After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Oregon law that authorizes doctor-assisted suicide, an administration spokesman said that President Bush was disappointed, but still committed to “building a culture of life.” Someone should direct the presidential attention, such as it is, toward Iraq. A culture of death has settled over that unfortunate country, where thousands of Iraqis and Americans have died because Bush invented excuses to invade. One might suspect that Bush’s commitment to the “culture of life” is not nearly so strong as his commitment to, say, “the culture of helping out my old buddies in the oil business who contributed to my campaigns,” and “the culture of no taxes for rich people.”

Those “pro-lifers” who gathered in Little Rock last Sunday weren’t marching for the culture of life either. They don’t utter its name, but what they’re really in love with — even more than fetuses — is Big Government. They demand that no one be allowed to make the most personal of decisions for herself or himself. Freedom be damned. Government on the people, not of. The executive director of a local anti-abortion group admitted that its goal is the denial of liberty life-long. “Our issues are abortion, infanticide and assisted suicide,” she said. “We go from the moment of conception to the very end of life.” Bowing down to Big Brother from the cradle to the grave — these are not the kind of Americans who were with Washington at Valley Forge. Thank goodness.

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The Oregon decision proved, if there was any doubt, that the new chief justice, John Roberts, is another big-government judge. He joined Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the most extreme of the justices, in holding that the whim of a U.S. attorney general trumps a vote of the people. Oregonians approved the state’s Death with Dignity law twice; John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, now operating a dubious lobbying business in Washington, said he didn’t like the law and he was more important than the people of Oregon. Roberts, Scalia and Thomas agreed. Happily, six members of the court felt otherwise. If Samuel Alito had been a member of the court at the time, the vote would have been 5-4 instead of 6-3. His record shows him to be another authoritarian, insensitive to individual rights. Reason enough for any senator to oppose him.

With the exception of Governor Huckabee, whose presidential ambitions have cut into his time for local demagoguery, the usual political adventurers showed up for the Arkansas “pro-life” gathering – Hutchinsons, Holts, Glovers, et al. Asa Hutchinson is the dangerous one. He’s sicced federal drug agents on cancer victims. Given the chance, he’d use the police power of the state against pregnant teen-agers. It’s a wonder Bush hasn’t nominated him for the Supreme Court.

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