Free Republic

I heard John Roberts' angry question towards Palin's choice for her baby (born April 18 this year) questioning whether Sarah could take care of a baby with Down's Syndrome and also manage to be Vice President. This was echoed on TV (again voiced by democrat male reporter), and by several seminar-callers to radio shows on Friday afternoon. Several radio show hosts - most in-depth was Hugh Hewitt with two interviews with DS organizers - skewered John Roberts about his attitude, and his assumption that having a child "with special needs" (as he put it) would take too much time, that...

During the 9 a.m. EDT hour of “CNN Newsroom,” “American Morning” co-anchor John Roberts gave an analysis of Governor Sarah Palin during discussion of Senator John McCain's vice presidential choice. Roberts focused on Palin's lack of experience, saying that a prerequisite for the vice presidency should be the ability to step right into the office, especially because of McCain's age. Roberts stated: She's only been in office for a couple of years now, which really raises the experience issue here. [...] Now, she is a manager. She is the governor of a state. She does have limited experience, though. She's...

The Moronic PartyFirst Published 2008-08-12 Republicans are interested in prevailing over the ‘bad guys.’ The fact that the bad guys are Bush, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle, Billy Kristol, and other such is beyond the Republicans’ imagination, notes Paul Craig Roberts. Many years ago, during the 1970s if memory serves, neoconservative Irving Kristol, echoing John Stuart Mill, called his conservative party, the Republican Party, “the stupid party.” Kristol was referring to the Republican’s inability to compete on the policy front. Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan led the Republicans out of the wilderness, but now Republicans have reverted to the stupid party,...

WASHINGTON — Where have all the 5-to-4 decisions gone? And whatever happened to the “Kennedy Court”? A year ago at this time, the Supreme Court had decided 13 cases by votes of 5 to 4, out of 41 total decisions. That proved to be an accurate snapshot of a highly polarized term. By the time the court wrapped up its work five weeks later, a third of the cases — the highest proportion in years — had been decided by margins of a single vote. But so far this term, with 35 cases decided with full opinions, there has been...

But it is his sharp words about his Democratic opponents (on a day when they wait for election returns without making much news until tonight) that may catch the most attention. McCain explains: Obama in particular likes to talk up his background as a lecturer on law, and also as someone who can work across the aisle to get things done. But when Judge Roberts was nominated, it seemed to bring out more the lecturer in Senator Obama than it did the guy who can get things done. He went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the...

Obama appeared on Fox and the far left is upset he didn't take them on but rather was quite accommodating. The interview itself brought forth a few nuggets especially this head scratcher: WALLACE: But, Senator, if I may, I think one of the concerns that some people have is that you talk a good game about, let’s be post-partisan, let’s all come together — just a couple of quick things, and I don’t really want you to defend each one, I just want to speak to the larger issue. The gang of 14, which was a group — a bipartisan...

"Tony McDonald, a member of the University of Texas Young Conservatives, sets up a protest anti- American Civil Liberties Union nativity scene, dubbed a 'solstice barn,' on the university's campus in Austin December 4, 2006. The display features a 'Nancy Pelosi' angel, a 'suicide bomber' shepherd, and Marx, Lenin and Stalin as the Three Wise Men." "Josh Perry, a member of the University of Texas Young Conservatives, spreads hay as he sets up a protest anti-American Civil Liberties Union nativity scene, dubbed a 'solstice barn,' on the university's campus in Austin, Texas December 4, 2006. The display features a...

Had to truncate the title. Actually, it's: "Inside The Incredibly Shrinking Role Of the Supreme Court. And Why John Roberts Is O.K. With That" The Incredible Shrinking Court The irony is that the Court's ideology is playing a dwindling role in the lives of Americans. The familiar hot-button controversies--abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, police powers and so on--have been around so long, sifted and resifted so many times, that they now arrive at the court in highly specific cases affecting few, if any, real people. And it's not clear that Roberts wants to alter that trend. His speeches on...

The recent claims that newly-confirmed Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito were ignoring precedent, contrary to their confirmation hearings pledges, are partisan chum hurled into the waters where swim the most radical members of the Democratic base. I have earlier examined the general scope of the doctrine of stare decisis which requires Supreme Court Justices to give great weight under appropriate circumstance to prior rulings of the Court and to the statements both Justices gave on the issue during their confirmation hearings for American Thinker readers

WASHINGTON -- Chief Justice John Roberts checked himself out of a Maine hospital Tuesday after a medical emergency that illuminates the potential fragility of the Supreme Court. One day after suffering a still-unexplained seizure, Roberts returned to his summer vacation home on remote Hupper Island and told President Bush there was no cause for alarm. "It was a brief conversation, but one where the chief justice reassured the president that, in fact, he was doing fine," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. But with four of the court's nine justices over the age of 70, and with the 52-year-old Roberts'...

