Palin couldn't name a single SCOTUS decision besides Roe v Wade

[jundp 191]

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.

What other U.S. Supreme Court cases are currently still generating a lot of political heat?

well maybe not "political heat" but certainly there are US Supreme Court Cases that a potential Pres or VP should be aware of. For example:

Marbury v. Madison (every US 11th grader knows this one)

Amistad case (even if you only know about it because of the movie....it is about slave ownership and was rather important)

as well as the Dred Scott decision (also for the slavery and citizenship issue)

Plessy v Ferguson (separate but equal....who the heck doesn't know that one?!) (again every US 11th grader learned it)

Brown v Board of Education

These are all Supreme Court cases that I know off the top of my head. How can a future leader of my country not know these?

I'm just putting this out there again. The OP is that she couldn't name a single SCOTUS decision besides RvW. I just named 5 off the top of my head, I juggle kids, soccer, choir, band, and the other various involvements of my children, I run the largest academic department in my school and a huge charity organization, I am not unreasonably in debt, I speak 2 and half languages (the half being English ), I have 2 college degrees, and a minor in history/government, and I am against abortion.

Can I be the VP candidate?

No but you can be a Communist!

according to some on here...I am one already!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

The video:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4493093n

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Of particular interest is that Palin does think privacy is a right in the Constitution, even though it is not explicitly enumerated as such.

[Peikko 1,575]

That is embarressing, truly.

Not that she believes in privacy, but that she couldn't name any other Supreme Court decisions that she apposes. I cringed watching it. I don't think I can take a full debate. I'll have to wait for selected high/low lights...

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

The finding of a right to privacy in the Constitution is what opened the door to Roe v Wade.

Opponents of Roe v Wade typically do not believe a right to privacy exists in the Constitution.

Palin, however, believes the right to privacy exists... and is opposed to Roe v Wade anyway.

[LaL 418]

I don't think I can take a full debate.

I am with you, but will probably suffer through it due to the inability to look away from such a train wreck.

[mawilson 2,133]

I don't think I can take a full debate.

I am with you, but will probably suffer through it due to the inability to look away from such a train wreck.

How can you have an intelligent debate with someone who doesn't have a clue?

It would be like discussing quantum physics and Schrödinger equation with Eric. loooool.

[LaL 418]

I don't think I can take a full debate.

I am with you, but will probably suffer through it due to the inability to look away from such a train wreck.

How can you have an intelligent debate with someone who doesn't have a clue?

It would be like discussing quantum physics and Schrödinger equation with Eric. loooool.

Based on her recent interview flops - yep I would totally agree, but AJ pointing out that she did well in past Alaska debates made me check it out. She did ok from what I saw.

[Peikko 1,575]

What was being discussed? Did you get a view of her political positions? How she plans on making reforms once she has identified and eradicated the corrupt old boys network?

[Peikko 1,575]

Gone researching...

[Peikko 1,575]

So far, I know she'll do well if they ask her any questions on hunting and fishing, she's hot on hunting and fishing and access for Alaskans to mooses...

[mawilson 2,133]

So far, I know she'll do well if they ask her any questions on hunting and fishing, she's hot on hunting and fishing and access for Alaskans to mooses...

Mooses? Meese?

[Peikko 1,575]

She can define what a traditional marriage is, but obviously the SCOTUS decision didn't really go in very well - which is a shame, she could have used that when talking to Couric - The C-Span debate is interesting but goodness how did she get elected???

[Peikko 1,575]

I'm not quite sure how she's going to survive if she moves to Washington...she just lovvvvvvvvves Alaska, and hunting and fishing and mooses...

[metta 0]

Gone researching...

Allow me to be your research assistant

Wednesday, October 01, 2008 Old media dinosaurs have NOT asked Sarah Palin about her actual accomplishments Posted by: Bill Dyer at 1:50 PM (Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

In considering Sarah Palin's fitness as a vice presidential nominee, it's absolutely crucial to distinguish between mere tenure in office and actual accomplishments while there. In their televised interviews with her, however, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric have almost completely ignored Gov. Palin's actual record in office. So, too, have most of the old-media sources who've been writing about her. They'd far rather dig through a dumpster or watch videos of a guest pastor from Kenya speaking at a church Gov. Palin has sometimes attended than talk about Gov. Palin's day job as chief executive of the largest state in America.

(There's yet another important aspect to her candidacy that the mainstream media has ignored almost as resolutely, which is her courage and determination in campaigning as an underdog reformer, taking on deeply entrenched and ethically challenged members of her own party in Alaska. Arguably that's her most important accomplishment of all, given how much of a cesspool Washington has become. But let's set that aside for the moment.)

Gov. Palin is now finishing up her second year as Governor of Alaska. Even added to her years as a city councilman and mayor, or her service as chair and ethics officer of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, that is not a very long record. But length is only one dimension. How deep is her record?

