Posted on 09/15/2005 4:11:01 AM PDT by nj26
Just enough? Ruth Bader Ginsburg could've given the answers Roberts gave and not misrepresented herself in the slightest. Clarence Thomas would've never said any of that.. He says "Roe v Wade" is worthy of respect. He sees the penumbras and emanations of Griswold. He thinks the Constitution is a "living document" that gets reinterpreted to match the "dynamic" popular zeitgeist. How much more flaming liberal can you get?
sigh..
We had all kinds of newbies on the hearing threads in the last couple days.
You're right I misread your post. Sorry. Need to go take out my contacts..
Check yesterday's transcript. There was a long exchange about right to privacy. (I think it was with Shumer, but all the Dems kind of merge in memory.) Roberts maintained that there is a constitutionally protected right to privacy (or several -- he went into 4th amendment, and 1st amendment freedom of religion at least). The exchange (too combative to be an actual discussion) got down to "general" right of privacy vs. "substantive" right of privacy, but I found it hard to follow. Shumer (if it was him) was trying to get Roberts to say whether he agreed or disagreed with a statement from Thomas, but his use of terms sounded slippery to me, and it got tedious.
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The primary examples, of course, being Kennedy for Bork (what a missed opportunity!) and Souter (IIRC pushed by Warren Rudman, backed by Sununu, and nominated to avoid a confrontation).
BTW, I've read (I don't recall myself) that Kennedy started off pretty conservative -- don't know about O'Connor. But Mark Levin once said that the justices from out of town who get into the DC social scene are the ones who drift left.
Stevens, of course, was appointed by Ford, who was not a principled conservative and had no wish to pick a fight with Dems, given the timing.
LOL! Literally. :)
.... or, that you have to have enough grey matter to either:
1)Listen to the hearings b4 you comment, or
2)Have enough grey matter to understand what the man says
The thing that is "not very encouraging" to me is that those two items seem to be beyond the grasp of more than a few freepers.
Roberts may turn out to be a huge disappointment. Kennedy surely did, and I had high hopes for him. However, there is NOTHING in the hearings that would disappoint anyone who listens and understands the man. All he has said so far is, in essence, "I can't comment on the cases, but I can assure you that if I destroy any of your shibboleths, it will be from a background that I understand CLEARLY how you reasoned to get there, CLEARLY how this law has become entwined in our culture, and CLEARLY how it must be overturned because of the incongruity with the words and intent of the Constitution."
IF the guy helps overturn ROE (big "if"), I will bet you he already has a gracious, irenic, and logically irrefutable brief in his head, which touches on the right to privacy and personal freedoms cited in Roe, incorporates both Blackmun's brief and Byron White's dissent, and the various precedents which have devolved from the ruling, along with a reason why the Court cannot OUTLAW abortion, but hands it back to the 50 states (where it was before Roe).
He strikes me as a guy who is as smart as Scalia, but one who, after he has demolished your argument, you want to go have a beer with him and talk about duck hunting or something.
I loved listening to him interact with the Senate.
Roberts disturbs me. I think he's a Souter.
I don't think so. Not even close.
This is true, but it's also true that Joe was a grandstanding egomanical jerk long before his latest foray into presidential politics.
BTW I emailed Neil Kinnock's office to say what a nice speech he'd written for opening remarks in the US Supreme Court hearings. ;)
Boston Globe.
In Bouhston they say "doit ahg."
FR should buy that name and link it to here.
Well said. The man reeks of fairness and integrity. It boggles the mind to watch this intelligent, even tempered man slice and dice the mental midgets everytime he opens his mouth. I look forward to watching the senator slayer again today!
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