Mandate, My Ass

As a 13-year-old Palm Beach County girl prepared this week to end a pregnancy she says she does not want, the Florida Department of Children and Families went to court to stop her from having the abortion.

The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the state's position Wednesday, saying DCF is overstepping its authority and violating the girl's constitutional rights.

The girl, identified only as L.G., lives in a shelter for abused and neglected teens and found out two weeks ago during a doctor's appointment that she is pregnant. Soon after, she told her DCF caseworker in Palm Beach County that she wanted an abortion.

The caseworker scheduled an appointment for the girl to have an abortion Tuesday and planned to drive her to the office, according to an appeal filed by the ACLU. On the same day, lawyers for DCF filed an emergency motion to stop L.G. from terminating her pregnancy.

In a hearing that day before Juvenile Court Judge Ronald Alvarez, the state argued that Florida law gives DCF authority to prevent L.G. from having an abortion. The state said the girl was not able to make an informed decision because of her age and immaturity, according to the appeal filed Wednesday by the ACLU.

[...]

The Supreme Court has established that nobody has the right to determine L.G.'s best interests but L.G. herself, the ACLU argues.

L.G., who is 13 weeks pregnant, does not believe she can care for herself or a child, said Bob Bertisch, the director of Palm Beach County's Legal Aid Society.

The girl has received counseling from a women's health clinic, talked about her decision with responsible adults and knows the medical risks of abortion, the ACLU and Legal Aid Society wrote in the appeal.

The ACLU asked the courts to act quickly. As she moves into the third month of her pregnancy, the abortion will become more risky, they said.

L.G.'s case continues a debate that started in 2003, in the case of J.D.S., a severely retarded women who was raped in a state group home. Gov. Bush intervened in that case, asking that the state be allowed to appoint a guardian to speak for the best interests of the fetus. The courts rejected his efforts as unconstitutional.

J.D.S. ultimately carried the baby to term, and a family adopted "Baby Grace."

Bush's critics argued that the state should have been more worried about how J.D.S. was raped in the first place, and they pointed out that she herself did not have a guardian until the pregnancy.

ACLU attorney James K. Green echoed those criticisms in the case of L.G. Until she became pregnant, the 13-year-old also had no guardian to represent her interests in court.

The state, Green said, should be more concerned with how L.G. was able to get pregnant in state care.

However it happened, Simon said, "forcing a 13-year-old to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term... is just plain cruel. This is what you get when ideology dictates child welfare decisions."

# posted by filkertom : 12:05 PM  5 comments

Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.

An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.

The discussion took place during a Washington conference last month that included addresses by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who discussed efforts to bring a more conservative cast to the courts.

Frist and DeLay have not publicly endorsed the evangelical groups' proposed actions. But the taped discussion among evangelical leaders provides a glimpse of the road map they are drafting as they work with congressional Republicans to achieve a judiciary that sides with them on abortion, same-sex marriage and other elements of their agenda.

"There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, according to an audiotape of a March 17 session. The tape was provided to The Times by the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

DeLay has spoken generally about one of the ideas the leaders discussed in greater detail: using legislative tactics to withhold money from courts.

"We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse," DeLay said at an April 13 question-and-answer session with reporters.

[...]

Perkins said that he had attended a meeting with congressional leaders a week earlier where the strategy of stripping funding from certain courts was "prominently" discussed. "What they're thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and re-creating them the next day but also defunding them," Perkins said.

He said that instead of undertaking the long process of trying to impeach judges, Congress could use its appropriations authority to "just take away the bench, all of his staff, and he's just sitting out there with nothing to do."

These curbs on courts are "on the radar screen, especially of conservatives here in Congress," he said.

[James] Dobson, who emerged last year as one of the evangelical movement's most important political leaders, named one potential target: the California-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court," Dobson said. "They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone."

Robert Stevenson, a spokesman for Frist, said Thursday that the Senate leader does not agree with the idea of defunding courts or shutting them down, pointing to Frist's comments earlier this month embracing a "fair and independent judiciary." A spokesman for DeLay declined to comment.

The remarks by Perkins and Dobson drew fire from Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who charged that the two leaders were more brazen in such private encounters with supporters than their more genteel public images portray.

"To talk about defunding judges is just about the most bizarre, radical approach to controlling the outcome of court decisions that you can imagine," Lynn said.

# posted by filkertom : 2:45 PM  6 comments

For years I've argued that the Democrats' problem on national security issues is not so much that they aren't 'tough enough' or that they lack new ideas. The problem is a now-deeply-ingrained habit of approaching national security issues not so much as policy questions to be wrestled with but as a political problem to be dealt with and moved on from.

That has a host of damaging consequences, the most serious of which is that if you chart your policy course so as to avoid political damage, always casting about for the sweet spot of political safety, you tend to lack any greater programmatic consistency. And that tells voters (as it probably should) that you’re inconstant and unserious. It also muddles effective communication by confusing the communicators themselves about just what it is they are trying to say or accomplish.

What the last year has taught me -- both in good ways and bad -- is that this malady isn't limited to the national security domain but applies to Democrats pretty much across the board.

We hear a lot today about framing or being tougher or being united or dumping the failed consultants. But while each of these prescriptions has some element of merit, each also recapitulates the existing problem -- only dressing it up in clothes -- because each mistakes the disease for the cure.

When it comes to strategy and tactics, the current Democratic party is like a drunk in the early stages of recovery or a man or woman who keeps ending up in the same bad relationship again and again with different people. For folks like that, strong medicine is required. Indeed, they usually require steps, correctives, lists of dos-and-don'ts more drastic than anybody would ever need who didn't have a problem.

Today we hear Democrats asking whether they should take a hard line on Social Security or a soft line, stand in opposition or come up with a contending plan. Here's what I propose whenever Democrats have a question about just what stance to take on the Social Security debate.

One question ...

What is the actual policy outcome that would be most preferable on Social Security (to protect, preserve or augment it -- whatever) and how important is it that it take place in this Congress?

That's the first, second and third question.

That answer should drive everything else.

If add-on accounts are important to preserve Social Security or expand opportunities for middle class families to save for retirement, and if it’s important enough on the merits to make it a priority in this Congress, then let’s do it. Otherwise, I’d say forget it. Stick with opposing phase-out and take it to the voters. End of story.

If the demon rum of optics or tactical too-clever-by-halfism tries to slither its way back even into second or third, slap your wrist and get back with the program.

I'm not saying that the Democrats need to get in touch with their political or ideological roots or hold to orthodoxies. Nor is this a argument for political purism. My point is entirely agnostic on what the policy should be -- only that it should drive the politics.

# posted by filkertom : 6:30 AM  1 comments