Lawyer-Wearing-Yarmulka

I watched a bit of the confirmation hearings today, mostly Kennedy's attempt to portray Alito as a racist, bigot, and sexist. It didn't work. But here's the stupidest thing said so far, and it comes from the senior Senator from my hometown.

SCHUMER: Does the Constitution protect the right to free speech?

ALITO: Certainly it does. That's in the First Amendment.

SCHUMER: So why can't you answer the question of: Does the Constitution protect the right to an abortion the same way without talking about stare decisis, without talking about cases, et cetera?

ALITO: Because answering the question of whether the Constitution provides a right to free speech is simply responding to whether there is language in the First Amendment that says that the freedom of speech and freedom of the press can't be abridged. Asking about the issue of abortion has to do with the interpretation of certain provisions of the Constitution.

Now Schumer can't really be that dumb. Or maybe he's illiterate. It is possible that he has never actually read the Constitution, and therefore just assumed that the right to an abortion was really written somewhere in the Bill of Rights. The way some people talk about the "right to an abortion", I could understand how someone would believe that it's an express right and not something discovered inside some penumbra of the Constitution.

Hat tip: Ezzie

Excellent comment - and thanks for the HT. I was actually planning on linking your previous post in the roundup...