Unbelievable

During the second debate, Bush made a seemingly wacky reference to Dred Scott, the protagonist in the 1857 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that blacks were not citizens and that, in essence, slavery was legal anywhere in the United States a slaveowner took his chattel (like Minnesota - one of the places Dred Scott had to go with his owner). The comic-book store owner from The Simpsons would say, "Worst decision ever." Frankly, I ascribed it all to Bush's idiocy, or worse, to an attempt to look smart when asked about his plans for the Supreme Court.

Turns out it ain't so. When a right-winger mentions the Dred Scott case, he doesn't mean the Dred Scott case: he means Roe v. Wade. Like my nephew says, "I'm not even kidding!" For some good background, follow all the links you can stomach from Michael Berube's synopsis of the issue.

Frankly, this is crazy. Orwellian. Duplicitous. Borgesian. And helpful. I hereby declare that whenever Bush drops the end of a word - noun, verb, I don't care - he's secretly telling the cognoscenti that he loves loves loves belonging to NAMBLA.