Patterico's Pontifications

1/8/2006

David Savage Falsely Makes Alito Sound Like a Potential Fifth Vote to Overturn Roe

Filed under: Abortion,Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 1:32 am



Today, the L.A. Times gives you true facts that create a completely misleading impression: that Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito might provide the fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

We’ve been through this before, back when the L.A. Times tried to imply that Justice Roberts might be that fifth vote. Even if you assume that Roberts will be an anti-Roe vote — which is a big assumption — you still can’t count to five votes against Roe. At most, there are currently three: Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts. If Alito replaces O’Connor, it could be as many as four. But it won’t be five.

So how does our old friend David Savage get around this obstacle, to make Alito seem like a potential fifth vote to overturn Roe? Watch how effortlessly he does it:

That effort to overturn the ruling ultimately fell short by one vote when two Reagan appointees — Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy — joined a 5-4 majority to affirm the abortion right in 1992.

If confirmed, Alito would succeed O’Connor.

See? Just like that, Savage creates the impression that replacing O’Connor with Alito might create a Court with five votes against Roe. What he “forgets” to mention is that, after the 1992 Casey decision reaffirming Roe, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a staunch vote for abortion rights, replaced Byron White, who dissented from the original Roe decision. So we aren’t 5-4 now, we’re (at best) 6-3 — even counting Roberts as an anti-Roe vote.

If you didn’t know that, then Savage has fooled you. And I think that’s just what he’s counting on.

18 Responses to “David Savage Falsely Makes Alito Sound Like a Potential Fifth Vote to Overturn Roe”

  1. OFF TOPIC

    Looks like you are getting nailed by comment spam. I use Spam Karma on both of my WordPress blogs. Works liek a charm and I have never had to deal with this issue since installing it.

    Jason McClain (4045bc)

  2. Patterico, facts are not “true.” That’s a category error. Facts just are. Sentences or propositions are true, when they’re not false.

    Brian (5a9105)

  3. What strikes me is that the press slants things routinely, and there are so few people nowadays who can actually “read between the lines” and understand the distortions. (blatant self-promotion here) I disassembled a Knight-Ridder story on my site yesterday.

    But I guess education isn’t what it used to be. I was taught in school how to read. Not just the words, but how the words were being used. I think I hated that 7th grade teacher more than anyone at the time. Now I thank her daily. Thank you Mrs. Montalto.

    Gaius Arbo (8e9f3c)

  4. From the Legal Information Institute, syllabus of Planned Parenthood v Casey:

    JUSTICE SCALIA, joined by THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE WHITE, and JUSTICE THOMAS, concluded that a woman’s decision to abort her unborn child is not a constitutionally protected “liberty,” because (1) the Constitution says absolutely nothing about it, and (2) the longstanding traditions of American society have permitted it to be legally proscribed. See, e.g., Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 497 U.S. 502, 520 (SCALIA, J., concurring). The Pennsylvania statute should be upheld in its entirety under the rational basis test. Pp. 979-981.

    OK, that is four votes against abortion being a constitutionally protected right. But Chief Justice Rehnquist is gone, replaced by Chief Justice Roberts; assuming that Mr Roberts would vote identically, it is a net zero. Justice White is gone, replaced by Justice Ginsberg, as you noted; that reduced the Casey dissenters to three, given that Mrs Ginsberg is an abortion rights fanatic supporter. (Did I use the word fanatic? Yeah, I think I did.) If Mr Alito replaces Mrs O’Connor, and is a reliable anti-abortion vote, we’re still back to five-to-four in favor of an unlimited abortion license.

    Yeah, I know: you already gave us the numbers. I simply thought the much more recent Casey decision (which supercedes Roe in some important ways) needed to be mentioned.

    Dana (a071ac)

  5. Upon following the link you provided, I looked for some evidence that this was an article printed in the opinion section; it looked to me as though it was in the news pages (in The Nation section). If such is the case, it ought to be one of the lead points in the 2006 Dog Trainer Year in Review article.

    Dana (a071ac)

  6. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

    Whether by deliberate malice or indefensible ignorance, David Savage and his editors (the Times does still have editorial review, doesn’t it?) have just destroyed their own defenders.

    Common Sense Political Thought (819604)

  7. I believe that Mr. Savage was not trying to pass along disinformation when he suggested that the balance of the Supreme Court would be tipped. Most likely he got his canard from some other left-leaning publication, which got it from from another liberal publication, and by the time it got to Savage he genuinely believed the statement was true. No one at the LA Times spotted his error (despite four layers of tenured editors) because virtually all of the newsroom are liberals who are pre-disposed to believing that such a statement could be true.

