Senator Boxer and John Ziegler

I heard a bit of the John Ziegler Show tonight. He went to a press conference held by Senator Barbara Boxer (D, California), in which she announced she would vote against Judge Alito for the Supreme Court. He asked the Senator some tough but fair questions.

In his first question he asked how Alito can threaten Roe v. Wade when there are not five votes against it yet. He asked her to name the five judges who would vote to overturn Roe and she named two, Scalia and Thomas. The Senator also said something to the effect that Ziegler is the only person in America who does not know the Alito vote is about a woman’s right to choose. (If I were Boxer, I would have said, “If Alito is not the fifth vote against Roe, then he is a step in that direction, a step we do not want to take.”)

In his second question he asked her about her comment on Alito’s ruling in a case concerning a black man whose jury was 12 white people. She did not think the black man was tried by a jury of his peers. Ziegler asked if she thought blacks and whites were not peers.

It’s interesting that twice, as Senator Boxer evaded his questions, she threatened to call his boss. Her response to questions from an unsympathetic journalist was intimidation. The implied threat was that she would use her power as a Senator to get him fired. Imagine the outcry on the left if a Republican Senator threatened to call a liberal journalist’s boss!

This is just another glimpse at what liberals really think of free speech rights. They love to talk in fuzzy bromides about free speech and civil rights, but there’s an iron fist in that velvet glove. If they can get away with it, liberals will use their power to shut up any speech they find inconvenient.