I don’t think Roberts’ integrity is at stake here. A) We don’t know how much he knows about the natural-born citizen issue and B) we have rule of law that he still has to follow. He can’t arbitrarily decide not to follow established law based on his personal feeling about Obama’s eligibility. There’s still a process that must be followed, even though it’s not clear what this process actually is. As for Orly, I just don’t trust her integrity. She’s done too many things that have sabotaged her own efforts.
When Roberts publicly stated that he trusts the justices to know when to recuse themselves - not long after Sotomayor and Kagan refused to recuse themselves from the Hollister conference where their own positions were at stake - I knew that Roberts’ integrity is severely compromised.
The only situation I can think of that would be a greater conflict of interest than that is if a judge was accused of murder and refused to recuse herself from the decision of whether the case should go to trial. If a chief justice publicly affirmed his trust for a judge who did that, everybody would know something was very badly wrong.
And that statement coming out within the context of the Obamacare case suggested to me that Roberts isn’t just compromised on Obama’s eligibility either, but on whatever Obama’s handlers want SCOTUS to rule on.
I think Orly’s intentions are good but she’s spread herself out too thin and has botched things up as a result. She’s been fighting so hard for so long. That wears a person down. After a while I think maybe a person succombs to the seductive belief that the end justifies the means so that compromises the integrity.
I have been operating under the assumption that Roberts simply doesn't understand the issue very well. Who does that hasn't researched it?