Right Wing Nut House

That noise you hear is exploding heads over at Daily Kos:

President Bush named federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts Jr. to a seat on the Supreme Court Tuesday, delighting Republicans while unsettling some Democrats with the selection of a young jurist with impeccable conservative credentials.

“John Roberts has devoted his entire professional life to the cause of justice,” Bush said in a prime-time announcement at the White House, “and is widely admired for his intellect his sound judgment and his personal decency.”

If confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, the 50-year-old Roberts would succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has long been a swing vote on a court divided narrowly on issues such as abortion, affirmative action, states’ rights and the death penalty.

If people never say anything else good about Bush 50 years from now, they’ll say that the man had some major league gonads. All the talk over the last few weeks about Bush losing his mandate and already being a lame duck just went out the window. He’s slapped the left across the face and thrown down the gauntlet daring them to be obstructionists.

I’m sure they’ll oblige.

The fact is that this choice is armegeddon for the left. Roberts is on record in favor of overturning Roe and for every left wing political group that matters, this would be absolute catastrophe. The reason? Not because abortions would stop, because they wouldn’t. But the catastrophe would be that it would force these groups to fight 50 different fights in 50 different states rather than fighting one big fight in Washington. As the abortion battle moves to where it should have been all along - the state legislatures - some states will allow it, some won’t, and some will probably leave it up to local communities as to whether or not to allow it. The rules governing abortions will also vary from state to state with some rules being restrictive and others not.

This is how it should have been all along. Only when the people feel they have a voice in decisions like this - not the very personal decision of whether or not to abort a child - but the political decisions that set down rules to govern people’s live.

Is there a chance that Roe would be completely overturned and all abortions made illegal? I would place those chances at zero. The body of law that has grown up around Roe is too intertwined with other issues of privacy to completely jetison it. More likely, parts of Roe will be struck down which would allow states to regulate abortion.

As for other issues like federalism and property rights, if Roberts aligns himself with Scalia and Thomas on a regular basis, that would be four solid conservative votes (with Rhenquist or his successor) which means that one of the more moderate Republicans like Souter or Kennedy would hold the balance of power in the court. I’ll take my chances with Kennedy who has proven himself to be a thougtful jurist when it comes to issues like affirmative action and states rights.

So cinch it up and strap it down because Kansas just went bye bye. It’s going to get bloody and probably pretty dirty.

A few links for your reading pleasure.

Michele Malkin has her usual tremendous round-up of the big story.

The Captian was live blogging the announcement.

The boys over at Powerline have been all over the story and link to a good profile of Roberts.

Ace has some thoughts.

And Hugh Hewitt is extremely happy. Here in the midwest you can catch Hughe’s special show that will go on till midnight.

Polipundit: “Now watch the far left squirm.”