    Besides, there’s a tendency among liberals to
    believe a statement to be true a priori if it appears in a liberal publication. There are still people at the LA Times, I’d guess, who still think that President Bush was photographed holding a cardboard turkey when he visited Iraq during Thanksgiving because The New York Times said so. (The New York Times’ correction came later.) Add to all that the generally lazy and sloppy work habits of the average newsroom employee, who would also prefer not
    to criticise or correct a fellow Union member.

    Justice Frankfurter (2dcd84)

  8. Mr Justice Frankfurter wrote:

    I believe that Mr. Savage was not trying to pass along disinformation when he suggested that the balance of the Supreme Court would be tipped. Most likely he got his canard from some other left-leaning publication, which got it from from another liberal publication, and by the time it got to Savage he genuinely believed the statement was true. No one at the LA Times spotted his error (despite four layers of tenured editors) because virtually all of the newsroom are liberals who are pre-disposed to believing that such a statement could be true.

    What a great defense! The writers and editors at The Los Angeles Times aren’t deliberately trying to mislead us; they’re just invincibly ignorant.

    It’s amazing that the Times editors didn’t know this, considering how many times our esteemed host has written about the math in this instance, yet were all over the Year in Review article.

    Dana (a071ac)

  9. The disgusting smear attacks you are perpetrating upon the LA Times are reminiscent- as any student of history knows- to the Stalinist Show Trials of the 1940s and 1950s, when mean nasty communists (not the ones who care about the poor, free health care, etc.) selectively quoted Pravda in order to put on their slanderous show trials.

    And shouldn’t you be at work? Where did you go to school? I lived in Russia dammit, so I know more about this than you do.

    Anyway, I actually agree with the deceased Justice above. I don’t think it’s willful lying, but just a stated mistruth that develops somewhere and gradually becomes accepted fact. That doesn’t mean that it’s responsible writing, though.

    Steven Donohue (360a32)

  10. Yeah, I know: you already gave us the numbers. I simply thought the much more recent Casey decision (which supercedes Roe in some important ways) needed to be mentioned.

    I did mention it.

    Patterico (929da9)

  11. Dang, I guess that I shouldn’t have read it so fast. 🙁

    Dana (a071ac)

  12. Looking beyond the obvious facts that these leftist clowns a) know little or nothing about the Supreme Court, and b) can’t count, let’s move on to the larger point…which is that the most conservative voices on the court are mustering to overturn Roe v. Wade.

    This is absurd, despite the widely accepted belief that it is apalling law, wrongly decided by a handful of activist and possibly drunk or retarded judges.

    PS Patterico, I like a good fight as much as the next guy, but your skirmish with this dipshit Hiltzik is doing nothing other than quadruple his blog hits. NO ONE READS HIS LEFTIST NONSENSE.

    Jaibones (e1c73b)

  13. Jaibones wrote:

    PS Patterico, I like a good fight as much as the next guy, but your skirmish with this dipshit Hiltzik is doing nothing other than quadruple his blog hits. NO ONE READS HIS LEFTIST NONSENSE.

    Does this mean if I get in a good fight with our esteemed host, I can quadruple my blog hits? 🙂

    Dana (a9eb8b)

  14. In addition to Savage’s misleading comments on the makeup of the SCOTUS’ affect on Roe, he wrote “Bush’s lawyers did not explain why the NSA did not seek warrants from the special court created to weigh such requests.” However, see http://www.nationalreview.com/pdf/12%2022%2005%20NSA%20letter.pdf

    Although the link is to National Review, the .pdf file is the verbatim text on the Justice Department’s letterhead of its 12-22-05 letter to Congress justifying the NSA intercept program.

    Stu707 (18fdc8)

  15. I want to make sure I understand the two sides in this war:

    The left wants the Supreme Court to ignore the Constitution if that’s what it takes to make abortion legal.

    The right wants the Supreme Court to ignore the Constitution if that’s what it takes to make abortion illegal.

    Do I have it right?

    How about just following black letter law? Let legislators legislate, voters vote, and remember there is a legislative process for amending the constitution.

    Chuck (0cd7ab)

  16. No, Chuck, you don’t have it right. The left wants to ignore the Constitution to make abortion legal everywhere. The right wants to follow the Constitution, but is split between a small faction that would like to amend the Constitution to prohibit abortion, and a larger one that would rather leave that issue up to the states.

    Xrlq (6c76c4)

  17. […] Roberts was on the Court, it was Justice Alito’s turn to become the bogeyman, as Savage misleadingly implied that Alito would be a fifth vote to overturn […]

    Patterico’s Pontifications » David Savage Cries Wolf on Abortion Yet Again (001073)


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