The answer to that question is critically important. Joe Biden has been a senator, as Gov. Palin points out, since Gov. Palin was in grade school, so of course he has a long record. With that seniority has come committee chair positions, first on the Senate Judiciary Committee, then on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But on closer examination, neither as a committee chairman nor a legislator has Slow Joe Biden particularly distinguished himself. His greatest legislative triumph has been in championing revisions to the bankruptcy code that dramatically changed the slope of the playing field to favor his home-state credit card companies in consumer bankruptcy proceedings — an accomplishment much disdained, in fact, by the Hard Left. So what, by contrast, has Gov. Sarah Palin done in her dramatically shorter tenure as a state chief executive?

If you only know three things that Sarah Palin has accomplished as Governor of Alaska, it should be these three:

• Gov. Palin is a proven fiscal conservative who used her line-item veto to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in spending from the state budget. In considering this accomplishment, keep in mind that the Alaska Legislature is controlled by the GOP, meaning that the funding she cut had already been approved by legislators of her own party. Nevertheless, she made her vetoes stick. Consider, too, that because of the current high price of crude oil, Alaska is enjoying record budget surpluses. It's harder to practice restraint in times of plenty. And look at her entire record over time (more than as revealed by her position on a single bridge): Although Alaska has traditionally been more dependent than other states on federal funding (since the federal government owns such a large portion of the state's property and resources), even the often-critical Anchorage Daily News admits that Gov. Palin has "increasingly distanced herself from earmarking" since 2000, and that her having done so over the past year has been "the leading source of tension between Palin and the state's three-member congressional delegation." Actually exercising fiscal discipline in a time of plenty, at both state and federal levels and against the will of the members of her own party, is a better predictor for how she would actually govern on a national level than ten thousand campaign promises.
• Gov. Palin kept her campaign promise to revamp the state's pre-existing severance tax on oil & gas production, replacing a structure negotiated behind closed doors by ethically challenged predecessors and the big energy companies with one negotiated in full public view — and then rebated part of the resulting surplus directly to tax-payers. Severance taxes are a kind of property tax charged on a one-time basis, at the time of production, on subsurface assets (like oil, gas & minerals) which can't be quantified and taxed through regular property taxes. There was widespread resentment and distrust over the version negotiated by Gov. Palin's predecessor with the three big energy companies who've traditionally ruled the roost in Alaska (ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and BP). The new version negotiated and passed with Gov. Palin's support was thoroughly disinfected by the sunshine of public scrutiny. Although it's not a "windfall profits tax" — indeed, the base rate only went from 22.5% to 25% — it did permit the Alaskan people to share in a larger portion of the current high prices for oil by raising the additional, progressive portion of the tax from 0.25% to 0.40% on revenues between $32.50 and $90/bbl. Above that, however, the new law actually cut taxes by dropping the rate on revenues above $90/bbl to 0.1%. With the resulting budget surplus, after contributing to the state's fund for that future day when its oil & gas wealth is exhausted, she pressed for and got legislation to rebate a healthy chunk directly to tax-payers on a per capita basis, trusting them to spend the proceeds from this sale of the state's commonly-owned resources rather than trusting government to spend it for them.
• Gov. Palin broke a multi-year stalemate over the financing and construction of a $40 billion cross-state gas pipeline that will deliver cleaner, cheaper natural gas to Alaska's own population centers (Alaskans themselves pay some of the nation's highest energy prices), while also delivering gas to the energy-hungry Lower 48. To do this, she had to break the monopoly power of the big energy companies by opening the project to competitive international bidding. Not only has a development contract with a Canadian company now been signed on better terms than had previously been discussed, but the former monopolists — finally spurred by competition — are cranking up their own plan that would not require any taxpayer investment. How precisely this will shake out remains to be seen, but Gov. Palin's vigorous action — calling special sessions of the state legislature and injecting herself directly and vigorously into the process — has ended the deadlock in ways that seem certain to benefit consumers. By this accomplishment, Gov. Palin has done more to advance the cause of American energy independence than any other politician — of any party, and at any level of state or federal government — in this century. But the national media have generally ignored this accomplishment.

It's no accident that Gov. Palin remains immensely popular in her home state, notwithstanding the widespread derision of the national elites. Her actual accomplishments in office are vastly disproportionate to her time spent in office, but her constituents value the results she's gotten.

And isn't that what we want? Should we want politicians who have been in office a long time without getting anything done? Should we want the kind of "wisdom" shown by Slow Joe Biden, who opposed the nominations of both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, and who proposed that we subdivide Iraq into three parts (each to be dominated by a different foreign interest)? Should we prefer someone like Barack Obama in the top job as POTUS, even though he has no longer tenure than Gov. Palin and conspicuously fewer actual accomplishments?

Will Gwen Ifill ask any meaningful question of either Gov. Palin or Sen. Biden about their actual accomplishments in office tomorrow? Will she ask Biden about the bankruptcy law changes? Will she acknowledge Gov. Palin as a demonstrated fiscal conservative and crusader for energy independence?

I'm not holding my breath. But if the media won't help educate Americans about Gov. Palin's accomplishments in office, then each of us should!

— Beldar

Edited October 2, 2008 by metta