Super-Duper Precedent? Or Just Duper?

Nick Gillespie | September 13, 2005

Via comedy genius Ben Schwartz comes the quote o' the day from the Roberts hearing. Let's give a round of applause for Arlen "Single Bullet Theory" Specter who reached deep into his surgically altered brain before offering up this koan-like query :

"Would you think that Roe might be a super-duper precedent?" Specter probed, pointing to times it has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

I've got no feelings for John Boy but would have become a mega-fan had he responded with something bizarre like, "If you see the Buddha's fetus on the road, kill it--as long as it's before viability." Or if he had reached into his baseball-metaphor bag one last time and paraphrased Bugs Bunny v. The Gashouse Gorillas and suggested that Roe was a powerful paralyzing perfect pachyderm palooka pitch of a decsion.

Instead the bland man from the Land of Wendell Wilkie replied with the less-than-ebullient (though informative) phrase: "[Roe] is settled as the precedent of the court."

Whole fan-fucking-tastic account here.

Comments

|9.13.05 @ 11:52PM|#

"Would you think that Roe might be a super-duper precedent?"

He really said "super-duper"?

I mean, a member of the Senate of the United States of America really, honest-Injun, no joshin', used, with a straight face, the term "super-duper" with regard to Roe v. Wade?

J T-Fin' C

|9.14.05 @ 12:05AM|#

On Jay, they showed some footage from the hearing of one of the senators doing the crossword. During the hearings. What do we pay these people for again? (Don't answer that; it's rhetorical.)

|9.14.05 @ 12:24AM|#

Grylliade, they showed footage of that on The Daily Show. Evidently this was the same senator who had earlier delivered a nearly teary-eyed call for bipartisanship.

Then the Daily Show quoted him on a couple of topics, namely gay people and abortion. Evidently, Tom Coburn's vision of bipartisanship involves sending anyone who disagrees with him to ze camps.

|9.14.05 @ 12:51AM|#

...and paraphrased Bugs Bunny v. The Gashouse Gorillas and suggested that Roe was a powerful paralyzing perfect pachyderm palooka pitch of a decsion.

Is that the one where Bugs struck out three batters with one change-up?

|9.14.05 @ 2:04AM|#

What I find disturbing is that I have been able to find this cited in *none* of the mainstream news sites I spent the last 20 minutes surveying. Could you imagine, being a reporter, and trying your best to ignore that comment? I mean, has *everybody* lost their sense of humor? Was *nobody* able to slip it into their news article?

A google search turned up a couple of blog references, including this gem:

"So if the 32-year old, twice-affirmed Roe is a super precedent, by the time of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the 58-year-old, 4+ times affirmed separate but equal rule must have been a super duper pooper scooper precedent, which really, really, double-dog, cross your heart and hope to die can�t be overruled."

|9.14.05 @ 2:38AM|#

"I mean, has *everybody* lost their sense of humor? Was *nobody* able to slip it into their news article?"

No question, the whole world's lost its mind. It happened a while ago. ...That's the only explanation for a lot of things.

Janet Jackson bringing us the War on Broadcasting, falling ticket sales at movie theaters, the king of torture memos is now our Attorney General, the popularity of American Idol, 800 people killed on a bridge by the rumor of a bomb, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California, hospital and nursing home patients drowning unattended, Mark Brunell is the Redskins' starting quarterback, 2 million people lose power in Los Angeles after a worker cuts the wrong line, Martha Stewart got thrown in the slammer, break out movies about penguins...

...The whole world's gone stark raving mad.

|9.14.05 @ 3:25AM|#

The Monday x-word -- feh. My dog could do that one. Weekend puzzle, I might be more impressed.

|9.14.05 @ 3:27AM|#

I don't get why people here are making such a big deal about this. Specter was just trying to be funny, while at the same time making a point about the precedent of Roe v. Wade. I think this is a case, at least for many here, of getting a different impression by reading about something compared to if you actually saw it. He didn't say it with a 'straight face', he meant it to be funny - that was obvious.

|9.14.05 @ 4:32AM|#

Did he say the word "super" like Big Gay Al does? :)

Del,

I don't get why people here are making such a big deal about this.

To pass the time.

|9.14.05 @ 4:48AM|#

I don't get why people here are making such a big deal about this.

Because as this link discusses (and assuming what is said there is accurate), Specter isn't really joking, he has used the term "super precedent" before, in seriousness.

|9.14.05 @ 7:41AM|#

Ah, Arlen Specter. Long has he been making us Pennsylvanians laugh. At least he was actually trying to be funny this time...I think.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Specter who "stood up" to Bush a year ago by saying he shouldn't use Roe as a litmus test for potential justices? I was really hoping in the wake of both the Raich and Kelo decisions that people would realise the SCOTUS really does do more than debate abortion, but c'est la vie.

|9.14.05 @ 7:48AM|#

From what Robert's has written on Roe previously, it is doubtful that he considers it good precedent, much less "super duper". Of course, unless you are coming from a unprincipled (and bloodthirsty) utilitarian position of loving the result of Roe, then you have to agree that Roe is a bad decision.

The interesting thing is that to people of a leftist bent, Roe is the only part of constitutional law that is "dead" i.e. immutable and unchangable. While things that are explicitly mentioned in the Constitution like free speech, gun rights, property rights are subject to the whims of the zeitgeist.

|9.14.05 @ 8:24AM|#

Maybe Sen. Specter had just finished listening to "Putting on the Ritz".

|9.14.05 @ 9:21AM|#

Actually, Bugs said he would "paralyze this paluka" (is that term anti-Pole?) with his "paralyzing pachyderm PERCUSSION pitch."

The paluka promptly hit it out of the park. Bugs, however, rented a cab, climbed to the top of the "Umpire" State Building, and caught the ball.

|9.14.05 @ 9:30AM|#

Bugs is a relic from the days when cartoons were good. About the topic at hand, I have no opinion.

|9.14.05 @ 9:36AM|#

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but have we even discussed what a plain ol' run-of-the-mill "super precedent" is, anyway?

R C Dean|9.14.05 @ 9:51AM|#

Specter was just trying to be funny

The apocalypse is here.

The interesting thing is that to people of a leftist bent, Roe is the only part of constitutional law that is "dead" i.e. immutable and unchangable. While things that are explicitly mentioned in the Constitution like free speech, gun rights, property rights are subject to the whims of the zeitgeist.

People like Specter regard as graven in stone a decision which, by its own terms, is based on the "emanation of a penumbra" of the enumerated rights in the Constitution, but the Constitution itself is a "living document" without any real meaning.

Yes, the world has gone insane.

|9.14.05 @ 10:28AM|#

Bugs is a relic from the days when cartoons were good. About the topic at hand, I have no opinion.

You haven't seen "The Venture Brothers" have you?

Timothy|9.14.05 @ 10:42AM|#

There's just no room for those of us who like abortion nice and legal but think Roe was a piss-poor decision.

|9.14.05 @ 1:19PM|#

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but have we even discussed what a plain ol' run-of-the-mill "super precedent" is, anyway?

The link in my second post goes to a discussion of this. Near as they can tell, Spector just made it up, or at least his meaning of it anyway.