- Via Politico: Inside the Quiet Republican Effort to Flip Fetterman.
- Via Politico: Trump Is Going After Birth Control. Here’s Why.
- Via NPR: Justice Department makes it easier to deport those with DACA status.
- Via the Independent: Atlantic writer sued by Kash Patel says she’s been ‘inundated’ with new sources corroborating her reporting.
- Via Techdirt: The $16 Million Question: If Editing Harris Was ‘Election Interference,’ What Was Editing Trump?
- Via HuffPo: Trump Administration Closes Watchdog Office For Immigration Detention Abuses.
- Via The Hill: Judge on challenge to Trump golf course takeover: ‘I’m no Amy Poehler’.
- Via Axios: Scoop: Rep. Chuck Edwards singled out young female aides for special attention.
- Via CNN: Fact check: Hegseth twice made a false claim to Congress about troops being sent to voting places under Biden.
TGITabs
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7 responses to “TGITabs”
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You know that piece about birth control says some things that raises my eyebrows. For instance,
When conservatives directly attacked the idea of contraception, though, they paid a price. That was a central lesson of Robert Bork’s failed 1987 Supreme Court nomination. A hero to the Federalist Society, Bork was widely expected to be confirmed and ultimately cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. But when he testified before Congress at his confirmation hearing, Bork condemned Supreme Court decisions recognizing a right to birth control. The backlash, led by a Delaware senator named Joe Biden, sank the nomination.
This is not how I remember it. This is not what I’ve read about it in retrospective, either.
Democrats were unhappy with Bork, because Bork was the guy that actually fired Archibald Cox as Watergate Special Prosecutor, after two other guys (Eliot Richardson and William Ruckleshaus) refused to. Apparently Senators told Reagan that if he nominated Bork, he would have a fight on his hands.
I dunno, maybe contraception was part of the hearings, though.
The text that the Politico piece is working from looks like pandering to natalists to me. I personally doubt there is any substance to it.
And yet, it is fair game to take them at their word.
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Bork was attacked during the confirmation hearings for having a number of views well outside the mainstream, most notably in a speech by Teddy Kennedy. The problem was that the attacks were generally accurate. Over the decades, the Republican Party has generally embraced Bork’s outlook, so it may not be fair to consider them outside the mainstream any more.
I was in law school at the time of his confirmation hearings, and his nickname in our discussions was “Bork from Ork” (google Mork and Mindy if that flies over your head).
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@Jay L. Gischer: @Moosebreath: I recall someone saying law students referred to Bork’s antitrust law class as “pro trust law’.
I’m old enough to recall Bork’s nomination hearing. Like you, I don’t recall birth control being an issue. Of course there were so many issues I may have forgotten. WIKI has a page on Bork and one on his Court nomination. Both quote Kennedy’s remark about forcing us back to back alley abortions, but I find no other reference to contraception. Seems to me POLITICO is retconning more than a little.
It does say something that Bork’s views, properly regarded as looney tune at the time, are now in the GOP mainstream. We dodged a bullet for a decade when his nomination was defeated.
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@Moosebreath: Oh no. “Bork from Ork” lands with me. Definitely. “This is Mork calling Orson, come in Orson”
I mean, yeah, Bork had a lot of non-mainstream views. AND I don’t think that’s why Democrats opposed him.
I mean, I’ve heard Robert Reich talk about him as his (Reich’s) law prof. And not as a “crazy” guy, but as somebody who asked Reich to come help him run the Justice Dept. Which Reich did.
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@Jay L. Gischer: I actually recall that Bork’s views on abortion as being more front and center than the Watergate stuff. I do not recall the contraceptive thing, per se, save perhaps in the context of abortion and of Griswold v. Connecticut.
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@Steven L. Taylor: Yes, as regards the actual content of the hearings, it was about abortion (and views on marijuana, I recall)
AND, the subtext was “we are never voting for that guy because reasons…” I have read this from several sources.
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@Jay L. Gischer: Just to clarify, my understanding of the Bork nomination was that the Republican story was “It was about abortion” but the Democratic story was, “It was about the firing of Archibald Cox, but that was subtext”. In some sense, both of those things seem accurate. But birth control? I’m not so sure about that.
Edit: I just found this confirmation of one part of this story: Nixon offered Bork the next nomination: https://news.yahoo.com/bork-nixon-offered-next-high-131851459.html
Wikipedia’s entry has other citations to confirm this take.
