Group's TV ad uses storm's aftermath to target Roberts

The televised images of poverty-stricken evacuees from Hurricane Katrina are part of a provocative, last-minute effort by a liberal interest group to divert federal Judge John Roberts' path to confirmation as chief justice.

MoveOn.org Political Action plans to unveil a TV ad on Monday that questions whether Roberts is sensitive enough to civil rights concerns to lead the Supreme Court. The ad suggests that the plight of the mostly African-American evacuees in New Orleans showed that poverty remains a serious problem among minorities, said Ben Brandzel, the group's advocacy director. In a mix of judicial and racial politics, the ad then suggests that minorities could suffer if the Senate confirms Roberts.

"The connection is obvious," Brandzel said. "The images after Hurricane Katrina show we still live in a society where significant racial inequities exist. We believe John Roberts' record on civil rights ... is clearly not the direction our country needs to head now."

Conservative groups such as the Committee for Justice accused their opposition of playing politics with the disaster on the Gulf Coast and saying that the conservative Roberts has favored several legal positions that would benefit minorities and the poor.

"It is sickening that some in Washington would politicize a national tragedy," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice.

The MoveOn ad is to begin airing on the day that Roberts' confirmation hearings begin in the Senate. Roberts, a former government lawyer who argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court while in private practice, has been under scrutiny since he was nominated to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in July. After the death of conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist last weekend, Bush tapped Roberts for chief justice.

Roberts has appeared to be headed for a fairly easy confirmation. But in recent days, liberal groups such as MoveOn and People for the American Way, along with Senate Democrats such as Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, have focused on memos Roberts wrote as a lawyer for the Reagan and first Bush administrations.

In the memos, Roberts advocated scaling back affirmative action and argued against a federal program the favored minorities who sought broadcast licenses. Roberts' precise views today are unclear, however, because his role then was to reflect the policies of conservative administrations.

Also Wednesday, Kennedy and the seven other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct the Roberts hearings, renewed their call for the White House to release more documents from the nominee's government work. The White House, citing attorney-client privilege, did not release papers from Roberts' tenure as a deputy solicitor general during the first Bush administration, from 1989 to 1993.

Meanwhile, interest groups are preparing for a renewed battle over O'Connor's seat. Bush said Tuesday that he is "wide open" to candidates. He could wait until the Senate votes on Roberts later this month before nominating someone to replace O'Connor on the nine-member court.

Her seat is key to the court's direction because she is a moderate conservative who has voted with the court's four-member liberal wing on several issues. She has supported affirmative action in college admissions and is among six justices who have backed abortion rights.

Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, said his group and other liberal organizations would press Bush to choose a replacement for O'Connor who "won't push the court dramatically to the right."

Roberts Too Successful For Post

Richard Cohen at the Washington Post writes a column that should embarrass him to have under his byline at some later date. He tries in a weak way to argue against the confirmation of Roberts by pointing out his many successes -- and then wishes that Bush had nominated someone with a demonstrated track record of incompetence instead. It takes failure, in Cohen's estimation, to really know the people:

I sometimes think the best thing that ever happened to me was, at the time, the worst: I flunked out of college. I did so for the usual reasons -- painfully bored with school and distracted by life itself -- and so I went to work for an insurance company while I plowed ahead at night school. From there I went into the Army, emerging with a storehouse of anecdotes. In retrospect, I learned more by failing than I ever would have by succeeding. I wish that John Roberts had a touch of my incompetence.
Instead, the nominee for chief justice of the United States punched every career ticket right on schedule. He was raised in affluence, educated in private schools, dispatched to Harvard and then to Harvard Law School. He clerked for a U.S. appellate judge (the storied Henry J. Friendly) and later for William H. Rehnquist, then an associate justice. Roberts worked in the Justice Department and then in the White House until moving on to Hogan & Hartson, one of Washington's most prestigious law firms; then he was principal deputy solicitor general, before moving to the bench, where he has served for only two years. His record is appallingly free of failure.

Which would present a more qualified candidate for the highest position in the judiciary -- a college dropout or someone who graduated from both Harvard and Harvard Law School with flying colors? As a college dropout myself, with much the same experience as Cohen (except for the military service), I can say unequivocally that I prefer someone with a track record of success. Unlike Cohen, the lesson I learned by dropping out was that it was a stupid thing to do, and I don't think that lesson broadened my perspective on humanity. As for cute anecdotes about military service I can say nothing, but if Cohen wanted to sit down with Roberts for a friendly conversation, I'm sure Roberts has his share of those as well, especially from his days in the Reagan administration.

Cohen tosses in, almost off-handedly, that Roberts lacks political experience, having spent his life arguing law and -- I'm not kidding -- having holidays off. Cohen wants someone, he says, who "worked the beach on Labor Day." Five years ago, the Left screamed about the Court mixing politics into its positions in Bush v. Gore. Now suddenly, having a politician sit on the court is not only okay with Cohen but downright desirable. If it turns out that Roberts had worked the beach on Labor Day stumping on behalf of the GOP, would Cohen find Roberts more or less attractive?

Finally, Cohen deduces that Roberts only thinks of the poor in theoretical terms and then tries to tie Roberts to a glib remark by Barbara Bush, of all people, in what has to be the biggest stretch yet of the Roberts debate:

Failure has its uses. Among other things, it can teach us about the human condition. It took a certain kind of cold arrogance to come up with the evacuation plan that New Orleans devised: Get everyone out of town. But what about those who could not get out of town? What about those with no cars or those already living on the streets? In other words, what about the very poor?
The poor? It's as if the idiots up and down the line never heard of them. It's as if no one at the top of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or at the White House knew they existed. Check that. They knew, but it was theoretical: Oh, they'll manage. The thinking was summed up in the sorry remark of Barbara Bush while she was visiting flood evacuees at a Houston relocation site. Since the refugees sent to Houston were poor to start with, she said, "this is working very well for them."

In fact, the person responsible for the response plan for New Orleans and its implementation didn't come from an out-of-touch, wealthy neighborhood but from a poor section of New Orleans. Ray Nagin has built a reputation as a man of the people, one who knows and understands their plight. Yet when he ordered the evacuation of New Orleans, he not only failed to execute his own response plan, but he never bothered to gather any resources at all to get the poor out of town. Neither, for that matter, did Governor Kathleen Blanco, who once taught high school. In fact, she and Nagin still continue to block aid from entering New Orleans for the people who have been left behind. Apparently, modest backgrounds don't guarantee compassion despite what Cohen argues.

It seems that politics and populism doesn't guarantee anyone the compassion that Cohen believes Roberts lacks, with absolutely no evidence to back up his claim. Cohen simply and desperately wants to find something to stop Roberts from his confirmation that he finally wants to claim that Bush's standards are too high. And at the end, Cohen won't even take responsibility for this argument by demanding that Roberts get defeated for his perfection in favor of someone who has a demonstrated record of incompetence. It's hard to discern any point at all in Cohen's rambling incoherence, other than to waste space by damning Roberts with high praise.

At least we know that Cohen would support Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco for the Supreme Court. They've certainly demonstrated the incompetence he so desires.

UPDATE: John Podhoretz feels this is an award-winning column in a great snark-shot at The Corner.

Posted by Captain Ed, http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/;

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