Romney Supports a State's Right to Choose

Listening to George Stephanopoulos' interview with Mitt Romney on ABC's This Week, I was struck by the Governor's explanation of his stance on abortion. While he was once pro-choice and now describes himself as pro-life, what he really likes to focus on is the states' right to determine whether they are pro-life or pro-choice. He said that under his policy, Massachusetts would remain a pro-choice state.

"My view is that we should let each state have its own responsibility for guiding its laws relating to abortion.

My preference would be to see the Supreme Court do something which is up to them, not up to me. Even if elected president, I don't guide this. The Supreme Court does.

But I'd like to see the Supreme Court allow states to have greater leeway in defining their own laws."

Describing his position as an assertion of states' rights seems to be an appeal to the conservative base, but the key element of his policy can be summed up in one word: choice. Weird how someone who is trying to position themselves as pro-life is actually emphasizing their belief in choice. In fact, when I heard him describe his position I thought, if I didn't know any better I would think he's arguing for a pro-choice policy.

"I feel a great empathy for women who have difficult decisions in this regard. I don't want to impose my view on the lives of women, and yet this is one of those points where mature men and women have to come together and say, "What's the right course?" And in my particular view, I believe in life, I believe in respecting life, and I believe that we should, as a series of states, allow states to make their own choice in this regard."

If it's okay to devolve the decision on abortion from the federal government to the states, why not let each county decide? And if it's okay for each county to develop their own policy, why not let each municipality decide if they are a pro-choice or pro-life community? Wait...if it's okay for each community to decide why not let each household decide?

It seems to me that in supporting a state's right to choose, Romney has revealed his pro-choice beliefs. I'm not upset with him for this, I just wish he wouldn't try to paint his beliefs in conservative clothing.

Heaven only knows

So The Economist lays out what a possible merger of the Catholic and Anglican churches would look like. It's one of those stories that you read and think--is this an April Fool's joke?

I think it goes to show how religion is understood and discussed in the British press versus the U.S. It is hard to imagine a U.S. newspaper carrying out the same line of reasoning.

A DRM Tipping Point?

Steve Jobs' essay "Thoughts on Music," posted on the Apple.com website yesterday has unleashed a fury of discussion on the future of digital rights management or DRM.

Steve Jobs writes, “With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to ‘open’ the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods. Let’s examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.”

This rather low key essay resulted in a front page story on today's Financial Times, was discussed on the Economist website, and was the lead story on PRI's Marketplace morning report--among other places.

Not only is the topic of discussion important and potentially transformative, the mode with which this discussion has developed is itself intriguing. Jobs, famous for his theatrical presentations, posted his thoughts on a webpage with little fanfare. This meme was then picked up by numerous sources in the "traditional media." It will be interesting to watch this story develop and see if it has any affect on the use of DRM technology in the music industry.

Stay (i)tuned.

Close but no cigar

According to the Economist, we residents of Washington, D.C. are almost full fledged participants in this experiment we like to call democracy:

"DC's congressional representative—and those of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands—inched closer to gaining full voting rights in late January. The House passed a bill allowing the five territories to vote, although if any of their votes prove decisive, the ballot will be cancelled and retaken without them. Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC's long-time congresswoman, had sponsored a bill to award these representatives full rights. So she was disappointed with the compromise, which restores the rights the representatives had before the Republican congressional takeover in 1994. She has described it as 'heartbreaking'."

Wow, thanks guys. Our elected representative is allowed to vote, but if her vote proves decisive the ballot is cancelled?! Doesn't that really defeat the voting in the first place? It reminds me of when I was a senior in high school and it came time to vote for a class song. Pink Floyd's "Another Brink in the Wall Part II" won decisively. Well this song, with it's famous line "we don't need no education," proved too much for the school administration to handle. What was their solution? The vote was retaken, but this time we were only allowed to vote for one of three pre-approved songs. Wow! How exciting! I could hardly bear the suspense! At least in this case, we were voting on a rather meaningless issue like a class song, not on huge issues like the war in Iraq and what to do about the millions of Americans who don't have health care. (In the end, John Cougar Mellancamp's "Small Town" won, and I have never quite recovered--as is obvious from this post.)

I would almost prefer the District (and other territories) weren't thrown such a pathetic bone by those members of congress (predominantly Republican) who'd prefer to get the issue off the agenda. Now they can pretend like they addressed the issue, when all they really did was come up with a politically opportunistic way to act like they did.

Let's hope our newly elected Democratic Congress will address the hypocracy of working so hard to bring democracy to far flung regions of the world while the citizens who live in our nation's capital enjoy no such right.