
When Kennedy quits your gonna see liberal heads explode.
This one is a given.
I’ll take him but I am not confident who he is with that BS!! Can you say SOUTER?
This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. In the legislative arena, especially when the country is closely divided, compromises tend to be the rule the day. But when judges rule this or that policy unconstitutional, there’s little room for compromise: One side must win, the other must lose. In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs–real-world laboratories in which ideas can be assessed on the results they produce–are not possible. Ideas are tested only in the abstract world of legal briefs and lawyers arguments. As a society, we lose the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide.
Or, to make the sentence in question more clear, let's remove the hyphenated portion: In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs are not possible.
It is a defense of keeping arguments and debate about morality and the cultural fabric of society to the realm of the legislative, to the representatives and voices of the people; it is far from an endorsement of using the judiciary as a bludgeon to change the body politic, regardless of motive.
“Innocent”.
Thanks.
“Innocent”.
Thanks.
Fair enough.
The hearings should be interesting :-)
I thought it was just a meaningless clump of cells?
I don’t see any MSM organization that quoted Feinstein on this today.
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
The lying, scumbag, infant murder loving, Feinstein keeps up with enough honest legal discussions to realize that one of the primary rationales made to justify Roe v. Wade was that there was some question about when life began or at least became fully human.
Since that time, science has improved to the point that there is no doubt that at the very latest, by the end of the first trimester there is a fully human life being taken, one that is obviously human in the way it reacts and how it looks in photos taken with a sonogram.
In addition, the infant murder industry knows their own statistics. They can't survive on only those women who have an abortion after the the end of the first trimester.
As a personal observation, both my sister and my wife said that at or near the end of the first trimester there was a distinct change in how their pregnancy "felt" and how they felt toward the infant. Over the years in discussions about abortions I've asked a number of women about that and they all said the same thing. How common that sentiment is I don't know, but it seems to me to be very common.
Feinstein and the infant murder industry will be fighting tooth and nail, fair or foul, every step of the way with this confirmation and all others because they know that it would be easy to have Roe limited based on the improvements in scientific knowledge to applying only during the first trimester of a pregnancy and add requirements like sonograms and one week waiting periods, all just to ensure the woman is fully informed, and all reducing the number of women who have abortions.
That, in fact, that is the very sort of USSC abortion decision which if made when Roe was decided, would have spared the lives of millions of infants, appeased the majority of anti-abortion folks, (face facts, most of whom live in the infanticide glass house of accepting quiet, private, early term, chemical abortions as long as they're called "use of contraceptives"), left the frantic unlimited abortion crowd with little support, and left abortions mostly in the hands of hospitals or clinics staffed with real medical personnel, rather than in the hands of murder for profit Planned Infanticide scum who frequently harm the mother of the infant while murdering the infant.
It would have also made the goal of buying a Lamborghini an unrealistic goal for the infant organ merchants. That very lack of large financial gains being uncommon is the main reason why those in elected office who serve abortionists are really concerned. Abortions were more common, and not "coat hanger" abortions but abortions done by doctors, than many people realize or at least admit to knowing. Some level of abortion has always existed and would continue to even if Roe were entirely overturned, gone, vanished, whatever. The profits from the infant corpse trade would all but cease to exist, though, as it would be regulated the way it was fifty years ago and really still is which is why there's so much profit in going around the regulated medical system. No big profits, no Lambroghinis, no big campaign donations, a true disaster for the fascist politicians and their SS infant murderers (who should be required by law to wear black uniforms with the the Nazi SS Death's Head Skull and crossbones on an large armband while at work).
I suspect that it could well end up reverting to being a State issue. The very last thing infant murderers want but the one they'll grasp at if all else fails. They'd absolutely prefer that the NY, West Coast, and DC, markets be in the hands of the State even if abortions are completely outlawed rather than restricted to the first trimester everywhere else.
So, would shooting someone in self defense be wrong?
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