Fact-Checking About Abortion Rates and Judicial Nominees

Factcheck.org tackles the claim popularized by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Howard Dean that abortion rates have gone up under Bush. Nationally speaking, that claim is simply false, though in a few states the rate has increased. [hat tip: Susan Olasky at World, though I'm not sure her claim that these people were lying is justified]

They've also tackled some false and misleading claims from both sides on the judicial nominees who have garnered much attention of late. They end with something that I think is wrong. Alberto Gonzales once said that one opinion Priscilla Owen wrote would have been an unconscionable act of judicial activism if her opinion had been the majority opinion. He has now said that he's never accused her of being an activist judge. They raise the specter of contradiction here without quite endorsing it. I just think that's poor journalism. There's an easy way to reconcile these two statements. In the first case he was talking about an action, and in the second he was talking about a character trait. He never accused her of having the character trait of judicial activism, though he did think one opinion she wrote would have been an instance of judicial activism (if it had been a majority opinion). I don't think one instance of judicial activist makes someone an activist judge. One must have a track record of judicially activist decisions to be an activist judge.