Monthly Archives: January 2006

Filibuster?

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This afternoon Sen. John Kerry has been trying to organize a filibuster against confirmation of Sam Alito. Kerry needs 41 votes. I just heard on CNN that Majority Leader Frist will call for cloture on Monday; Frist will need 60 votes.

According to CNN,

Nearly all 55 Republican senators have said they will vote for Alito. Only three Democrats — Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota — have said they will vote for the nominee.

Earlier Thursday, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said she would oppose a filibuster.

Landrieu hasn’t said how she will vote, I don’t believe.

Bob Fertik at Democrats.com is sorting out which other Dems might be wobbly. Likely suspects:

Tom Carper (DE)
Kent Conrad (ND)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Daniel Inouye (HI)
Joseph I. Lieberman (CT)

Bob says Ken Salazar (CO) has spoken out against the filibuster, but we don’t know how he will vote.

Beside the Dems, three other Senators are on the fence as of this afternoon: Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Ted Stevens of Alaska have not yet announced support for Alito.

Bob says: “Use these toll free numbers to call the Capitol: 888-355-3588 or 888-818-6641. If you can’t get through, look up your Senator’s District Office number in your phone book or here.

Do it tomorrow! Final decisions will be made this weekend!

Points to Ponder

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You have to scroll ten paragraphs down to find proper credit given to Glenn Greenwald, but in today’s Washington Post Dan Eggan picks up on Glenn’s Tuesday post, “The Administration’s new FISA defense is factually false.” Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder places Glenn in the eighth paragraph, but in David Savage’s story in the Los Angeles Times, Glenn’s credit appears at the very end.

So far, only a handful of rightie bloggers have weighed in, and the big guns like Captain Ed, the PowerLine trio and Glenn Reynolds as of this morning are holding fire. One suspects they’ll be spending part of today in conference calls with GOP strategists, brainstorming new and convoluted legalisms meant to confound public debate. As soon as they come up with something I’ll blog about it.

Basically, as Glenn explained,

In light of Gen. Hayden’s new claim yesterday that the reason the Bush Administration decided to eavesdrop outside of FISA is because the “probable cause” standard for obtaining a FISA warrant was too onerous (and prevented them from obtaining warrants they needed to eavesdrop), there is a fact which I have not seen discussed anywhere but which now appears extremely significant, at least to me.

In June, 2002, Republican Sen. Michael DeWine of Ohio introduced legislation (S. 2659) which would have eliminated the exact barrier to FISA which Gen. Hayden yesterday said is what necessitated the Administration bypassing FISA.

David Savage in today’s Los Angeles Times:

Four years ago, top Bush administration lawyers told Congress they opposed lowering the legal standard for intercepting the phone calls of foreigners who were in the United States, even while the administration had secretly adopted a lower standard on its own.

The government’s public position then was the mirror opposite of its rationale today in defending its warrantless domestic spying program, which has come under attack as a violation of civil liberties. . . .

… A Justice Department spokesman confirmed Wednesday the administration had opposed changing the law in 2002 in part because it did not want to publicly debate the issue.

Sounds about right. And I predict rank-and-file righties will justify rejection of the DeWine proposal by claiming the Bush Administration didn’t want al Qaeda to know it was wiretapping them. (If you aren’t a terrorists, see, you don’t have to worry about it.)

Glenn and others have already discussed the legal and constitutional issues surrounding the DeWine proposal and the NSA program, so I won’t go into them here.

Points for discussion:

The most obvious point — what are the Bushies really up to? No good, I say. There is no plausible explanation for Bushie behavior in this matter that exonerates them.

Next — let’s hear it for bloggers.

Point 3 — The time has come for people calling themselves “conservatives” to make a choice — either you believe in small, unobtrusive government, “strict construction” of the Constitution and fiscal restraint — as the Right has been claiming for several years — or you admit that your political affiliation has devolved into a cult of personality “erected around the person of George W. Bush.” You can’t have it both ways any more. Some will try, of course. But from now on anyone clinging to the myth that George W. Bush Republicans believe in small government and fiscal restraint will have left ordinary cognitive dissonance far behind. They will have entered the Twilight Zone.

