Last night Franken was at a off the record speech by Scalia and then confronted him at an on-the-record cocktail party about his claims of being a strict constructionist and originalist.
Franken has big brass ones. He walks up to Scalia and says ``Now you know abortion was not always illegal in this country'' to which Scalia sternly responded ``I know you are wrong.''
Guess who was right?
UPDATE: The Princeton professor on the Franken show was Christine
Stansell, who works on American history; as noted in the comments below, the understanding about the lack of regulation on abortion in the early US was discussed in full in the original Roe v. Wade decision.
On his show this morning, Franken had a Princeton professor who teaches a class on gender studies. She pointed out that ``women's issues'' such as abortion were below the radar screen of the founding fathers and not picked up until the mid 1800s when the AMA pushed to render abortion illegal. Prior to that it was not regulated at all. Moreover, she said that no enforcement really kicked in until the 1940s.
Al was right!
And, big hearted man that he is, he wants NO apology from Scalia.
He just wants Scalia to realize that as a strict constructionist and originalist he needs to reverse his views on abortion and Roe v. Wade.