On abortion etc...

Jonah,

First, to mollify the red state orientation and reactionary element that is NRO I think one of those steam trains that goes from D.C. through West Virginia in a day would really cover all bases and should be explored for a "cruise."

Second, in law school Gtown professors thought this "good Samaritan" law stuff was devastating to conservatives. As it happens I was against good Samaritan laws because affirmative duties to do good are not something free societies deal with well, and worse, inevitably the person with the responsibility (duty) in the law also has a duty to do it non-negligently which is a recipe for damned if you do damned if you don't litigation. However, for the reasons you state a drowning baby that is a stranger to you is a lot different from a non-dying unborn child who is related to you! We all have greater responsibility in the law to our own children. The analysis should be turned against Glen (as he recognizes in the case of unwed fathers') because whereas you have no direct duty to other people's children you most certainly do to your own. It is another reason the abortion regime he touts so assiduously violates natural justice.

And...

Let's assume that there is no federal right to abortion. So, if you are a Virginia legislator, what do you propose that the law on abortion should be, and why? My understanding is that many of those who describe themselves as "pro-life" believe that the government should protect a fetus from the moment of conception exactly as it protects a person already born. This would require that a woman who intentionally undergoes an abortion, except in self-defense, and any person who assists her in that endeavor, be executed, or imprisoned for life. All persons involved should be treated precisely as they would be if they took a 15-year old child, brought him to an office, paid a doctor money and held the kid down while the doctor stabbed him to death with scissors. If you don't like this idea, then perhaps we should execute only the doctor and not the woman. Or perhaps not execute anyone, but jail the doctor for awhile, or pull his license to practice medicine. But why such relatively light punishment, unless you believe that killing a fetus isn't really as bad as killing a person who is already born? But if it's not really as bad, then what's it like? What are you "protecting"? How is what you are "protecting" different from the 15-year old. I'm going to guess that the last thing the Republican Party wants is for Roe to be overturned. There are all kinds of jurisprudential and political reasons why this might be a good thing, but an overturning of Roe would have the ironic effect of forcing Democrats (and I'm going to use "Democrats" and "Republicans" as a short-form for "pro-choice" and "pro-life") to deal in a disciplined way with making the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable restrictions on abortion, while ripping the Republican Party in half. Right now, it's the other way around: Democrats have infantilized themselves by relying on the judiciary to make their case for them, while Republicans get a free ride - they can campaign against a decision without having to deal with the real-world effects of "winning" and of squaring their pro-life campaign with the principles that underlie that campaign. Just some thoughts. I guess you would call me "pro-choice", but I'm somewhat conflicted and my view stems more from a libertarian and pragmatic streak then from any sort of conviction about "rights".

Jonah,

The drowning baby analogy is not terribly useful when you properly
analyse the source of the common law duty of care.

The duty the bystander has to the baby at common law comes from his or
her positive decision to assume responsibility for the welfare of the
baby.

The relationship that a pregnant woman/ bystander have to the
foetus/drowning baby don't exactly have the same staring point when it
comes to the issue of responsibilty.

On the foetus issue alone, I have always thought it curious that a
third party can have a duty of care to avoid injury to an unborn child -
a duty that he or she will have in some circumstances irrespective of
their personal preference - but when it comes to the mother, it is a
matter of her choice.

Ms. Lopez,
I read your blog entry on NRO with interest, and I appreciate the publicity. I think you've misunderstood our most recent editorial, in which we called for administrators to return CUA to a real university.
The criticism we leveled against Father O'Connell in that editorial wasn't one involving a speaker's position on abortion rights. We saw Father O'Connell's appearance at a blatantly partisan event, in which he was introduced as the president of CUA, "a sad irony" in light of the fact that he had prohibited *all* politicians from appearing on campus during the campaign season, irrespective of their positions, in order to keep CUA from being perceived as supporting one candidate or another. Father O'Connell has insisted that the University remain, and be perceived as, non-partisan.
We certainly have criticized his other policy, which bans speakers who are known to support abortion rights, because we see it as an infringement on the free debate and discourse that is central to a university's identity. We also agree with many faculty members who believe that banning all speakers who take positions contrary to those of the Church is unenforceable. The CUA-sponsored and -promoted appearance of John Corigliano, an Oscar-winning composer who is openly gay and whose partner refers to him as his "husband," would seem to bolster this view.
Regards,
Phil Essington
Editor In Chief
The Tower Newspaper

