Alan Dershowitz is still with us?

This howler from Best of the Web Today implies as much. Still, I had better check it out, kiddies.

A Chief Justice Is Born

There are many theories about when life begins: Some say at conception, others at "quickening," and still others at birth. Some even think life begins at 40. But Alan Dershowitz, Harvard's most socially rough-edged law professor, goes even further. To his mind, according to the Harvard Crimson, life doesn't begin until sometime after the 206th trimester of pregnancy:

In a stab at the 50-year-old [John] Roberts, who, if confirmed, will be the youngest chief justice in 200 years, Dershowitz said, "Today, they're trying to nominate fetuses in the hope that they will be kept alive like [Terri] Schiavo."

Before embellishing jokes from the Onion, Dershowitz should check his facts. Terri Schiavo was not kept alive; she was aborted in the 169th trimester, even though that was not her mother's choice.

Maybe Dersh is trying to put political pressure on Roberts to recuse himself from abortion cases. Yet in that case, is any justice free of conflicts of interest? Even John Paul Stevens, though now in his 345th trimester and thus presumably a full person even by the Dershowitz standard, is a former fetus, right?

Alive? Coulda fooled me.