Did you know that the virulently pro-abortion website ThinkProgress has something called a “Justice Editor”? Well it does, and in his latest piece, current holder of the position Ian Millhiser (last seen here at Live Action News for lying about the Susan B. Anthony List) inadvertently gives us yet another demonstration that abortion advocates’ definition of justice bears little resemblance to the real deal.
You see, Millhiser is incensed that President Donald Trump plans to appoint John Bush, an attorney and president of the Federalist Society’s Louisville chapter, to the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Millhiser admits that Bush “boasts a conventional legal resume for a federal appellate nominee,” yet maintains that “this is not normal,” because Bush has been more open about his political views than is traditionally expected—or, more accurately, demanded—of Republican judicial nominees.
This double-standard—which has no basis in the law or in sound judicial ethics—has always plagued the judiciary. It usually leads GOP presidents to nominate so-called “stealth nominees,” whose opinions on past cases such as Roe v. Wade are supposed to be gleaned from dueling platitudes such as “not legislating from the bench” or “respect for precedent,” rather than straight answers that honestly apply their legal philosophy. This has needlessly set the cause of ending abortion back decades, with pro-life presidents nominating judges like Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy who turned out to uphold Roe, or John Roberts who infamously saved the pro-abortion Obamacare.
Yet there is never any question that a Democrat president’s nominees will dutifully uphold abortion-on-demand. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is as biased toward abortion as they come, while Elena Kagan was confirmed for the Supreme Court despite not merely expressing pro-abortion views, but while in the Clinton administration actually having added politically-manipulative language into a paper that was supposed to be an objective, expert medical opinion on partial-birth abortion.
But while Millhiser thinks all of that is just fine (ThinkProgress’s archives are full of his pieces defending and lavishing praise upon Kagan), he thinks it’s a scandal that John Bush has also contributed to the conservative blog Elephants in the Bluegrass under the pseudonym G. Morris.
Much of the commentary he attacks falls beyond Live Action’s scope, though as an illustration of the honesty level we’re dealing with, it is worth noting that Millhiser falsely describes one post, consisting solely of a photo of a yard sign warning that McCain-Palin yard signs are protected from vandals and thieves by the Second Amendment, as Bush supposedly having “written on” the “virtues of shooting Obama supporters.” Fortunately, just dissecting the abortion material should suffice to discredit Millhiser’s characterization of the rest.
Bush also argued in a post titled “The Legacy From Dr. King’s Dream That Liberals Ignore” that “the two greatest tragedies in our country” are “slavery and abortion.” In that post, Bush claims that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have opposed Roe v. Wade had King been alive when that case was handed down. In reality, there’s no evidence that King — who supported efforts to increase access to birth control and said in 1960 that he’s “always been deeply interested in and sympathetic with the total work of the Planned Parenthood Federation” — would have stood against reproductive rights.
Of course, Millhiser conveniently neglects to mention that Bush’s claim is based on quite a bit more than speculation and wishful thinking: the expert opinion of Dr. King’s own kin, niece Alveda King. That’s not “evidence” in ThinkProgress’s book? Alveda has explained that she bases her opinion of what her uncle would have thought partly on the logical conclusion of his faith and stated principles on equality, and partly on her grandfather and his grandfather, Martin Luther King Sr., passionately preaching against abortion, including urging Alveda’s own mother to let her live.
As for Dr. King’s praise for Planned Parenthood, Millhiser leaves out a couple of tiny details—like how Planned Parenthood still condemned abortion as a “dangerous” procedure that “kills the life of a baby after it has begun” as late as four years after King praised the organization, or how Planned Parenthood didn’t even begin committing abortions until 1970, two years after Dr. King’s death.
Regarding comparisons between abortion and slavery, Bush is spot-on; the two judicially-enabled violations of fundamental rights are eerily similar not only in how they violently denied basic human equality for the convenience of others, but in how they both relied on indefensible departures from the Constitution’s true meaning, and how they were even propped up by a number of similar arguments and tactics. Indeed, the ability to recognize that with abortion the Supreme Court has reenacted its greatest historical failure is exactly what we should demand of every jurist, and the real scandal is that, a century and a half after Dred Scott v. Sanford, its mentality lives on in law schools, courts, and legal commentary.
It sounds like John Bush is exactly what the federal courts need. Hopefully his nomination is a sign that President Trump intends to do away with the stealth nominee farce, ignore the howls of the abortion lobby, and name proven champions of the unborn that we know for sure will faithfully interpret the Constitution.