The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is "the most conservative in memory," and the Senate should not confirm another nominee to the bench from President Bush "except in extraordinary circumstances," in the view of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Addressing the fifth annual American Constitution Society convention Friday, Schumer said the Senate had been misled by the "charm of nominee Roberts and the erudition of nominee [Samuel] Alito." "Our fears were more than justified from the ultra-conservative record of [those] two men," said Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Schumer's comments coincided with a new ABC...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- One of the top pro-abortion Democrats in the Senate says he wants Congress to slow down on confirming the next Supreme Court nominee if President Bush has a chance to pick one more before the end of his term. Sen. Charles Schumer, of New York, commented on the same day a poll showed a majority of Americans backed the high court's decision in the partial-birth abortion case. Schumer said on Friday at the American Constitution Society convention that the Senate should only confirm Bush's next high court nominee "in extraordinary circumstances" and should "reverse the presumption...

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home in Maine on Monday, causing a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. He will remain in a hospital in Maine overnight. "It's my understanding he's fully recovered, said Christopher Burke, a spokesman for Penobscot Bay Medical Center, where Roberts was taken. Roberts, 52, was taken by ambulance to the medical center, where he underwent a "thorough neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for concern," Arberg said in a statement. Roberts had a similar episode in 1993, she said. Doctors called Monday's...

"About half of the public thinks the Supreme Court is generally balanced in its decisions, but a growing number of Americans say the court has become "too conservative" in the two years since President Bush began nominating justices, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Nearly a third of the public -- 31 percent -- thinks the court is too far to the right, a noticeable jump since the question was last asked in July 2005. That's when Bush nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to the court and, in the six-month period that followed, the Senate approved Roberts as...

WHEN a majority of Supreme Court justices adopt a manifestly ideological agenda, it plunges the court into the vortex of American politics. If the Roberts court has entered voluntarily what Justice Felix Frankfurter once called the “political thicket,� it may require a political solution to set it straight. The framers of the Constitution did not envisage the Supreme Court as arbiter of all national issues. As Chief Justice John Marshall made clear in Marbury v. Madison, the court’s authority extends only to legal issues. When the court overreaches, the Constitution provides checks and balances. In 1805, after persistent political activity...

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) plans to review the Senate testimony of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito to determine if their reversal of several long-standing opinions conflicts with promises they made to senators to win confirmation. Specter, who championed their confirmation, said Tuesday he will personally re-examine the testimony to see if their actions in court match what they told the Senate. "There are things he has said, and I want to see how well he has complied with it," Specter said, singling out Roberts.The Specter inquiry poses a potential political problem for the GOP...

WASHINGTON -- The new Supreme Court is more conservative than it has been in decades. It's also meaner. It is a dream come true for Republican presidencies dating back to the "strict constructionist" court aspirations of President Nixon and now made possible by the conservative George W. Bush. Before closing down for the summer last month, the high court tossed out a flurry of decisions that overturned or reinterpreted long-standing liberal precedents. The court under Chief Justice John Roberts seems intent on rolling back advances in race and gender relations that have helped America achieve a more equal and humane...

The Court’s liberal critics are especially exercised by Justice Alito, who in a few cases voted differently than the justice he replaced, Sandra Day O’Connor. These critics say that the rule of law is eroded when the outcome of a case depends on who’s sitting on the bench. This critique comes a little late in the seasons of our experience. We don’t recall any of the legal experts who are condemning Alito having urged Ruth Bader Ginsburg to follow the example of the justice she replaced, Byron White, who dissented from the liberal constitutional agenda on abortion and gay rights.

Just say no. The Senate's Democratic majority -- joined by all Republicans who purport to be moderate -- must tell President Bush that this will be their answer to any controversial nominee to the Supreme Court or the appellate courts. The Senate should refuse even to hold hearings on Bush's next Supreme Court choice, should a vacancy occur, unless the president reaches agreement with the Senate majority on a mutually acceptable list of nominees. And no Bush nominee to a lower court deserves any deference now that we learn that U.S. Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh may have misled the...

