The Week

National Review, April 7, 2003

-- The Senate voted to ban partial-birth abortion, although not before supporters of the procedure made the usual contradictory arguments. (There's no such thing as partial-birth abortion, and it's also vital to women's health.) President Bush has promised to sign the ban. But the ban may still be voted down by another group of legislators: the justices of the Supreme Court. In 2000, the Court struck down Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortion. The sponsors of the federal ban have sought to accommodate some of the Court's stated concerns about the Nebraska law. But it would be naive to think that those accommodations will save the law. The ban will be upheld only if one of the following two conditions obtains. Either Justice O'Connor must conclude that it would harm the Court to keep bucking the popular sentiment against partial-birth abortion. Or the composition of the Court must improve. At this late date, it should be obvious that the legal merits have little to do with how the Supreme Court rules on abortion.

-- Recent reports have suggested that the Air Force Academy has largely ignored an epidemic of rapes. Feminists, notably Pat Schroeder, attribute this scandal to the military's misogynist culture. But Schroeder's blanket indictment is wrong (as is the implicitly proposed solution of further feminizing the military). Of course young women attending the service academies must be safe from any violent predators in their ranks. But the rate of sexual abuse at the academy, based on reported complaints, is less than one fifth the rate at civilian universities. So the incomplete integration of women into the military cannot be to blame. Nor should the academy be condemned for not investigating assaults that were never reported to it. Finally, we should keep in mind that charges of assault following illicit drinking, prohibited fraternization, and, in one case, an inebriated evening of strip poker, can be frustratingly difficult to prove. At the academy, such behavior typically warrants disciplinary action. Waiving penalties for such infractions if an assault is alleged could create an incentive to make false accusations. The Air Force brass is dealing with the need to protect the rights of both accusers and accused in a glare of publicity. The public rightly has high expectations of men and women in uniform, but those expectations should be leavened by an appreciation of some of the practical difficulties of military justice.

--Jim Nussle, chairman of the House Budget Committee, wrote a budget plan that eliminates the deficit by 2010 while making the pro-growth tax cuts President Bush wants. He accomplishes both goals by restraining non-defense spending. Both small-government conservatives and deficit-phobes should cheer the plan. But liberal Republicans in the House are demanding more spending, and the press is depicting the spending cuts as savage. The White House has been noticeably silent. It need not endorse every detail of the plan, but Nussle could use -- and deserves -- some support.