Tong and the Democrat Libertarians

Tong

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong sounded very much like an extremist libertarian when he commented, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that plaintiffs had no standing in a mifepristone case brought before the court, “Medication abortion is safe, legal and accessible in Connecticut. That was true before today, and following this decision, it will stay that way.”

However, Tong advised, “Anti-choice radicals are combing this decision as we speak and have already started the process of coming back with new plaintiffs. We will fight back at every single step along the way to protect the rights of patients and providers to live their lives and do their jobs free from extremist political micromanagement. [Emphasis mine}.”

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, giddily approved by Tong, Governor Ned Lamont, Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz and other prominent state Democrats, was penned by associate Justice Brett Kavanagh, who wrote, echoing a court decision that shuttled decision making on the matter of abortion from courts to state legislatures in Dobbs v Jackson, that “federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs concern about the FDA’s actions.” In addition, Kavanaugh wrote, the plaintiffs had no standing before the court because they could not show that they had been injured by an FDA decision that expanded its approvals — in 2016 and then again in 2021 — to allow mifepristone, an abortifacient, to be used up to the 10th week of pregnancy and to be prescribed remotely via telemedicine.

In Dobbs v Jackson, Justice Alito wrote, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. ‘The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.’ Casey, 505 U.S., at 979 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand.”

That decision lends support to a Connecticut statute that in essence incorporates Roe v Wade into Connecticut statutory law, one of the most deeply concealed state secrets this election year among Connecticut Democrats, including its governor and all the Democrat members of the state’s U.S. Congressional offices.

U.S. Seantor Dick Blumenthal has vigorously opposed the nominations to the high court of so called “conservative” justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, all originalists, as was Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who notably said of the post-Justice Antonin Scalia court, “We are all originalists now.” 

Before moving on to the U.S. Senate, Blumenthal had been for 20 years Connecticut’s Attorney General, and as such blissfully unconcerned that providers of goods and services in the Constitution State should be able to live their lives free from extremist political micromanagement by the Attorney General.

Blumenthal was preceded in the office by the recently departed former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Both Lieberman and Blumenthal materially changed the nature of the office from what used to be called in colonial days “The King’s Lawyer,” an office that was statutorily obligated to represent the judicial interests of the state’s chief executive, into the prosecutorial arm of Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection.

The 40 years in office of Lieberman and Blumenthal have set the pattern of their Democrat successors.

As a prosecutorial enforcer for Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection, Tong’s job is to heap upon providers of goods and services in Connecticut binding findings and resolutions that prevent otherwise free citizens from living their lives and doing their jobs “free from extremist political micromanagement.” Tong, Blumenthal and Lieberman may properly be characterized as political micromanagers of the highest order. None, in their official duties, are motivated by libertarian concerns, chiefly the preservation of personal liberty though restraints on run-amuck political agencies.

Why should Planned Parenthood, a global operation, be the only mega-company that Connecticut Democrat libertarians decline to regulate? Abortion regulations, provided they are enacted by the state legislature and not unelected and autocratic judges, should be decided by state legislatures and not the judiciary, which oversteps its Constitutional separation of powers bounds when judges legislate from the bench. That is the sum and substance of Dobbs v Jackson. Would it not be churlish – not to mention aggressively undemocratic – of the state’s sometime libertarian attorney general to pointlessly refute the point? Under current state legislation, after all, Connecticut has become the abortion capital of the northeast.