WASHINGTON - Iraq remains chaotic and immigration overhaul faces an uncertain fate. But if President Bush wants to sing the old tune, “They can’t take that away from me” he can turn to the Supreme Court where his appointees Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito sit. As the high court nears the end of its 2006-2007 term, the impact of Bush’s appointees is becoming clearer. In high profile-decisions, Roberts and Alito have bolstered the conservative wing, which includes Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and occasionally Justice Anthony Kennedy. Former Reagan administration Justice Department official Doug Kmiec,...

As we enter the last few decision days of the Term – with 17 cases remaining – I want to raise the prospect that the Term will ultimately reveal that the Court’s ideological shift has been far more profound than almost anyone outside the building has realized so far. Here are the numbers to this point. Eleven cases have been decided by a five-to-four vote on classic ideological lines. Justice Kennedy has cast the deciding vote in each – six times with the right and five with the left. Those results suggest a balanced outcome. But the numbers are very...

June 12, 2007 Dear X: Thank you for your letter on immigration. I appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts with me. The Senate has spent the past few weeks debating S. 1348, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act. However, the Senate has been unable to end debate on the legislation. I voted against efforts to end debate because senators were prevented from offering all their amendments and having them voted on. This is not how the Senate is supposed to operate. Furthermore, the Senate has repeated the mistake of the last session – a closed-door deal without committee...

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson demands that Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee set the record straight. July 16, 2004 | Editor's note: Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on the U.S. intelligence community's prewar assessments on Iraq. An appendix discusses the role taken by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson in determining whether Iraq had obtained uranium from Niger. The following is Wilson's letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee pointing to errors in the Republican senators' additional comments to the report and demanding corrections. The Hon. Pat Roberts, Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence The Hon. Jay...

THE Supreme Court, having decided only four cases since the term began in October, has not exactly been living in the fast lane. But the pace is about to pick up. The coming months will be a testing time for the young Roberts court, including decisions due by early summer on abortion, school integration and environmental policy, with an unusually large emphasis on cases of significance to the business community.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has spoken often of the virtues of a court that speaks modestly and unanimously. Those goals may well prove elusive. The court’s conservative bloc reached...

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, the former small town boy from Indiana who now presides over the highest court in the land, said today in a rare conversation that he doesn't believe justices should make their rulings based on "personal policy preferences," and spoke with enthusiasm about his respect for the separation of powers.

Dozens of Amish neighbors came out Saturday to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was buried in his wife's family plot behind a small Methodist church, a few miles from the one-room schoolhouse he stormed Monday.His wife, Marie, and their three small children looked on as Roberts was buried beside the pink, heart-shaped grave of the infant daughter whose death nine years ago apparently haunted him.About half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish."It's the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness...

My husband and I live in Lancaster County and have of course been following the news of the school house shooting tragedy over the past few days. Friends from around the country have been in contact with us, wanting to know where they can send letters of condolence and contributions to the families of the young victims. I originally had very mixed emotions about contributing to a fund to defray the families’ transportation and medical expenses. The Amish do not believe in insurance of any kind, so surely do not have the means to pay for what will no doubt...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — If Year 1 was the transition for the new Roberts court, Year 2 is likely to be the test. During the first term under the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the justices were able to find common ground with some regularity by agreeing not to decide much. By the time the term ended in late June, the extent to which the members of the newly configured court were prepared to confront either precedent or one another remained unclear. Chances are high that the new term, which begins on Monday, will be different. The...

I've got nothing more to add, but the 'birdie' has not steered me wrong yet. I post what I was told for discussions sake, if the Mods dont want it, they know what to do with it.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three quarters of Americans can correctly identify two of Show White's seven dwarfs while only a quarter can name two Supreme Court Justices, according to a poll on pop culture released on Monday. According to the poll by Zogby International, commissioned by the makers of a new game show on pop culture called "Gold Rush," 57 percent of Americans could identify J.K. Rowling's fictional boy wizard as Harry Potter, while only 50 percent could name the British prime minister, Tony Blair. The pollsters spoke to 1,213 people across the United States. The results had a margin...

Weekend Talk Show Preview - Analysis for August 12th and 13th, 2006On the shows this weekend I'm most interested by Vali Nasr, on CNN, and Ken Mehlman, on Meet The Press.  I think we'll learn more about the events in the Middle East from Nasr and more about the coming campaign from Mehlman than all of the other guests, combined.  Nasr is an expert, from Iran, on the issues of conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.  I actually view this as our best hope of winning the coming world war.  Just as Communists and Nazis joined forces to start World...

