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Politics : The Supreme Court, All Right or All Wrong? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (488)	8/18/2005 12:46:53 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3029

The Ingenuity of the Roberts Nomination Susan Estrich Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005 This is getting silly. Or it would be silly, were it not potentially so absurd. What I am referring to is the daily drip-drop on Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. One day, The New York Times is supposed to be looking at his children's adoption records, and the next day, everyone is attacking the very idea that a newspaper would ever look at such records. Then there is the famous moot court mess, and the question of just how much help John Roberts, the attorney, offered to former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Jean Dubofsky, who was arguing the case on behalf of (yes!) the gay rights side. Was it strictly professional, or could this moot court provide some piece of some answer to something that was not provided by, say, his wife's membership in Feminists for Life, which was last week's Supreme Court Controversy. Story Continues Below In the meantime, the skirmishes continue over what may be the centerpiece of the fight: memos, many of them written by a young, political lawyer, some of them 20 years old. If that's the centerpiece, I can't wait for dessert. Let's face it: You couldn't get a justice from central casting who is more spick-and-span than John Roberts. He looks like the Boy Justice. He talks like the very smart Boy Justice. And he has acted like a Boy Scout, by all reports. No one has found anything. We can say that out loud. The right is more nervous than the left, if truth be told – what they fear is not a confirmation fight, but a moderate. They really needn't worry. While it's true that people change their minds on the high court, they usually aren't people who have spent their lifetimes thinking about law. Participating in a moot court is a fun way for the cleverest lawyers (which Judge Roberts surely is) to show off, as well as help. As a consummate professional, John Roberts may have felt it to be his obligation, particularly given his personal views and his history, to participate vigorously in the moot and thereby underscore that professionalism. So there is a nick-nick, every day, and an almost identical picture of the justice-to-be with another senator, as he continues to make his rounds and build support. But if the conclusion is looking more and more foregone, the process remains important in two respects. First of all, it will be theater – even if the votes are in. And the theater will portray the two parties as they try to place themselves along the values-moral-culture agenda that played so prominently, according to exit polls, in the last election. There will certainly be dancing on abortion, not only as Republicans seek to play to the right, but also as Democrats figure out whether they want to be seen as pushing what will be called a "litmus test" on abortion. There will also be background music from the war on terrorism and the issues of treatment of prisoners. Second, this is just the warm-up. You get the good cop first; this is the nice guy. However you treat the nice guy, whatever standards you apply to the nice guy, whatever breaks you give him are going to be demanded by the you-know-what who is coming next as chief justice. George W. Bush is not going to pick a wimp for chief justice. There won't be any questions at that point about ideology. He won't be as nice. He won't be easy. He won't alarm conservatives by helping out liberals with moot court arguments. A lot of people who will vote for John Roberts won't want to vote for him. But it's tricky, since on paper, they'll look a lot alike – and it's particularly tricky because you have to figure it out well enough to explain why you're voting yes now, and may not later ... COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. newsmax.com

To: sandintoes who wrote (488)	8/20/2005 10:33:37 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3029

This article is hilarious. Every Roberts comment is creatively edited and/or stripped of context to make him look as bad as possible. Newsday is the afternoon NY lefty paper. Conservative Memos (Transparent hit piece accuses Roberts of "making jokes about Hispanics") ________________________________________ Conservative memos BY TOM BRUNE NEWSDAY WASHINGTON BUREAU August 19, 2005 WASHINGTON - In internal White House memos written in the 1980s, John G. Roberts often showed his conservative edge, offering critical assessments of government programs for women and minorities, making jokes about Hispanics and discussing how to "defund the left." Though the Supreme Court nominee offered straight legal advice, and sometimes savvy political suggestions, he also expressed partisan views in the 35,000 pages released yesterday from his years as White House associate counsel from 1982 to 1986. In some memos, for example, he made jokes about Hispanics and women. For a 1983 Reagan interview in Spanish Today, he said, "I think this audience would be pleased that we are trying to grant legal status to their illegal amigos." He also joked in 1982 about Kickapoo Indians, saying "a group of them made Newsweek by choosing to live in squalid conditions beneath the International Bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas, rather than their Mexican homeland." In a 1984 memo advising on how to respond to an eccentric letter to his boss, Fred Fielding, asking if all property had been placed in a public trust, Roberts began, "One Ramon L. Rivera of Los Angeles (where else?) ... " And in a 1985 memo about a corporate scholarship program for women, Roberts said, "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good." Some of his sharpest criticism was aimed at a project headed by Elizabeth Dole, now a Republican senator, that compiled efforts to boost the equality of women in all the states. In 1983 Roberts wrote that many proposals were "highly objectionable," including a Florida plan to charge lower tuition to women because they have less earning potential and "a staggeringly pernicious law codifying the anti-capitalist notion of 'comparable worth.'" Discussing a rule change on government funding of nonprofits, Roberts worried the proposal was too broad: "It is possible to 'defund the left' without alienating TRW and Boeing, but the proposals, if enacted, could do both." The documents also showed the breadth of issues that Roberts addressed, from advising a narrow line to avoid Neutrality Act violations in raising money for the Nicaraguan contras to suggesting a 15-year limit on federal judges' terms, instead of life tenures as they have now. Subscribe to Newsday home delivery