Posted on 07/20/2005 7:33:31 AM PDT by Babu
After pretending to consider various women and minorities for the Supreme Court these past few weeks, President Bush decided to disappoint all the groups he had just ginned up and nominate a white male.
So all we know about him for sure is that he can't dance and he probably doesn't know who Jay-Z is. Other than that, he is a blank slate. Tabula rasa. Big zippo. Nada. Oh, yeah...we also know he's argued cases before the supreme court. big deal; so has Larry fFynt's attorney.
But unfortunately, other than that that, we don’t know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever.
Since the announcement, court-watchers have been like the old Kremlinologists from Soviet days looking for clues as to what kind of justice Roberts will be. Will he let us vote?
Does he live in a small, rough-hewn cabin in the woods of New Hampshire and avoid "women folk"?
Does he trust democracy? Or will he make all the important decisions for us and call them “constitutional rights.”
It means absolutely nothing that NARAL and Planned Parenthood attack him: They also attacked Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Hackett Souter.
The only way a supreme court nominee could win the approval of NARAL and Planned Parenthood would be to actually perform an abortion during his confirmation hearing, live, on camera, and preferably a partial birth one.
It means nothing that Roberts wrote briefs arguing for the repeal of Roe v. Wade when he worked for Republican administrations. He was arguing on behalf of his client, the United States of America. Roberts has specifically disassociated himself from those cases, dropping a footnote to a 1994 law review article that said:
“In the interest of full disclosure, the author would like to point out that as Deputy Solicitor General for a portion of the 1992-93 Term, he was involved in many of the cases discussed below. In the interest of even fuller disclosure, he would also like to point out that his views as a commentator on those cases do not necessarily reflect his views as an advocate for his former client, the United States.”
This would have been the legal equivalent, after O.J.'s acquittal, of Johnnie Cochran saying, "hey, I never said the guy was innocent. I was just doing my job."
And it makes no difference that conservatives in the White House are assuring us Roberts can be trusted. We got the exact same assurances from officials working for the last president Bush about David Hackett Souter.
I believe their exact words were, "Read our lips; Souter's a reliable conservative."
From the theater of the absurd category, the Republican National Committee’s “talking points” on Roberts provide this little tidbit:
“In the 1995 case of Barry v. Little, Judge Roberts argued—free of charge—before the D.C. Court of Appeals on behalf of a class of the neediest welfare recipients, challenging a termination of benefits under the District’s Public Assistance Act of 1982.”
I'm glad to hear the man has a steady work record, but how did this make it to the top of his resume?
Bill Clinton goes around bragging that he passed welfare reform, which was, admittedly, the one public policy success of his entire administration (passed by the Republican Congress). But now apparently Republicans want to pretend the Party of welfare queens! Soon the RNC will be boasting that Republicans want to raise your taxes and surrender in the war on terrorism too.
Finally, lets ponder the fact that Roberts has gone through 50 years on this planet without ever saying anything controversial. That’s just unnatural.
By contrast, I held out for three months, tops, before dropping my first rhetorical bombshell, which I think was about Goldwater.
It’s especially unnatural for someone who is smart and there’s no question but that Roberts is smart.
If a smart and accomplished person goes this long without expressing an opinion, they'd better be pursuing the Miss America title.
Apparently, Roberts decided early on that he wanted to be on the Supreme Court and that the way to do that was not to express a personal opinion on anything to anybody ever. It’s as if he is from some space alien sleeper cell. Maybe the space aliens are trying to help us, but I wish we knew that.
If the Senate were in Democrat hands, Roberts would be perfect. But why on earth would Bush waste a nomination on a person who is a complete blank slate when we have a majority in the Senate!
We also have a majority in the House, state legislatures, state governorships, and have won five of the last seven presidential elections — seven of the last ten!
We're the Harlem Globetrotters now - why do we have to play the Washington Generals every week?
Conservatism is sweeping the nation, we have a fully functioning alternative media, we’re ticked off and ready to avenge Robert Bork . . . and Bush nominates a Rorschach blot.
Even as they are losing voters, Democrats don’t hesitate to nominate reliable left-wing lunatics like Ruth Bader Ginsberg to lifetime sinecures on the High Court. And the vast majority of Americans loathe her views.
As I’ve said before, if a majority of Americans agreed with liberals on abortion, gay marriage, pornography, criminals’ rights, and property rights –liberals wouldn’t need the Supreme Court to give them everything they want through invented “constitutional” rights invisible to everyone but People For the American Way. It’s always good to remind voters that Democrats are the party of abortion, sodomy, and atheism and nothing presents an opportunity to do so like a Supreme Court nomination.