Final point: I understand that some commenters are declaring the American people have chosen to give up some civil liberty for the sake of security. I must have missed when the question was put to a vote, but never mind. What passes for political debate on the MSM has failed to articulate one critical point — if we allow the 4th Amendment to be nullified for the sake of the “war on terror,” this will not be a temporary measure. It will be permanent. And once one part of the Bill of Rights is nullified, ignoring other parts will become that much easier.

The one thing that has held our big, sprawling, diverse, messy nation together all these years is the Constitution. Throughout our history we have taken it seriously — so seriously that we engaged in Civil War over what amounted to a constitutional crisis. Over the years we have had honest differences over what some clauses meant, and how they should be applied. Sometimes expedience requires rethinking — during the Lincoln Administration the meaning of coining money was expanded to include printing, for example — and sometimes emergencies require extraconstitutional action — e.g., Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. And occasionally we choose to amend the Constitution. But we’ve never just walked away from any part of the Constitution that clearly articulated a power or privilege.

But that’s what we’re being asked to do now.

Constitutions, like laws, have authority only when they are enforced. Many nations have adopted democratic constitutions but ignored them. The former Soviet Union, I’ve been told, had a constitution that had no bearing whatsoever on the way government actually operated or on the lives of citizens. It wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

As I said above, in times of extreme danger presidents have taken on extraconstitutional powers. But it has always been understood that these were temporary measures required to save the nation. Not just provide enhanced security for some citizens, mind you, but to ensure the continued existence of the United States itself. And when these war powers have been used, they’ve been used openly, and for a brief time. They were given up as soon as the immediate crisis had passed.

But Bush’s “war on terror” may not end in our lifetimes. Probably won’t, in fact. This nation could be under a threat of terrorism for the next few centuries. Even if Osama bin Laden were captured tomorrow and al Qaeda were disbanded, other leaders and organizations will arise to fill the void. I understand this is happening already. And even if the threat of radical Islamic terrorism were to end we might not realize it for a few years. And in that time other threats may emerge.

In other words, the 9/11 state of emergency is now the new normal. This is the way the world is going to be for a long time. I believe we are entering a new stage of human history in which wars are no longer fought between nation-states but between ideological tribes of people. All of our rules and conventions that applied to the Civil War or World War I and II will need to be re-examined in light of new reality. The phrase state of war itself may need to be redefined.

It is unrealistic to abandon an article of the Bill of Rights for decades, generations, centuries, and expect that it will somehow come back into force in some unknowable future. And if Sam Alito is confirmed to the SCOTUS we cannot count on the courts to save us from the folly of the rest of government. No; if we abandon an article of the Bill of Rights now, for the sake of “security,” we are abandoning it for good.

I’d like to see that point brought up, even once, by the MSM.

Update: Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate:

In fact, the Senate hearings on NSA domestic espionage set to begin next month will confront fundamental questions about the balance of power within our system. Even if one assumes that every unknown instance of warrant-less spying by the NSA were justified on security grounds, the arguments issuing from the White House threaten the concept of checks and balances as it has been understood in America for the last 218 years. Simply put, Bush and his lawyers contend that the president’s national security powers are unlimited. And since the war on terror is currently scheduled to run indefinitely, the executive supremacy they’re asserting won’t be a temporary condition.

Update update: Why Orrin Judd remains my favorite rightie:

Note that her [Hillary Clinton’s] argument requires us to accept that the routine spying carried out by pretty much every American leader since George Washington in the Revolution was illegal up until 1978? In point of constitutional fact, the Executive has not been and can not be bound by Congress in this area, not does the Court have jurisdiction to rule in the matter–that’s just how separation of powers works.

Brilliant. Wrong, but brilliant.

Update update update: Carla at Preemptive Karma writes,

Over the many messy, tumultuous, violent and dark times this nation has withstood, the Constitution has been the thread that’s bound us together. Once we nullify a piece of it by Executive fiat..which pieces are next? How will it effect the unity of the states?