Folks, please don't overread into what I've written about the drowning baby stuff. I haven't attempted to lay down my soup-to-nuts views on abortion and I haven't endorsed wholesale good samaritan laws. People are emailing me with one hypothetical after another. I don't know where I would draw the line on good samaritan laws. But I do know that I think it should be illegal not to stop and save a baby from drowning when it takes about as much effort as stopping to pick up a penny. And I do think there should be no punishment for someone who crosses the street to punch a man in the face if that man is in the process of drowning a baby. No I don't think this is all perfectly analogous to abortion. Which was my point -- that Glenn's analogy didn't work very well. Actually, my original point was that Glenn had written something interesting. But I guess that ship has sailed.

Arlen Specter the independent and outspoken senior senator from Pennsylvania has already lost out on the chairmanship, and at best an empty vessel for carrying out the White House's judicial priorities in the droopy visage of Arlen Specter will be taking the helm.

Jonah,

As Reynolds states, he's not exactly addressing your point but I don't
even think he adds tangentially to the discussion. Simply put, you're
saying it's wrong while Glenn says it's legal. But that IS your point:
It's ASSUMED that it's legal and your illuminating the inherent
hypocrisy in making the portrayal that it's OK to get mushy about the
expected infant while retaining the right to end its life in utero.
Glenn, as much as I like his work, simply falls back on, "Yeah, but it's
legal."

Why just rail cruise the blue states? Travel through Red America, too - The trip from Jacksonville, Fla to California only touches one blue state - and their governor could meet us at the station. Of course, by the time it gets to my neck of the woods, SW Louisiana, Amtrak is typically anywhere from 5 to 24 hours late (right now, train 1 - Sunset Limited is 4 1/2 hrs late). We could spend our extra time talking about what a great waste of taxpayer money 90% of Amtrak's routes are! Keep your NY to DC run and scuttle the rest.

Hey folks I just said I thought Instapundit's post was interesting. I didn't say I agreed with it. Two objections that strike me -- and several readers -- as obvious.

First of all, no matter what the law requires, morality absolutely requires you to save the drowning baby. That the law imposes no penalty whatsoever to such morally disgusting behavior is a scandal, but it doesn't make the morality any less clear. If the law doesn't require me to save the baby's life, than the law is "a ass."

Second, the drowning baby isn't very much like abortion anyway because it is not the natural or default state of a fetus to die just as it is not normal for a baby to drown in water. It takes action by one or more parties to drown a baby in water or to abort a fetus. Surely the law recognizes that it is murder to drown a baby in a puddle. Indeed, the law may or may not require the individual passerby to stop someone from drowning a baby (I would like to think it does) but a policeman is most definitely required to stop anyone drowning a baby -- including its mother or father. Further, if I stopped someone from drowning their baby I sincerely doubt I would be in trouble with the law.

In other words, the analogy falls apart because the drowning baby scenario Glenn provides is more like a miscarriage while an abortion is more like a willful killing.

Instapundit took our discussion of abortion and TV and went interesting places with it:

I realize I'm not quite addressing Jonah's argument here, but it's not so shocking that a single decision like that might change, if not a person's moral status, at least the constellation of duties that someone has in regard to them. A classic example (and one that I've always meant to write a law review article about, but never gotten around to) has to do with abortion and the duty to rescue.

At common law -- and still, pretty much, the law generally -- there's no duty to rescue. The classic example, in fact, involves a man walking down the sidewalk and observing a baby drowning in a half-inch of water. Even if the man could rescue the baby with no risk and minimal inconvenience to himself, he's under no duty to take any action at all, and can simply keep walking without facing any penalty beyond moral condemnation.

But if he decides to help, and takes action, then he becomes obligated to follow through and must exert all reasonable effort (short of risking death or serious bodily harm; inconvenience doesn't generally count) to save the baby's life and leave it in a position of reasonable safety. The analogy should be obvious here.

Now I've thought of this argument in a different context, as an explanation for why you could both support abortion rights (as, of course, I do) and also support holding pregnant women liable for engaging in behavior -- like drug use, excessive alcohol consumption, etc. -- that might endanger the fetus. But I think it provides at least a partial answer to Jonah's question.

