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Frist says he's willing to use nuclear option for Alito
By Tom Smith

AKA the absolutely constitutional and even a great idea option. I'm glad to hear it. It's basic strategy that if you have a weapon and you want to deter a fight, you need to make it clear you will use that weapon. Besides, Frist should use the option if necessary. I am more sympathetic to the 'living constitution' view that many on the reasonable, erudite Right, but I think the constitution grows more like a redwood tree than genetically altered kudzu, that is, slowly. I just don't believe that while we were distracted the Constitution suddenly sprouted a glistening bud to the effect that no conservative is allowed on the Supreme Court. And in any event, I'm not going to take Senator Barbara Isn't-that-horse-sexy Boxer's word for it. Nor do I care if the faculty of the Yale Law School testifies to that effect, like those deluded souls in Rancho Santa Fe who said we all had to get on board when that comet arrived. So what if Alito said in 1983 or whenever that the Constitution does not provide a right to get an abortion. Well, here's the news flash. It doesn't. The Supreme Court made. it. up. Every constitutional scholar who is halfway honest admits that, though I suppose there are some who spend half their lives coming up with zany theories about how you can get to abortions from search and seizure. So now we have the theory that anyone who said something obvious but politically incorrect back in the '80s, cannot be on the court, as if that is the ideological equivalent to getting high with students, as poor Judge Ginsburg did. Sounds like a perfect use for the nuclear option to me. I say, let's put on the funky sunglasses, crouch behind the earth berm, and start the countdown.

posted by thomas at 12/12/2005 09:06:00 AM