This is the question We, the People must address, and now.

Knock Knock

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Righties are congenitally unable to recognize and appreciate satire, but judging by the reactions to this, some lefties don’t get it, either.

Update: To those of you who, so far, aren’t getting the point: The “jokes” aren’t jokes. They aren’t supposed to be funny. Humor is not the point.

Update update: This, on the other hand, is genuinely amusing.

Why George Bush Is President

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Screen capture of actual email to The Mahablog. You can’t make this shit up.

The text reads:

YOU CAN TELL YOUR A LIBERAL THAT BELIEVES GOOD IS BAD AND BAD IS GOOD,,,THERE SURE NOT HARD TO SPOT..YOUR PROBABLY AN ACLU SUPPORTER THAT IS SOCIALIST AND THERE GOAL IS TO TURN OUR COUNTRY INTO A COMMUNIST STATE,,,WAKE UP. WILL IT TAKE ANOTHER BAD BOMBING TO WAKE UP YOU TED KENNEDY LIBERALS,? I HOPE NOT..FOR ALL OF OUR FUTURE CHILDRENS SAKE, YOURS TRULY, JOHN AN ANGRY AMERICAN.

Another victim of the dreaded caps lock syndrome. And an AOL user, to boot. Sad.

More Bush Bumbling

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If you watched last night’s The Daily Show you saw a clip of Bush at Kansas State University taking a question about education — today Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe provides a description —

In the question-and-answer period, there was a moment when Bush was caught confused about his assets in another arena. Someone asked Bush, ”Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education . . . How is that supposed to help our futures?”

There was applause from the crowd.

Bush stumbled. ”Education budget was cut? Say it again. What was cut?”

The person said, ”$12.7 billion was cut from education. And I was just wanting to know: How is that supposed to help our futures?”

Bush said, ”At the federal level?”

The person said, ”Yes.”

Bush said, ”I don’t think we’ve actually — for higher education?”

The person said, ”Student loans.”

Bush said, ”Student loans?”

The person said, ”Yes, student loans.”

Bush said, ”Actually I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We are not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren’t going to be cut off the program. We’re just making sure . . . it functions better. In other words, we are not taking people off student loans. We are saving money in the student loan program because it’s inefficient.”

Bush continued, ”And secondly, . . . we’re actually expanding the number of Pell grants through our budget.”

Derrick Jackson provides the correct answer:

The questioner at Kansas State was correct. In December, the Senate passed a $12.7 billion cut in loan aid, which would force college students and their families to pay much higher interest rates on their loans. Pell grants would remain capped at $4,050 for the fourth straight year, further depressing a purchasing power which has declined, according to the American Council on Education, from covering 84 percent of the cost of a public four-year college in 1972 to 34 percent today.

Jackson points out that just two weeks earlier Bush gave an address at an elementary school in Maryland to observe the anniversary of No Child Left Behind and promote the importance of education.

There are many observations one could make about the exchange at KSU. For one, can you imagine any other president of recent memory being caught that flat-footed by a question? (And did no one on the Bushie team anticipate that university students might ask a question about Pell Grants?) Once again, we see that Bush isn’t really interested in governing. He’s interested in power, and the perks of office, but the governing thing just doesn’t get his attention.

Back from paternity leave (yeah!) Dan Froomkin also provides commentary on Bush’s appearance at KSU.

How can a president of the United States talk for almost two hours, unscripted, and be so fundamentally unrevealing? …

… Just by virtue of his speaking so long, the meandering talk at Kansas State University generated zillions of column inches this morning in which reporters dutifully recorded the one genuinely new development — his rechristening of “domestic spying” as “terrorist surveillance” — as well as his playful digs at his wife, his hemming and hawing when asked about that gay cowboy movie, and so on.

And simply by taking a baby step outside his protective bubble and fielding unscreened questions (most, but not all of them, softballs) from a starry-eyed, solidly red-state audience, he garnered buzz about being forthcoming.

But he wasn’t.

