Trolling for Titans
Part One of Two

By Dave Andrusko

Editor's note. Part Two is NRLC's reaction to the latest abomination by pro-abortion President Barack Obama. Please send your thoughts and comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

As the quasi-official house organ for the Abortion Establishment, the New York Times can always be counted on to signal followers of the Culture of Death the best way to advance the cause of killing unborn babies and expediting the deaths of the medically fragile. Friday's "Souter's Exit Opens Door for a More Influential Justice" is a perfect example.

To be sure retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter was a reliable pro-abortion foot soldier and deserving of gratitude from places like the Times. Positioned as a conservative when he was nominated for the High Court, had Souter not dedicated himself to preserving Roe, who knows what would have happened.

But his replacement, we're told, must be a "counterexample." He [more likely she] must be a "bigger and bolder figure," someone who "sets agendas, forges consensus and has a long-term vision about how to shape the law," according to Adam Liptak. How?

Well, for starters, by writing pithier opinions (they need more "zingers"). And it would help if he/she were a "larger than life" figure "like Justice Brennan, Justice Thurgood Marshall or Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the court through what many liberals consider a golden age." And it would really help if the replacement were a politician extraordinaire like Brennan (whom Souter replaced).

Brennan was a "liberal lion who was also a master tactician," writes Liptak. "The first rule of the Supreme Court, Justice Brennan would say, holding up his open hand, is to get to five -- meaning persuading five of the nine justices. Justice Brennan also took the long view, planting seeds in bland footnotes in the hope they would take root in other cases years later."

Souter's real shortcoming, it would appear, is that he was, "by temperament and design, a low-impact justice devoted to deciding one case at a time, sifting through the facts and making incremental adjustments in legal doctrine to take account of them." In a word he demonstrated "a wariness of grand theories."

I have no idea if that description of Souter is even remotely accurate, but what matters is what characterizes the "ideal" candidate. Not only is he or she as political astute as a ward heeler and given to zippy opinion-writing. They will also go, if not exactly to "where no man has gone before" (to borrow from Star Trek's Capt. Kirk), they will take huge speculative jumps based on the filmiest of justifications. That is the formula that gave us Roe v. Wade.

Please take a moment to read Part Two. In his never-ending search to find "common ground," Obama has torched still another limitation on abortion.