During the “filibuster” fracas, one lonely voice in the woods admonished Republicans: “Of your six minutes on TV, use 30 seconds to point out the Democrats are abusing the filibuster and the other 5 1/2 minutes to ask liberals to explain why they think Bush's judicial nominees are ‘extreme.’" Republicans ignored this advice, spent the next several weeks arguing about the history of the filibuster, and lost the fight.
Now we come to find out from last Sunday’s New York Times — the enemy’s own playbook! — that the Democrats actually took polls and determined that they could not defeat Bush’s conservative judicial nominees on ideological grounds. They could win majority support only if they argued turgid procedural points.
That’s why the entire nation had to be bored to death with arguments about the filibuster earlier this year.
The Democrats’ own polls showed voters are no longer fooled by claims that the Democrats are trying to block “judges who would roll back civil rights.” Borking is over.
And Bush responds by nominating a candidate who will allow Democrats to avoid fighting on their weakest ground – substance. He has given us a Supreme Court nomination that will placate no liberals and should please no conservatives.
Maybe Roberts will contravene the sordid history of “stealth nominees” and be the Scalia or Thomas Bush promised us when he was asking for our votes. Or maybe he won’t. The Supreme Court shouldn't be a game of Russian roulette.
Wow, in that case I missed the multi-volume exploration of Constitutional law that Clarence Thomas published prior to his nomination. </sarcasm>
Sorry, folks, but this column is the flip side of Kennedy and Schumer's press releases—she could have written it four weeks ago and just filled in the blanks with Roberts' name. To say that Roberts' is a judicial enigma whereas Thomas was a known quantity is just shockingly ignorant.
I agree with you!! I am already worn out, and it is not even 24 hours into the process!!!!!!
President Bush nominated DC Circuit Court Judge John Roberts to the US Supreme Court. The Feminist Majority, the National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the National Abortion Federation all immediately announced their intentions to oppose Roberts for the position.
“I am extremely disappointed that the President did not appoint a centrist woman to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the Supreme Court,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “We are now going back to tokenism for women on the highest court in the land.”
“Everything we know about Judge Roberts’ record thus far indicates that he will be a solid vote against women’s rights and Roe v. Wade,” Smeal continued. “If he is to be confirmed by senators who support women’s rights, he must say where he stands on Roe and the right to privacy. The burden is on him.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1446803/posts
I am sure if he could wish for just one thing, it would be... World Peace.
Could it be that to get to this point inbhis career Roberts has had to be well let's say publically noncomittal...In the leftist dominated legal establishment, an outspoken conservative would have gone nowhere much less graduated from Law School with honors.
OK Ann, so he is not as outspoken as you would like, but then again he is not in the media...that's your cache.
I think that Annie has gotten too big for her tight leather skirt.
Ann is marginalizing herself and not being completely truthful. Scalia was not a household name when appointed. He was as stealth as Souter as far as that goes.
Must be the time of the month or Anne is whipping up her Right Wing Moonbat followers for fun.
"Please, PLEASE think about increasing your carb intake and put some MEAT on dem bones!!!!"
Leave Ann alone. As she gets older she will naturally get fatter. Enjoy the thinness while it lasts.
Justice Scalia thinks Judge Roberts is one of the best attorneys ever to appear before the Supreme Court
Could you please source this comment? Thank you.
...But the nomination is made and we'll now have to see if we're stuck with an activist. If not, great. If so, it could be a very long and damaging 30 year wait to replace him....
Be positive. If he's a closet commie, we end almost immediately. There won't be any thirty year wait.
Ann is voice of common sense. I don't like the 'he's fair-minded' nonsense coming from some quarters, and some reporter last night said Roberts was nicer than Scalia. How can that be? Scalia is perfect. (Perhaps he meant Roberts would smile more.)
I agree. Ann's point about how the Reps handled the filibuster is an excellent illustration of how the Reps do not know how to engage in political warfare.
Bush should have thrown down the gauntlet with the purest Constructionist judge he could find and turned all of the backbiting and political dirty work of the past years into one debate: the values of the majority of Americans and how it is a Constructionist judge that does not undermine them through judicial activism.
If he'd done that, all the other issues would have been silenced and he would have gone a long way to getting America back on the paved road for the 08 Rep candidate that will face the wolf in sheep's clothing better known as Hillary.
Ann's a fool on this. Her legs are thinner and have less meat than her bizarre words!
Ann, honey, you're probably the last real man on the planet, but I SO hope you're wrong!
She looks like a hooker.
What "moonbat followers?" I don't see any here. In fact, everybody is attacking her here for peeing in the lemonade, much like they attacked critics of Gonzales when he became AG.
That's one skinny chick.
Hackett? Souter's middle name is Hackett?
That settles it. From now on, I'm calling him "Buddy".
Let's hope we don't have to eat our words, but if Mark Levin is rejoicing, that's good enough for me.
Shes's Leslie Nielsen in drag. She must be drunk writing this.
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