Ultimately Bush unplugged gave a performance of remarkably little substance. There was no new thinking on display. There were no real insights shared. Instead, we heard mostly restatements of policy, familiar phrases and even whole stories recycled from the 2004 campaign.

My favorite Bush line, as recorded by Froomkin: “If I had to give you a job description, it would be a decision-maker. I make a lot of decisions.”

Wow, that’s …. inane.

Harold Meyerson: A Light Dawns

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I don’t think this qualifies as shrill, but it’s damn close.

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it’s hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president’s defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things — particularly when most of them were the president’s own initiatives.

In numbing profusion, the newspapers are filled with litanies of screw-ups. Yesterday’s New York Times brought news of the first official assessment of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, in which the government’s special inspector general depicted a policy beset, as Times reporter James Glanz put it, “by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting [and] secrecy.” At one point, rebuilding efforts were divided, bewilderingly and counterproductively, between the Army Corps of Engineers and, for projects involving water, the Navy. That’s when you’d think a president would make clear in no uncertain terms that bureaucratic turf battles would not be allowed to impede Iraq’s reconstruction. But then, the president had no guiding vision for how to rebuild Iraq — indeed, he went to war believing that such an undertaking really wouldn’t require much in the way of American treasure and American lives.

Meyerson then goes into detail on the boondoggle extraordinaire that is the President’s Medicare Prescription Drug program, and concludes:

This is, remember, the president’s signature domestic initiative, just as the Iraq war is his signature foreign initiative.

How could a president get these things so wrong? Incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn’t explain it. For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.

To achieve True Shrillness, IMO, Meyerson needs to look deeper into the explanation of why the Bush Administration is so incompetent. Greed and sloth are apparent, but just the tip of the iceberg. And he also needs to ask why it is the Republican Party and most of the news media continue to dance to his tune.

A recent American Research Group poll put Bush’s approval rating at 36 percent. This time last year, the same poll had Bush at a 51 percent approval. Clearly, the American people are turning against him. Why is it that “Democratic strategists” (I use the term loosely) are afraid to take him on?

Any answers to those questions lead to utter, mouth foaming, incoherent, howling-at-the-moon shrillness. Guaranteed.

Six Degrees of NSA Wiretapping

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If you missed Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, you missed this:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE:

When you‘re talking to your daughter at state college, this program cannot intercept your conversations. And when she takes a semester abroad to complete her Arabic studies, this program will not intercept your communications.

Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States, and we would have identified them as such.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: For a reality check on that claim and everything else we heard from the Bush administration today, I‘m joined now by Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies.

Ms. Martin, thanks for being with us tonight.

KATE MARTIN, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES: Thank you.

OLBERMANN: That‘s a pretty bold claim there from General Hayden today, obviously an improvable one. What credibility is it given by experts in the field?

MARTIN: Well, you know, Vice President Cheney made the same statement, I think, in an effort to deflect the conversation from whether or not the president broke the law.

I mean, what General Hayden said is that we would have detected al Qaeda operatives in the United States before 9/11. But, of course, the 9/11 commission found that they did detect two al Qaeda operatives, two of the hijackers, in the United States before 9/11, they knew they were al Qaeda, and they didn‘t do anything about it.

OLBERMANN: The issue then was not finding, but knowing what to do when you find.

MARTIN: Yes.

OLBERMANN: A question about the semantics of what we just heard General Hayden say about the domestic spying program. He said that a call to your kid at state college “cannot” be intercepted by this program, but he then said that if she‘s studying Arabic, the program “will not” intercept. Is that anything more than just somebody writing it unclearly? Or should we assume that there‘s something about “will not” that implies that in the past the program could have intercepted those calls?

MARTIN: Well, I think the problem is that the administration hasn‘t been forthcoming about who they are listening to at all. The only thing they‘ve said is, they are listening Americans without warrants who are calling overseas, and that there‘s some link to al Qaeda.

And so he‘s trying to reassure people. But, of course, if you look at the actual law and their words about what is that mean with regard to the link to al Qaeda, any American who‘s conspiring with al Qaeda, they can get a warrant on in about two seconds.

