Sarah Palin and the Supreme Court

I talk a lot about the Supreme Court and its cases. While watching Palin late last night, I struggled for several seconds to come up with a Supreme Court case other than Roe I disagreed with. And if I were truly on the spot, maybe I wouldn't have come up with one at all. So why should I, a layman Supreme Court geek, hold it against Palin that she couldn't name one off the cuff?

I think my understanding of the Court -- which is much greater than most Americans -- is sufficient for anyone running for President or Vice President. So who cares?

I eventually came up with the recent "no executions for child rapists" case, only because I'd seen an article about it earlier in the day (the Court had just refused to hear a new case on the same subject). But why is it that I couldn't come up with the Kelo case, which I've read in its entirety, and have strongly disagreed with, and have written about, and have discussed many times?

It's how my brain works. Ask me my opinion on a specific case I disliked, and I can rattle it off, including the reasons why, and maybe even making specific references to the decisions, including who wrote which ones, who voted which way, and so on. But ask me to come up with some arbitrary decision I disagree with, and I'll struggle, because that is not how my brain catalogues things. I don't store them in "agree" and "disagree" folders in my mind. I imagine most people don't, including Palin.

The dumbest thing, though, is that people are attacking her for favoring a right to privacy, but being against Roe v. Wade (which is the same position I have, though I disagree with Palin, and many others, that abortion should be handled in the states). There are many reasons to be against Roe, and "privacy" is only one of them: most opponents of Roe would say that whether or not there is a right to privacy is irrelevant, since the question of the rights of the life in the womb isn't a question of privacy.

Joe Klein on CNN, incredibly and idiotically, said that she would be "drummed out of the Federalist Society" (were she in it) just for saying that. Now, this only shows that I know more than Joe Klein, because I distinctly remember that our current Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito both said during their recent hearings that they believe in a right to privacy, and they were both members of the Federalist Society.

I know this, and yet I couldn't easily, without thinking significantly about it, name a decision I disagreed with.

Biden was able to do so, because it was a case he actively worked on as part of his senatorial duties. Plus, he's a big nerd. But none of this reflects poorly on Palin in any way, it just shows she that she is not actively thinking about what cases she disagrees with.

Joe Klein and most other people complaining about this are being really stupid, and not merely because they don't understand the modern opposition to Roe, but because they do not understand that it means nothing of significance that she couldn't name a case she disagrees with off the top of her head.