ABC News: Fox News Won't Show Ad Opposing Alito

This is interesting - the story comes from the AP, so don't go blasting ABC for reporting, as anything they added would be editorializing.

Why is it interesting to a libertarian? Well, for a few reasons...

First, although I abhor Fox News (in fact, I abhor most news broadcasts), they are a private company and can do what they wish, including refusing to sell their product (advertising airtime) to anyone for any reason. It's called private property rights, and if Fox doesn't want to run the ad, for whatever reason, so be it.

Second, the fight over Supreme Court justice nominations since the 1980's have focussed on a single issue - abortion rights. While the AP story does mention Alito's queer views on what constitutes a legal search, it also mentions his views on abortion when he was seeking a job in the Reagan administration. Abortion isn't the only issue here, and making the fight against any Supreme Court nominee hinge on his or her views on abortion is, in my mind, horribily short-sighted. Given his views on illegal searches, his views on abortion should be evident to anyone anyway.

Third, I find it an extraordinary juxtaposition of philosophies. You see, the abortion rights people feel that a woman's body, and anything growing inside it, it hers to do with as she pleases. While the religious fervor they exude is off-putting at best, the idea that what you do with your body is up to you stems from the most basic of property rights - you own your body. This is the "I think, therefore I am" of property rights, and it's culminates, in this story anyway, with Fox exercising its right not to air this ad.

Of course, despite the lip-service both parties hand out like candy at a parade, neither of the two major parties give a damn about your property rights, whether it's the right to your own body, or your real estate, or your domain name, or you broadcast airwaves, unless you've got some money and power that can help them.

And as for Alito's view on abortion, that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion", I'd encourage him (and the rest of you fascists who think there is no right to an abortion, or to use drugs, or prostitution, or any other supposed crime that involves consensual activities) to reread Amendments 9 and 10. Don't understand them? Well, the basically say two things:

• We couldn't list every right the People have, so we're explicitly saying there are more.


• We listed every power the Federal government has - any others are either State powers, or left to the People.

All this means we should be freeer and the government smaller, but it hasn't worked out that way, has it?

ABC News: Fox News Won't Show Ad Opposing Alito