I have had the honor of serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee for 43 years, during which I've participated in confirmation hearings for every one of the justices who now sit on the Supreme Court. Over that time, my colleagues and I have asked probing questions and listened attentively to substantive responses. Because we were able to learn a great deal about the nominees from those hearings, the Senate has rarely voted along party lines. I voted, for example, for three of President Ronald Reagan's five Supreme Court nominees... But the careful, bipartisan process of years past -- like so...

WASHINGTON, July 1 — As the dust settled on a consequential Supreme Court term, the first in 11 years with a change in membership and the first in two decades with a new chief justice, one question that lingered was whether it was now the Roberts court, in fact as well as in name. The answer: not yet. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was clearly in charge, presiding over the court with grace, wit and meticulous preparation. But he was not in control. In the court's most significant nonunanimous cases, Chief Justice Roberts was in dissent almost as often...

As the Supreme Court wraps up its session, there has been so far fairly little attention paid to the fact that this is when U.S. Supreme Court retirements are typically announced. All of the last 14 retirements were announced between May 14th and October 1st of their respective years; the last to retire outside of those dates was Charles Whittaker, whose doctor ordered him to retire on account of a worsening disability making it impossible for him to sit at his bench. Of those 14, 9 announced their retirement between June 12 and August 3rd, a space of only seven...

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for government employees to file lawsuits claiming they were retaliated against for going public with allegations of official misconduct. By a 5-4 vote, justices said the nation's 20 million public employees do not have carte blanche free speech rights to disclose government's inner-workings. New Justice Samuel Alito cast the tie-breaking vote. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court's majority, said the First Amendment does not protect "every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job." The decision came after the case was argued...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court reaffirmed Monday that police can enter homes in emergencies without knocking or announcing their presence. Justices said four Brigham City, Utah, police officers were justified in going inside a home in 2000 after peeking through a window and seeing a fight between a teenager and adults. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the unanimous court, said that officers had a reasonable basis for going inside to stop violence. "The role of a peace officer includes preventing violence and restoring order, not simply rendering first aid to casualties; an officer is not like a boxing (or...

WASHINGTON, May 21 (AP) — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said Sunday that he was seeking greater consensus on the Supreme Court, adding that more consensus would be likely if controversial issues could be decided on the "narrowest possible grounds." In a 15-minute address to Georgetown University law graduates, Chief Justice Roberts, 51, sketched a vision for leading a court sharply divided on issues like abortion, the death penalty and gay rights. "If it is not necessary to decide more to a case, then in my view it is necessary not to decide more to a case," Chief Justice...

By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun jstevenson@heraldsun.com May 11, 2006 : 12:20 am ET DURHAM -- Tissue found under the fingernail of an exotic dancer who claimed she was raped at a Duke University lacrosse party may match a player who was there, several well-placed sources said Wednesday. Analyzing the tissue, scientists concluded it came from the same genetic pool and was "consistent" with the bodily makeup of one of 46 lacrosse players who gave DNA samples for testing, the sources said. At the same time, scientists ruled out a possible match with any of the other 45 students, according...

Valerie Plame should be the next Director of Central Intelligence, not Gen. Mike Hayden. Now that the CIA's Praetorian Guard has -- with the connivance of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte -- rid itself of Porter Goss, the CIA is confidently preparing to march back into the intelligence dark ages that preceded 9/11. Gen. Hayden -- former head of the National Intelligence Agency and most famous for his strong defense of the NSA terrorist surveillance program -- is slated to be nominated for the DCI post today. Hayden, now Negroponte's deputy and choice for DCI, will face tough questioning in...

After the high-profile confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito, judicial nominations went into limbo. Today, we'll see the opening gambits on when and whether that will end.The reason the confirmation process came to a standstill is simple: Senate Democrats don't want additional conservatives on the bench and hope to stall votes long enough to keep them off until Democrats can reach the Holy Grail of a Senate majority. That could be a very long time coming, though Democrats always are hopeful that their day is at hand.It's less clear why Republicans let the nominations wallow in...

 The stars must have been aligned that January morning in 1955 when John G. Roberts Jr. was born in Buffalo, N.Y., because almost everything thereafter led him straight to the Supreme Court of the U.S. He graduated from Harvard College, then excelled at Harvard Law School as well as in his work at the U.S. Attorney General's office. It was there that our paths first crossed, for he helped prepare briefing papers for my confirmation hearings to the Supreme Court in 1981. He was later a successful litigator and partner at the Washington firm of Hogan & Hartson. He argued...

