Posted on 06/13/2003 4:51:10 PM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
If Bill Pryor were running again for attorney general, he'd get my vote. (For the record, I voted for him the last time he ran.)
If Pryor were running for governor, I'd likely vote for him - and I can say that without even knowing who the opposition might be - because he's one of the most thoughtful and decent politicians I've ever met or observed.
Pryor is what we need our politicians to be: What you see is what you get.
And that's why it pains me to say that I don't support President Bush's nomination of him to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Yes, Pryor has been a great attorney general. I especially applaud him for leading the effort to remove the ban on interracial marriage from Alabama's constitution.
When former Gov. Don Siegelman refused to take a position on the ban, Pryor didn't hesitate.
Still, for all his good points - and Pryor has many - he has made it clear that he places more importance on using the law as an enforcer of Christian morality - as he sees it - than on the rights of individuals to define and practice their own morality.
For me, this is a deal-breaker. Putting Pryor on the federal bench, one step below the Supreme Court, will give him a tremendous opportunity to apply this vision in ways he hasn't been able to as attorney general - ways that may well challenge or even eliminate the civil liberties we must have to be a free society.
I don't revel in opposing Pryor. I've never had more respect for a politician. He's bright, articulate and competent. He has integrity - a trait in short supply among politicians - and I don't recall ever seeing him play to the crowd as others commonly do. (His confirmation hearing on Wednesday certainly proved that.)
He's also a genuinely nice guy. I can honestly say I like him.
But that doesn't mean I've always agreed with him.
Pryor suggested in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that the right to have sexual relations doesn't extend to homosexuals or those engaged in "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia."
Perhaps you don't find this troubling, but I do.
Some of these acts are rightly considered deviant and thus illegal because they subject others - the dead, animals and children - to the gratuitous desires of others, making them victims and not consenting partners. But the other acts - when engaged in by consenting adults - reflect preferences and choices.
While some local and state laws make prostitution, homosexuality and adultery illegal, law enforcement tends to be lenient or even ignore these violations - probably because most believe that adults should be allowed to act on their preferences and choices, and to suffer any consequences or enjoy any benefits.
Live and let live, some would say.
I'm also troubled by Pryor's position on Roe vs. Wade, which he told the Senate Judiciary Committee caused a "morally wrong result."
Abortion shouldn't be used as a method of contraception. But that should be left up to the mother, not the government.
Besides, even if it can be presumed that every child yet born would want to live, we don't give children the right to overrule their parents once they exit the womb. Why should we allow the parent to be overruled by the child - or more accurately, the child's advocates - while it's still in the womb?
Pryor's views, born of his religious convictions, give the law wide latitude to regulate our bodies and personal behaviors.
I think he's wrong here. We don't live in a theocracy, nor should we want to. Faith is a personal, not collective experience. And it must remain that way if we are to be a free people.
Freedom is messy. We won't all agree. We won't avoid conflict.
That's where the law comes in. It is to provide equity between our competing viewpoints, not guarantee morally correct outcomes.
Right and wrong will be sorted out one day by the one the New Testament calls "the righteous judge."
On that day, God won't need any help on the heavenly bench - not from you, me or my esteemed friend Bill Pryor.
David Person's column runs every Friday on the commentary page. Voice mail: 532-4362; e-mail: davidpe@htimes.com.
Will Bill Pryor uphold the law? Person doesn't ask that.
And to the statement
"we don't give children the right to overrule their parents once they exit the womb. Why should we allow the parent to be overruled by the child - or more accurately, the child's advocates - while it's still in the womb?"
True, but if you kill the child after exiting the womb, it's murder, not parent choice.
Can someone please explain this to me real slow.
I thought law was based upon morality? Not completely, but from where else does a cultural begin from if not from shared values?
I can see clearly where a cultural would ultimately die should they adpot an approach which upheld the individuals right to determine morality.
But can not see how any group would succeed for long using the standard of everyone for his/her self.
So logically, if the parent wanted to kill the child after it was born, that would be okay too?
Mobile Register
06/13/03
ALABAMA ATTORNEY General Bill Pryor handled himself splendidly in Wednesday's Senate committee hearing to consider his nomination for a judgeship on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
For every serious argument against him, Mr. Pryor had a clear, convincing answer. Unlike some nominees who, fearful of making mistakes, have provided canned and vague answers, the AG gave testimony in a manner specific, open, and forthright.
Indeed, Mr. Pryor parried his Democratic critics so effectively that not a single Democratic senator returned to the hearing after the lunch break to continue grilling him. Presidential candidate John Edwards of North Carolina, an accomplished trial attorney, avoided asking any questions -- a sign from a good lawyer that he sees no openings to exploit.
His critics, in short, drew no blood directly from Mr. Pryor -- although Sen. Russ Feingold did raise a policy issue worth legislative consideration.
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York proved particularly apt to hit below the belt with his statements, to ignore Mr. Pryor's answers, and to mischaracterize the AG's positions. The biggest Schumer line of attack, repeated often, was that Mr. Pryor's personal views are so strong that it is "very hard to believe" those views "won't impact how he rules" as a judge.
Ignored were all the examples Mr. Pryor gave of times when as attorney general he has followed legal precedents on issues in which his preferences on policy or politics did not match his official actions. On abortion, on an anti-Southern portion of the Voting Rights Act, on redistricting matters where he opposed his own Republican Party activists, and on church-state sepa ration issues where he opposed the very governor (Fob James) who appointed him, Mr. Pryor has set aside personal preferences and applied the law as handed to him by the U.S. Constitution and courts. But Mr. Schumer paid no heed to the direct evidence from the Pryor record.
Sen. Schumer also accused Mr. Pryor of holding that the state of Alabama "had the right" to "demote" a state worker who had been temporarily incapacitated. But the AG did no such thing; instead, he merely held (with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison) that the woman had no right to sue the state's taxpayer-funded treasury for monetary damages -- although she could indeed sue to get her job back.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mr. Pryor's favor.
Similarly, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, asking about the AG's opinion of a recent court ruling, ignored Mr. Pryor's repeated explanations that the ruling was so recent that he had not had time to read it. Instead, Sen. Kennedy accused Mr. Pryor of making what would have been an absurd claim that he could "not remember" the case -- and thus of "ducking" the question.
And no Democrat would acknowledge that many of the supposedly "extremist" legal positions taken by the AG had been supported by top Democratic office holders, among them now-Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas.
In sum, and despite a fierce assault from the Democrats, few fair-minded people could watch the hearing and come away disagreeing with the opinion of Dr. Joe Reed, longtime chair of the (black) Alabama Democratic Conference, who heartily endorses the AG's nomination and says Bill Pryor "will be a credit to the judiciary and will be a guardian for justice."
"Every child yet born"??? This guy obviously writes for a backwoods newspaper. At least Jayson Blair's stuff was reasonably proofread. But even there, it seems, Hillaryism reigns triumphant. And I'll bet he's lying about voting for Pryor. In that too, Hillaryism seems to have infested the boondocks.
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