Distract and distort: Republicans declare Alito Court the victim after anti-Roe draft leaks

The Rev­erend Franklin Gra­ham, chief shill for Don­ald Trump on the reli­gious right, spe­cial­izes in the tweet­ing of pas­sages about virtue and love from the Bible while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bear­ing false wit­ness against his neighbor.

He has tak­en up the right wing’s par­ty line response to the leak of Supreme Court Jus­tice Samuel Alito’s draft opin­ion over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade, the Supremes’ 1973 deci­sion that legal­ized abor­tion in Amer­i­ca as a right.

The polit­i­cal right’s preach­ers, law­mak­ers and media mouths claim it’s all a left-wing plot to intim­i­date the Ali­to Court.

“It seems these activists will try to use any tac­tics to get their way,” Gra­ham tweet­ed, link­ing the Ali­to leak to pub­li­ca­tion of the jus­tices’ home addresses.

Our own Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, R‑Washington, blast­ed out a state­ment: “At this very moment, Democ­rats and the Left are using this breach of trust as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread fear and force their dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pro-abor­tion agen­da on every American.”

We don’t (yet) know the leaker’s iden­ti­ty. Chief Jus­tice John Roberts has ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion of what he describes as “a betray­al” and an “egre­gious breach of trust” of the Court’s pri­vate delib­er­a­tions. Pre­vi­ous leaks out of the Court have always come in books writ­ten after deci­sions came down.

But the right has moved quick­ly with three objectives:

1. to define the unknown leak­er as com­ing from the “rad­i­cal left’;
2. to get believ­ers to believe the leak is an attempt to intim­i­date the Court;
3. to dis­tract the pub­lic from what is an attempt to strip a right from Amer­i­can women and begin roll­back of the Court’s pri­va­cy rulings.

“The left con­tin­ues its assault on the Supreme Court with an unprece­dent­ed break of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, clear­ly meant to intim­i­date,” said Sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley, R‑Missouri, best known for his clenched fist encour­age­ment of the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion­ists at the Unit­ed States Capitol.

The favorite aca­d­e­m­ic of Rupert Mur­doch’s FNC, George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor Jonathan Tur­ley, has sniffed out what he describes as an effort “to pres­sure the Court and push the leg­is­la­tion in Con­gress on a fed­er­al abor­tion law before the midterm elections.”

Indeed, the pro-lib­er­ty camp – legit­i­mate­ly! — sees the Ali­to draft as a wake-up  call and warn­ing to Amer­i­cans. Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, D‑Washington, stood with Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer on the steps of the U.S. Capi­tol to call for Sen­ate enact­ment of House-passed repro­duc­tive rights legislation.

A Sen­ate vote on the leg­is­la­tion, like­ly to fail, will be held next Wednesday.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic House mem­bers in this Wash­ing­ton joined togeth­er to vocal­ly pro­claim their sup­port for repro­duc­tive rights.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Schiff, D‑California, who chairs the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, deliv­ered this blunt mes­sage: “I don’t care how the draft leaked. That’s a sideshow. What I care about is that a small num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices, who lied about their plans to the Sen­ate, intend to deprive mil­lions of women of repro­duc­tive care.”

Two Repub­li­can law­mak­ers, Sen­a­tors Susan Collins, R‑Maine and Lisa Murkows­ki, R‑Alaska, have called out lies told to the coun­try by Trump-appoint­ed Supreme Court Jus­tices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gor­such dur­ing their con­fir­ma­tion process.

Both men described the Roe v. Wade deci­sion as set­tled law. So, for that mat­ter, did Ali­to when ques­tioned by Sen­a­tor Diane Fein­stein, D‑California, dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing before the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Committee.

The draft opin­ion, on which they have report­ed­ly agreed to join Ali­to in sign­ing their names to, “would be com­plete­ly incon­sis­tent with what Jus­tice Gor­such and Jus­tice Kavanaugh said in their hear­ings and in our meet­ings in my office,” Collins said in a state­ment. If the Court rules as Ali­to has writ­ten, added Murkows­ki, “it rocks my con­fi­dence in the Court right now.”

Such words are enough to bring tears to your eyes, if you hap­pen to be a croc­o­dile. We’ve seen it in a suc­ces­sion of Sen­ate bat­tles. Sen­a­tor Collins is an inde­pen­dent voice in Con­gress only so long as Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t need her vote. Murkows­ki is made of tougher stuff, but needs Demo­c­ra­t­ic and inde­pen­dent votes to get reelect­ed this fall.

McConnell is clear­ly a brains behind the demo­nize/de­fine-the-leak­er strat­e­gy. I watched a news con­fer­ence at which he deflect­ed all men­tion of what Ali­to has writ­ten and is try­ing to do. Instead, he bore down on the leak, say­ing: “By every indi­ca­tion, this was yet anoth­er esca­la­tion in the rad­i­cal left’s ongo­ing cam­paign to bul­ly and intim­i­date fed­er­al judges and sub­sti­tute mob rule for the rule of law.”

The con­trary may be the case, a cam­paign by Ali­to and Clarence Thomas to pres­sure the jus­tices to aban­don a nar­row­ly writ­ten opin­ion – clear­ly Roberts’ pref­er­ence – and mount a full, frontal assault to the right to pri­va­cy. They’ve appeared spoil­ing for a fight and have sin­gled out Roe v. Wade in past opinions.

The assur­ance by Ali­to in his draft opin­ion, that over­turn­ing Roe is not a full-scale attack on pri­va­cy and stare deci­sis, is about as believ­able as Vladimir Putin’s descrip­tion of the Ukraine inva­sion as a “spe­cial mil­i­tary operation.”

Sem­i­nal rul­ings, e.g. recog­ni­tion of same-sex mar­riage, are in jeopardy.

Extrem­ist Sen­a­tor Mar­sha Black­burn, R‑Tennessee, has denounced as a “con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unsound rul­ing” Gris­wold v. Con­necti­cut, the 1965 deci­sion by the Supremes that struck down a ban on con­tra­cep­tion and defined pri­va­cy rights.

If you dis­count the right wing’s definition/disinformation cam­paign, just check the opin­ion page of the Wall Street Jour­nal late last month. It hint­ed broad­ly of a leak out of the Supreme Court, with the goal of keep­ing Chief Jus­tice Roberts from try­ing to find a “mid­dle way” and pulling a col­league back to his side.

“We hope he (Roberts) doesn’t suc­ceed – for the good of the Court and the coun­try – it would pro­long the Court’s abor­tion agony – far bet­ter the Court to leave the thick­et of abor­tion reg­u­la­tion and return the issue to the states.”

Yeah, states that will sub­ject poor peo­ple to the agony of hav­ing to seek back-alley abor­tions in des­per­ate cir­cum­stances and suf­fer­ing the consequences.