maher is an embarrassing pseudo-intellectual poser and attempts to "bork" barrett over religion have struck me as ill conceived and dishonest.

i like to make up my own mind. so i looked at her rulings.

i was not impressed.

i think she's a poor choice. https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/maher-rips-barrett-trumps-expected-supreme-court-pick-shes-a-f-ing-nut

honestly, i was ready to like her. she clerked for scalia.

the court today could really use a principled, intellectual heavyweight and a constitutional originalist who will protect individual rights and limit federal power.

but she ain't it.

not by a long stretch.

her most famous ruling is a dissent.

and this is one of those treacherous sorts of cases where i agree with her position, but think she got there with bad reasoning that sets a dangerous precedent.

she is not reasoning from principle, but rather from position.

her ruling is not about rights or limited powers or the text of the second amendment.

it's a flimsy, lightweight appeal to tradition, which is literally a form of logical fallacy.

it's a push not to grant or protect rights, but to cede them to governmental discretion.

she has chosen (to my view) the correct outcome but for the wrong reason, and in law, reasoning matters. this precedent will inform future interpretations.

it makes a right into a privilege and establishes subjective gov't power to decide who can have it and who is "dangerous"

this is an unsound basis for law in a republic and antithetical to its basic underpinning in the primacy of the rights of the individual.

and her other decisions look a lot like this.

her stance on selective immigration is a similarly position driven "give the discretion to the gov't" sort of kludge.

i did like her stance on voiding qualified immunity when police lie, but felt it was too narrow and could have been broader in ending that travesty of a loophole

i'm just not seeing an top notch legal mind here not any tendency to rule from principle or consistent legal theory.

it feels vapid and tactical. it seems more dogmatic than reasoned in most cases.

and this really shows through on abortion.

so let's grasp the nettle and look:

she seems repeatedly disposed to seek to stop courts from striking down restrictions to abortion in a manner inconsistent with individual rights (such as notification and the requirement to cremate or inter remains) and then, oddly flipped sides on rights to join in a dissent.

she joined easterbrook in seeking to prevent a court from even hearing a case seeking to overturn a ban on abortions based on disabilities, etc and labeled it "eugenics"

thus, she seem to simply support restrictions and be on both sides of the rights issue in so doing.

that's a loser for me. i can accept principled differences in view, but not tactical adoption of principle.

and do we seriously want to make abortion an issue here?

yes, it's a thorny issue and principled people can disagree.

you can argue my body my choice and be on the side of rights.

you can also argue that humans have a right not to be killed and be on the side of rights.

this, of course, winds up boiling down to "what are we going to call a human?"

when do you become a person with rights?

there is really no firm, objective answer there not based in religion.

it seems a stretch to call a teaspoon of cells a person.

it also seems a stretch to call a 8.5 mo gestated fetus "just cells".

it's a real debate and one we really ought to settle for real.

half the problem is that roe v wade is such a dicey and partial handling of such an important and complex issue.

at some point, we need to sort it out and pick a standard.

if it's to be durable, that will take real principle, not doctrinaire partisanship.

i do not see barrett as the one for that.

so, based on having a look, i think she's a mistake to nominate

trump would do well to look elsewhere

choosing her would be a bad outcome for the republic

it also looks like a massive political loser, which he may find of more import.

injecting this sort of provocation into the abortion debate in an election already so rancorous & dogmatic seems like suicide

it's how you lose the center

sure, dropping her for politics is a prime example of making the right choice for the wrong reason, but maybe we get lucky.