A decent respect for the Constitution should cause the Supreme Court to reconsider some past decisionsAT THE OUTSET OF Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter asked a series of questions about the rather arcane subject of stare decisis, which is the judicial practice of following prior decisions. Eventually the questions took an odd turn, with Specter asking Alito whether he agreed that the right to abortion had special immunity from reconsideration, that is, whether it is "super-precedent." Alito parried this by declining to "get into categorizing precedents as super-precedents or super-duper precedents." That sort of terminology, Alito...

Chief Justice John Roberts declined to participate in the U.S. Supreme Court hearing that yesterday took up the appeal of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who served as Osama Bin Laden's driver for five years. Roberts was forced to step aside because he had rendered an opinion on Hamdan's claims while sitting on a lower court. Roberts' recusal was regrettable because his legal thinking was spot-on in upholding President Bush's power to try Hamdan, now held at Guantanamo Bay, before a military tribunal. Roberts concluded that Congress had authorized the President to convene such tribunals and that Hamdan can be so tried...

With the confirmation of Justice Alito, South Dakota has now passed an anti-abortion bill, and Mississippi is following suit. If you want to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, whether for constitutional reasons (which I share) or for religious or moral reasons, this action by the state of South Dakota is a big mistake. In the first place, the addition of Alito, by itself, did not change the liberal vs. conservative balance on the Supreme Court.

Speech The Reagan Lecture by Chief Justice John Roberts Reagan Presidential Foundation Simi Valley, California (United States) ID: 191523 - 03/08/2006 - 0:41 - $29.95 Roberts, John G. Jr. Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. gave the Reagan Lecture at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library about his time in the Reagan White House and lessons learned from the former president. Following his remarks, Chief Justice Roberts took questions from members of the audience. Chief Justice Roberts served as a special assistant to the attorney general of the United States from 1981 to 1982, as...

WASHINGTON, March 22 — A Supreme Court decision on Wednesday in an uncelebrated criminal case did more than resolve a dispute over whether the police can search a home without a warrant when one occupant gives consent but another objects. Skip to next paragraph Pool Photo by Ken Heinen Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., right, wrote the dissent. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not vote because he did not hear the privacy case. Text: Opinion (Georgia v. Randolph) Forum: Issues Before the Supreme Court More than any other case so far, the decision, which answered that question in...

By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday urged lawmakers to begin wrapping up the second phase of its investigation into U.S. intelligence on prewar Iraq, despite fresh demands from Democrats for further scrutiny. Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican, laid out a schedule for completing four of the investigation's five segments by the end of April and pledged to release much of the findings to the public. The largest segment of the Phase 2 investigation, which has increasingly become a lightning rod for partisan squabbling, promises to examine whether Bush administration officials...

HUNDREDS of law professors at the nation's finest law schools, representing the all-but-unanimous views of the legal academy, filed a series of briefs last year on one side of a Supreme Court case. On Web sites and in lecture halls, the professors spoke out about the case, which they called a crucial test for gay rights and free speech. Marshalling their collective intellectual firepower and moral outrage, the professors, from Harvard, Yale and elsewhere, made it sound obvious: Universities should be allowed, they said, to take government money but oppose the military's policies on homosexuality by restricting military recruiting on...

JOHN ROBERTS HAS SAT IN the center seat of the Supreme Court a mere five months. Conventional wisdom holds that it takes four or five years for a new justice to hit his stride. Even so, Roberts's work stands out in a Washington whose daily manufacture, it seems, is another fight between an irresponsible Congress and a president with cratering job-approval numbers. If you want to see excellence in government, consider the brief tenure of our new chief justice.Under Roberts the Court has decided 39 cases. Roberts himself has written three opinions. Each was unanimous, the most recent being last...

SIMI VALLEY -- In his first major speech since being sworn in last year, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is scheduled to deliver a tribute Wednesday to Ronald Reagan at the hilltop library dedicated to the former president. Roberts, 51, who as a young lawyer served in the Reagan White House and Justice Department, was invited to speak about how lessons learned from the former president apply today, said Melissa Giller, a spokeswoman for the Reagan Presidential Library. A court spokeswoman did not comment on what issues Roberts would address. A sold-out audience of 870 people was expected....