Comments on: Go read something

By: Ananth

Ananth — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:20:30 +0000

There’s the problem. While it may be a ’surgical procedure’ it is not just a surgical procedure to be lumped in with appendectomies for numerous reasons, removing life of the mother abortions from the discussion the chief of which is that appendectomies are not elective and are life saving.

What is perhaps is a more appropriate analogy would be something like gastric bypass surgery which is elective but has benefit to the person having the surgery, and it’s fair to say we should strive for a society that has 0 gastric bypasses. This is also ignoring the fact that at some point the fetus crosses over the line of being a part of the mother to being something that is capable of living in the world on it’s own, (and that line gets further and further along with 66% of premature births at 24 weeks surviving). To simply be dismissive of this fact is frankly scary. I am not saying life begins at conception, but at some point it does become a life and that needs to be recognized in the debate particularly when it comes to 2nd and third trimester abortions

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:01:17 +0000

Abortion is a surgical procedure, and should be treated as one, was part of the point he was making there. Which is to say: sure, we want fewer abortions, just as anyone would want there to be fewer outpatient surgeries in general, if we’re making policy in that direction.

I am sure Glenn was all for forcing actual fillibuster when the democrats were in the minority right?

Sure, why not? It makes for good political theater. Not that it came to that very often, since they could pretty much never rustle up enough votes to avoid cloture, which made filibusters pointless.

Speaking of politics, that’s another part of Greenwald’s point. The Republicans made a huge stink about Democratic obstructionism on the few occasions that the Democrats got it up to filibuster something particularly egregious. Now the Republicans are filibustering two or three times as often as those “obstructionist” Democrats did, and it’s just insane not to hang that around their necks. Especially when their filibuster would be unpopular, make them get up on the floor of the Senate and actually go through with it in front of the country, don’t just cave in and hand it to them every time.

And so it’s especially infuriating that Reid, after giving the Republicans anything they want whenever they ask, is now doing everything he can to stop a Democrat from taking the popular stand of trying to stop telecom immunity. This is exactly the sort of thing that made Steve Gilliard call people like Reid “Vichy Democrats.”

By: Ananth

Ananth — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:25:26 +0000

I am sure Glenn was all for forcing actual fillibuster when the democrats were in the minority right? But still, I think it’s insane that the threat of a fillibuster pretty much acts like a fillibuster. (bothered me with dems in minority, bothers me now).

Also your link to Scott Lemieux post lost me when he compared abortions to appendectomies.