The Next Roberts Smear
By Captain Ed on Judiciary
Captain's Quarters
The AP has taken over where NARAL left off. In their report on John Roberts' upbringing, Tom Coyne and Ashley Heher do everything except paint a white robe and pointy little hat on his head while describing the neighborhood in which his parents raised him:
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Like many towns across America, the exclusive lakefront community where Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. grew up during the racially turbulent 1960s and '70s once banned the sale of homes to nonwhites and Jews.
Just three miles from the nearly all-white community of Long Beach, two days of looting and vandalism erupted when Roberts was 15, barely intruding on the Mayberry-like community that was largely insulated from the racial strife of that era.
It was here that the 50-year-old Roberts lived from elementary school until he went away to Harvard in 1973, and that decade — as well as the rest of his life — is receiving intense scrutiny as the Senate gears up for its Sept. 6 confirmation hearings on President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee.
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If this last assertion proves true, it demonstrates how vile the Democrats will get in trying to trump up any kind of a smear against the Supreme Court nominee they desperately want to block. Now they want to hold Roberts responsible for a decision made by his parents about where they wanted to raise their children. How, exactly, did Roberts have any control over that decision?
The AP reports that the area had real-estate covenants about the resale of property to non-whites, a dodge used during the civil-rights era to keep minorities out of desirable suburbs. Long Beach, like a number of Lake Michigan towns during that era, had sales deeds that included these clauses, which legislation made illegal. So if the AP features them in a story like this, then Roberts' parents must have had one in their sales contract, right?
Uh ... no:
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The family purchased land a few blocks from the beach in 1966 and built an unassuming tri-level house. The Roberts property did not include a racially restrictive covenant, according to LaPorte County deed records, and the restrictions had begun fading away by then.
Other homes built decades earlier in the town had covenants. Deeds on file from the 1940s in Long Beach ban the sale or lease of houses to "any person who is not a Caucasian gentile."
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So not only did Roberts' house not include a covenant as part of its deed, neither did his neighborhood, and in fact the practice had mostly died out when he lived there. So, excuse me for asking this question, but what the hell is the point of bringing it up? Simply as an excuse to imply that John Roberts is a racist.
Hell, the Democrats elected a Ku Klux Klan recruiter to the Senate, and made him Majority Leader. He's served longer in his Senate seat than Roberts will likely serve on the Supreme Court. Why doesn't the AP cover the voluntary adult service of Robert Byrd instead of making the most ridiculous stretch I've ever seen to paint someone as a bigot?
Here's a more germane story from the AP, one that reports on something that has to do with what kind of jurist John Roberts will be on the court. The AP notes that the man they want to paint as a bigot just got the highest rating from the American Bar Association on a unanimous vote:
Supreme Court nominee John Roberts earned a "well
qualified" rating from the American Bar Association on
Wednesday, clearing one hurdle in his path to joining the
high court.
The rating by unanimous vote of an ABA committee was
disclosed as the Senate Judiciary Committee announced
plans for the start of confirmation hearings on Sept. 6.
Roberts will face almost an hour of questioning from each
of the 18 senators on the committee. ...
This is the fourth time the ABA has rated Roberts. He was
designated as well qualified in 2001 when he was
nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit. He earned the same rating in 2003
when he was nominated again for the appeals courts and
then confirmed. He was rated as qualified as an appeals
court nominee in 1992, but the Senate never took up that
nomination.
Perhaps the AP should stick to reporting news instead of cooking up scurrilous smear jobs as a cover for the Democratic Party. Tom Coyne, Ashley Heher, and their editor owe the AP readers and John Roberts an apology, if not their resignations.
UPDATE: Radioblogger takes a closer look at Coyne and Heher.
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captainsquartersblog.com
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