Today’s historic decision by the Supreme Court regarding partial birth abortion provoked several appalling media distortions that deserve immediate correction. Herewith, a quick effort to address three of them:.

1. NO COURT-MANDATED BAN. Many news outlets, on both TV and radio, highlighted the story with the headline “The Supreme Court today banned a controversial late term abortion procedure….” This is totally untrue, of course. The court didn’t ban anything. Congress, not the court, banned the grisly operation in which a doctor sucks out the brains of a half delivered fetus. It’s not in the power of the court – or at least it shouldn’t be – to bar any medical procedure. Today’s decision refused to overturn a decision made by Congress in 2003 – but despite impassioned anti-abortion rhetoric in Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, the court did nothing to change the law or to impose new rules. Its decision does mean, however, that the new Congressional policy can now be enforced – after more than three years of delays while courts considered the question of its Constitutionality.

2. NO HYPOCRISY BY RUDY. Many journalists noted that Rudy Giuliani’s statement endorsing the court’s decision represented a flip-flip by the former New York Mayor. In 2000, when he ran a potential candidacy for the US Senate (again Hillary, remember) he said that if elected he wouldn’t support a ban on partial birth abortion. Today, however, he said that he (like all GOP Presidential candidates) agreed with the reasoning and judgment of the court majority. Actually, there’s no inconsistency or hypocrisy in these two positions. Rudy’s opposition to a partial birth abortion ban meant he thought it was a bad idea – NOT that he thought it was unconstitutional. Giuliani has said consistently that he supports strict construction of the Constitution, with an emphasis on originalism – rather than allowing judges to invent new rights that our founding fathers never addressed. In that context, there’s no contradiction between opposing a ban on partial birth abortion as a potential Senator, at the same time that you oppose the Supreme Court overturning a Congressional decision once it’s been made. Rudy’s affirmation of the court’s decision today should remind conservatives that even though he’s been a pro-choice advocate for years, he’s still vastly preferable to any Democrat because of his strict construction approach. Today, every major Democratic candidate strongly condemned the court’s decision, while every Republican proudly endorsed it.

3. A REAL ACHIEVEMENT FOR PRESIDENT BUSH. For months, America’s media establishment has been characterizing the Bush administration as an abject failure, and many conservatives have joined the lynch mob mentality with declarations that the President has achieved nothing positive in his more than six years in office. Today’s news gives the lie to those claims – though few pundits will acknowledge the huge triumph for Bush. The court decision brought about on a five-to-four vote reflects the President’s victory in seating two outstanding, strict-constructionist judges (Roberts and Alito) among the Supremes. The switch from O’Connor (who considered a ban on partial birth abortion unconstitutional) to Alito (who voted with the majority to let the ban stand) made all the difference—providing the most significant legal victory for the pro-life cause in more than forty years. Moreover, it was Bush who made even this test case possible – he fought for the ban in Congress, then proudly signed it into law (in contrast to Bill Clinton, who vetoed similar bans in 1996 and ’97). To all those who claim that conservatives have lost their way, that there’s no longer any difference between Democrats and Republicans, that politics doesn’t matter for the big life-and-death issues before the country, today’s decision ought to come as a correction and a reality check. If Al Gore had been president, we’d never have a partial birth abortion ban as the law of the land, and we’d never have a Supreme Court majority to affirm that ban. Moreover, some of the other great achievements of the Bush administration included sweeping tax cuts, which the President promised and then realized (in both 2001 and 2003). Those tax rate reductions bore new fruit today as the stock market continued to soar to a new all-time high.

For all those who insist that Bush has done nothing right, consider this: we’ve enjoyed nearly four uninterrupted years of dynamic growth in incomes, jobs (more than 7 million new jobs created) and national wealth, combined with falling deficits to the point where we’re now below the average (as a percentage of the economy) for the last 35 years. The President’s policies, however controversial, have also led to five-and-a-half years of unexpected homeland safety and security since the devastating attacks of 9/11. And with today’s Constitutional decision, thousands of babies who would have died will be welcomed into the world of life as we continue to push back against a malevolent culture of death.

Okay, these achievements may not suggest that Bush has achieved “everything.” But they’re not nothing – and shouldn’t be dismissed or disregarded.

  President Bush announced today the transfer of 14 top terrorist prisoners to the special prison at Guantanamo. He wants them to face justice with the same sort of military commissions that the US used in the Civil War, World War II and other major conflicts, but Democrats (and some "moderate" Republicans) want to employ more normal civilian or military judicial procedures.

   This seemingly technical disagreement actually highlights a crucial contrast in approaching the war on terror: should our adversaries be treated as enemy combatants, or as common criminals? In a sense, treating them as combatants (with the same rights as prisoners of war) accords them more dignity than they deserve, since they don''t wear uniforms and they are not affiliated with a normal or recognizable army or state. But treating them as criminals -- with the full civil liberties protections accorded to criminal suspects -- raises far deeper problems. Some of these fanatical terrorists will, inevitably, be released on technicalities, or for lack of evidence, or else receive light sentences (for mitigating factors?) that guarantee their release after a few years. The problem with that is that these individuals would almost certainly return to their dedicated plotting to inflict death and destruction on the United States.

  Nations hold Prisoners of War indefinitely, until a peace agreement or a surrender, because of the recognition that a POW is never "rehabilitated," has never paid his "debt to society," is never deserving of release until the war is over for the nation he serves. Would American have released Japanese or German prisoners at the height of World War II with any confidence that they would then return home to pusue the paths of peace? The answer is obvious-- and as a matter of fact, the desire to seek release of POW's can be a powerful motivator for our enemies to pursue some meaningful peace settlement (were that ever imaginable with terrorist gangs). The United States, for instance, cared deeply about the prisoners of war held by the Vietnamese and the desire to secure their release helped drive the Paris Accords and other efforts to end the war.

  In addition to the inevitable breaches of security and revelations of secret information that would occur in normal courtroom procedures for terrorist kingpins (as described today on my radio show by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow), the treatment of terrorists as criminals sends precisely the wrong message to the US public and to the world: bringing us back to the bad-old-days of Clintonism, which treated the terror threat as a law endorcement matter, not a war. That's a reversion we can ill afford -- especially when the enemy (in contrast to some American politicians) understands we're engaged in a true World War and continues to act accordingly.