And so these people that they‘re wiretapping, and we don‘t know who they are, appear to be people who are maybe calling somebody who, in turn, is calling somebody, who then may be linked to some al Qaeda affiliate.

And that‘s apparently why they haven‘t gone to court to get a warrant do the wiretapping.

OLBERMANN: Even in—just in terms of the technology, could this domestic spying program really be targeted, as targeted, as limited, as the administration is saying? Because this is what does not add up for me. How would you know in advance that it‘s an al Qaeda operative making a phone call, sending an e-mail, making a contact in some way with somebody here?

Is there not necessarily, even if you‘re hitting a 500 percentage here, is there not some fishing around just to find out, in fact, that it‘s an al Qaeda representative calling someone?

MARTIN: Well, those are all unanswered questions, but very good questions, because, of course, the NSA does have the capability to vacuum up millions of telephone conversations and then sort them through a computer and pick out which ones some actual person is going to listen to.

And even though the law that the president is ignoring, and, in my judgment, violating is very specific, that if you have some probable cause that an American is in communication with, is involved with, al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization, you can get a secret warrant and secretly wiretap them.

So the question that hasn‘t been answered by the administration is, why didn‘t they get those warrants? Who is it that they‘re trying to wire—that they are wiretapping, who the judge wouldn‘t give them a warrant for? The judges have given them 13,000 warrants, and generally say yes when they ask.

OLBERMANN: Which question resonates more within the intelligence community, that one, or the one that the president asked today rhetorically that, of course it was legal, because if he were trying to break the law, why would he have briefed Congress?

MARTIN: Well, of course, if you—he did not brief Congress in any forthcoming way at all. In fact, Senator Rockefeller wrote Vice President Cheney a handwritten note after that briefing, saying, You told me something, I don‘t understand the significance, it was completely confused. And then you told me that I was prohibited from telling my staff or anyone else. I want more details.

He never got an answer.

And, you know, telling Congress, of course, doesn‘t matter, because the law says you may not wiretap without a warrant. And whether or not he told Congress doesn‘t make it legal.

OLBERMANN: Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, thanks for your perspective. Thanks for joining us tonight.

MARTIN: Thank you.

Update: MUST READ post at Unclaimed Territory!

Two Justices Don’t Make a Society

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Anti-abortion rights forces see an end to Roe v. Wade just around the corner, writes Michelle Boorstein in today’s Washington Post.

Tens of thousands of abortion opponents held an upbeat rally on the cold, gray streets of downtown Washington yesterday and described what they see as a societal tide turning against the 33-year-old Roe v. Wade court decision that legalized the procedure.

“Societal tide”? Two justices don’t make a society. In fact, possibly the most remarkable thing about the abortion controversy is that, in spite of years of Sturm und Drang, opinions actually are not shifting. I believe we’re still pretty much where we were just after Roe v. Wade was decided.

Check out the archive of abortion polls at pollingreport.com. Scroll down to the ABC News/Washington Post poll asking the question, “Do you think abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?” This table shows results going back to 1996. In June 1996, 58 percent of adults nationwide believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases; 39 percent believed it should be illegal in all or most cases. In December 2005, 57 percent believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 40 percent believed it should be illegal in all or most cases. Given a 3 percent margin of error, this shows that over the past decade there has been no change at all.

If you scroll even further down, you can find a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll that goes back to 1975. This poll asked the question “Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?” Let’s compare April 1975 to November 2005:

1975

Always legal — 21 percent
Sometimes legal — 54 percent
Always illegal — 22 percent

2005

Always legal — 26 percent
Sometimes legal — 56 percent
Always illegal — 16 percent

If anything, the Fetus People lost ground somewhere.

Back to Boorstein:

Demonstrators at the annual March for Life said their movement has been buoyed by two recent Supreme Court nominees — one of them confirmed — who appear open to reconsidering the 1973 decision. They talked optimistically about how technological advances are producing clearer sonograms, which could make it harder to argue that a fetus is not a person.