Read the whole thing, as he would say.

With the roster of contentious nomination hearings filling up, Senate Republicans are moving quickly to rule on Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) bid to chair the Judiciary Committee with a pair of meetings Tuesday likely to determine his fate.

Recognizing that conservative activists intend to keep up the pressure to deny Specter the chairmanship, Senate leaders have set a meeting with the moderate Republican for Tuesday morning; the Pennsylvanian is slated to sit down with the nine other GOP members of the panel later that afternoon.

Aides said Specter still has the opportunity to lock up the chairmanship, but they stressed that it was extremely important to resolve the matter now rather than let it drag into early January, when committee chairmanships and panel rosters will be officially revealed.

Deciding who runs the panel sooner rather than later will allow for orderly preparations for the potentially volatile nomination hearings of Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales, even as Supreme Court observers anxiously watch Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s bout with thyroid cancer and speculation mounts that he may resign from the court soon.

K-Lo: Let's start a campaign to have them replace Safire with Jonah.

Mr. Specter did pick up some support on Sunday. Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, said he backed Mr. Specter but mainly because of Senate rules. "If Republicans decide they want to change of all them, that's a different situation," Mr. Lugar said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. "But they haven't, and therefore Specter ought to be the chairman."

Dr. Frist pointedly declined to endorse Mr. Specter for the post on Sunday, saying the Pennsylvania senator should lobby his Republican colleagues in the Senate's lame-duck session this week. "The case needs to be made to the leadership of the United States Senate," Dr. Frist said, "and also to the existing members of the Judiciary Committee."

My proposal would be to change the Senate rules so that every nominee would be guaranteed a vote on the floor. The committees would retain an advisory role, but wouldn't be able to scuttle a nominee. After a nominee is submitted to the Senate and has handed in the paperwork, the committee would have 20 session days to hold a hearing. Then the committee would have another 20 session days to vote on the nominee. If after these days have elapsed, the committee has not voted on the nomination, the nominee would be discharged from the committee and placed on the executive calendar. Then the full Senate would have 20 session days to vote on the nominee on the floor. If it has not voted after these days have elapsed, any senator would be allowed to bring up the nomination for a four-hour debate and vote. No extended debate would be allowed on a floor vote on a nomination. Every nominee could get a vote in the Senate after his nomination has been in the Senate for 60 session days.

Do you like apples?

How do you like these apples:

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- US forces dropped a pair of 2,000-pound bombs early yesterday morning on a bunker complex believed to be an insurgent training facility on the southern edge of this city, where the most dedicated and best trained rebel fighters are making a last stand.

The bombs shook the ground of the former insurgent stronghold and set off secondary explosions that went on for 45 minutes but could not be seen above ground, persuading officers of the Army's First Infantry Division that there were large stockpiles of weapons underground.

Note: Link fixed

I'm not mentioned as a speaker on the London cruise. I assume this is a mere oversight.

Nevertheless, I think it's time to revisit my old idea for an NRO "cruise" for those who don't quite have the shmundo to drop on an ocean-going trip.

Years ago, I suggested an NRO bus cruise. We would rent one or two really cool John Madden or rock star style buses. Have a full wet bar, some TVs for re-runs of everything from Roadhouse (an American classic among my earliest readers, as well as among most scholars) to old episodes of Firing Line. We could start from wherever and pick some cool destination like Vegas and stop along the way to see the world's largest ball of twine, eat the best hoagie and have "seminars" of some kind en route (maybe we'd rent out a room at a brewery). It wouldn't be cheap, but it'd be cheaper than a cruise -- and shorter. Like a three day road trip. People who lived nearby could meet us for some of the events.

I still think NRO On The Road is a great idea but, alas, the suits remain unpersuaded.

Hagel, 58, is not your standard-issue politician. He is outspoken, does his own reading, thinking and even writing, and has the capacity to charm Nebraskans, foreigners, even Democrats. Richard Fellman, a liberal Democrat and professor at Hagel's alma mater, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, calls Hagel "the best Republican senator this state has had since George Norris," Nebraska's one certifiable political giant, who supported both Roosevelts and the New Deal.