BCT Editorial – 7/8/07

This page was last updated on July 8, 2007.

Big difference; Editorial; Beaver County Times; July 8, 2007.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on abortion, school desegregation, campaign finance reform and other issues touched off a spat of articles about the conservative shift on the court.

“And given the relatively young ages of the conservative members of the nation’s highest court (and of those who are serving on lower federal benches), the situation isn’t going to change for decades, if at all.

“Think back to the 2000 presidential election.

“Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader was traveling around disdainfully claiming there wasn’t any difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and their presidential candidates, Al Gore and George Bush respectively.

“We wonder how many people who cast votes for Nader buy that argument now.”

[RWC] What’s missing from this editorial? Any mention of specific Supreme Court rulings and why the Times apparently disagreed with them. Read what I wrote below and you don’t have to be Einstein to figure out why.

Since the editorial didn’t identify the specific cases, I’ll take a guess.

Regarding abortion, the Supreme Court upheld the law banning partial birth abortions.

Regarding “school desegregation,” the Court struck down efforts by two school districts (Louisville and Seattle) to use race to determine where a child should go to school. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Regarding “campaign finance reform,” the court struck down a provision of the McCain/Feingold bill that prohibited certain forms of political speech at specific times during an election campaign. In other words, in a small way the Court upheld freedom of speech.

Yep, I can see why the Times would be upset with these rulings.