Life Magazine ran its famous photographs of fetii in utero in April 1966. These photos and others like them have been around for 40 years. And the dingbats are talking about better sonograms?

You’ll like this part:

And they noted yesterday’s large turnout of young people, who filled the march route along Constitution Avenue and lined the walls outside the Supreme Court in cheerleader jackets, black leather outfits with studs and T-shirts that read, “Abortion is Mean” and “Sex is good, the pill is not.” [emphasis added]

You see the problem.

In the February 9 New York Review of Books, historian Gary Wills reviews Jimmy Carter’s Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis. Here’s a snip:

On abortion, for instance, Carter argues that a “pro-life” dogmatism defeats human life and values at many turns. Carter is opposed to abortion, as what he calls a tragedy “brought about by a combination of human errors.” But the “pro-life” forces compound rather than reduce the errors. The most common abortions, and the most common reasons cited for undergoing them, are caused by economic pressure compounded by ignorance.

Yet the anti-life movement that calls itself pro-life protects ignorance by opposing family planning, sex education, and informed use of contraceptives, tactics that not only increase the likelihood of abortion but tragedies like AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rigid system of the “pro-life” movement makes poverty harsher as well, with low minimum wages, opposition to maternity leaves, and lack of health services and insurance. In combination, these policies make ideal conditions for promoting abortion, as one can see from the contrast with countries that do have sex education and medical insurance. Carter writes:

    Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but, deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the same age group in Germany…. It has long been known that there are fewer abortions in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs.

The result of a rigid fundamentalism combined with poverty and ignorance can be seen where the law forbids abortion:

    In some predominantly Roman Catholic countries where all abortions are illegal and few social services are available, such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand. According to the World Health Organization, this is the highest ratio of unsafe abortions [in the world].

A New York Times article that came out after Carter’s book appeared further confirms what he is saying: “Four million abortions, most of them illegal, take place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000 women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions.“[*] This takes place in countries where churches and schools teach abstinence as the only form of contraception—demonstrating conclusively the ineffectiveness of that kind of program.

By contrast, in the United States, where abortion is legal and sex education is broader, the abortion rate reached a twenty-four-year low during the 1990s. Yet the ironically named “pro-life” movement would return the United States to the condition of Chile or Colombia. And not only that, the fundamentalists try to impose the anti-life program in other countries by refusing foreign aid to programs that teach family planning, safe sex, and contraceptive knowledge. They also oppose life-saving advances through the use of stem cell research. With friends like these, “life” is in thrall to death. Carter finds these results neither loving (in religious terms) nor just (in political terms).

Be sure to read the whole review; you’ll enjoy it. I’d also like to point out that Wills is a Catholic and Carter an evangelical, proving that not all religious people are whackjobs.

Back to Boorstein:

“This is the beginning of the end. We’ll look back at some point soon and won’t believe that people were ever killing babies like it was nothing,” said Ryan McAlpin, 19, who came from Chicago with a group of friends.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute provides a wealth of information on abortion and abortion law worldwide. I’ve spent considerable time there and have yet to find an example — in the past 30 or so years, anyway — of a nation criminalizing abortion in a place where it was once legal. Abortion has been decriminalized in many nations, but not the other way around. Worldwide, the societal tide is clearly with choice, not against it.

One more bit from Boorstein:

Joe Giganti, a spokesman for the action center, said more Americans are starting to question the notion that Roe is settled law. “I’d say the mood has changed significantly just in the past year,” he said. “We’re going to see the overturning of Roe .”

Back to pollingreport.com. According to a, NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in December 2005, 66 percent of adults nationwide support keeping Roe v. Wade as settled law; only 30 percent want it overturned. I’d say Joe Giganti is celebrating a little too soon.

In the long term, even if Roe v. Wade were overturned and a whole mess of states criminalized abortion the next day, the overwhelming force of public opinion would eventually set things right again to make abortion legal. That is, unless the United States isn’t converted into a fundie theocracy, in which case all bets are off. And in that case abortion law will be the least of our problems.

Update: See also feministing and Digby.