Boxer Issues Threat Over Roberts

That this woman is my senator drives me absolutely crazy. Babs "Punch Drunk" Boxer now says that unless John Roberts says he'll vote to uphold abortion rights, she'll do everything she can to stop the business of the Senate.

The SF Wrongicle reports:

Sen. Barbara Boxer said Wednesday she will vote against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts unless he supports rights she considers essential - - including abortion and privacy -- and slow Senate business to a crawl if he doesn't answer her questions.

"I need to know exactly where he will stand, and I need to know if he will fight to protect and defend the rights and freedoms of the American people,'' Boxer, D-Calif., told reporters after addressing a group of law students and abortion rights supporters at Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

Those rights, she said, include reproductive choice and the constitutional right of privacy that was the basis of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion. Boxer said she was alarmed to learn that Roberts, as a lawyer in President Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, referred in a 1981 memo to a "so-called right of privacy.''

Roberts must answer questions about his writings, his work on anti-abortion legal briefs, and his rulings as a federal appeals court judge, including a recent opinion that questioned federal authority to protect endangered species, Boxer said.

If he declines, she said, she will "use all the parliamentary tools I've been given as a U.S. senator,'' including procedures that "make it difficult for other business to get done until we get the information we need.'' She did not threaten a filibuster, however, reflecting Democrats' hesitation to embark on all-out political warfare against the nomination.

Fortunately, there are 99 other senators, nearly all of them more intelligent than Boxer, at least when they're sober. Most of them are not shocked that President Bush, who won the last election by 3,012,497 million votes, is keeping a campaign promise.

Let her be a hissybitch over this one and stage a one-woman work stoppage in the senate. Maybe the voters of California will be embarassed enough to remember when she's up for reelection.