NARAL is bluffing with Jack high

The Bush v. Choice Blog has alerted me that NARAL is now wasting their money on an ad which calls on viewers to call their senators to oppose Roberts because he filed a brief in the Supreme Court case Bray v. Alexandria, which his side won 6-3 in 1993.

At the end it calls on viewers to call their Senators to because "America can't afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans."

It features Emily Lyons, who was injured in Eric Rudolph's 1998 bombing, who says she's "determined to end this violence, so I'm speaking out." Yes, because stopping the nomination of John Roberts is going to stop nuts like Eric Rudolph from bombing abortion clinics?

The ad is so unbelievably crass and deceptive that I almost have trouble believing that even NARAL could stoop so low. This is truly bottom of the barrel. The average person watching the ad would think that Roberts was defending the bombing of Emily Lyons' clinic in 1998. The viewer is left with no clue as to what Bray v. Alexandria was really about nor what Roberts' brief argued.

It has nothing to do with whether bombing abortion clinics is bad or not. It has nothing to do with whether John Roberts supports violence. The issue is whether abortion clinic demonstrations violate "any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the law" and if pro-choice groups can sue them in federal court. You can listen to part of the oral argument here.

I wonder if NARAL with Emily Lyons in tow are going to start campaigns to remove other justices who voted in favor of Roberts' arguments because their ideologies "led them to excuse violence against other Americans."

If NARAL continues to spew forth garbage like this, their the speed at which they are no longer listened to by politicians will speed up.

NARAL's President, Nancy Keenan, is already trying to defend the commercial:

"I want to be very clear that we are not suggesting Mr. Roberts condones or supports clinic violence. I'm sure he finds bombings and murder abhorrent. But still his ideological view of the law compelled him to go out of his way to argue on behalf of someone like Michael Bray, who had already been convicted of a string of bombings."

Uh-huh. Too bad the commercial is far from clear on that point and even insinuates the exact opposite. "He doesn't condone violence but his ideology (which supposedly finds violence abhorrent) compels him to argue on behalf of violent people?" Come on, Nancy. We all know what you're trying to sell and it would take the entire NARAL staff a year to dig Nancy out of this much cow dung.

UPDATE:
Ed Whelan at Bench Memos has more - here, here and here.