Posted on 07/20/2005 7:33:31 AM PDT by Babu
After pretending to consider various women and minorities for the Supreme Court these past few weeks, President Bush decided to disappoint all the groups he had just ginned up and nominate a white male.
So all we know about him for sure is that he can't dance and he probably doesn't know who Jay-Z is. Other than that, he is a blank slate. Tabula rasa. Big zippo. Nada. Oh, yeah...we also know he's argued cases before the supreme court. big deal; so has Larry fFynt's attorney.
But unfortunately, other than that that, we don’t know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever.
Since the announcement, court-watchers have been like the old Kremlinologists from Soviet days looking for clues as to what kind of justice Roberts will be. Will he let us vote?
Does he live in a small, rough-hewn cabin in the woods of New Hampshire and avoid "women folk"?
Does he trust democracy? Or will he make all the important decisions for us and call them “constitutional rights.”
It means absolutely nothing that NARAL and Planned Parenthood attack him: They also attacked Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Hackett Souter.
The only way a supreme court nominee could win the approval of NARAL and Planned Parenthood would be to actually perform an abortion during his confirmation hearing, live, on camera, and preferably a partial birth one.
It means nothing that Roberts wrote briefs arguing for the repeal of Roe v. Wade when he worked for Republican administrations. He was arguing on behalf of his client, the United States of America. Roberts has specifically disassociated himself from those cases, dropping a footnote to a 1994 law review article that said:
“In the interest of full disclosure, the author would like to point out that as Deputy Solicitor General for a portion of the 1992-93 Term, he was involved in many of the cases discussed below. In the interest of even fuller disclosure, he would also like to point out that his views as a commentator on those cases do not necessarily reflect his views as an advocate for his former client, the United States.”
This would have been the legal equivalent, after O.J.'s acquittal, of Johnnie Cochran saying, "hey, I never said the guy was innocent. I was just doing my job."
And it makes no difference that conservatives in the White House are assuring us Roberts can be trusted. We got the exact same assurances from officials working for the last president Bush about David Hackett Souter.
I believe their exact words were, "Read our lips; Souter's a reliable conservative."
From the theater of the absurd category, the Republican National Committee’s “talking points” on Roberts provide this little tidbit:
“In the 1995 case of Barry v. Little, Judge Roberts argued—free of charge—before the D.C. Court of Appeals on behalf of a class of the neediest welfare recipients, challenging a termination of benefits under the District’s Public Assistance Act of 1982.”
I'm glad to hear the man has a steady work record, but how did this make it to the top of his resume?
Bill Clinton goes around bragging that he passed welfare reform, which was, admittedly, the one public policy success of his entire administration (passed by the Republican Congress). But now apparently Republicans want to pretend the Party of welfare queens! Soon the RNC will be boasting that Republicans want to raise your taxes and surrender in the war on terrorism too.
Finally, lets ponder the fact that Roberts has gone through 50 years on this planet without ever saying anything controversial. That’s just unnatural.
By contrast, I held out for three months, tops, before dropping my first rhetorical bombshell, which I think was about Goldwater.
It’s especially unnatural for someone who is smart and there’s no question but that Roberts is smart.
If a smart and accomplished person goes this long without expressing an opinion, they'd better be pursuing the Miss America title.
Apparently, Roberts decided early on that he wanted to be on the Supreme Court and that the way to do that was not to express a personal opinion on anything to anybody ever. It’s as if he is from some space alien sleeper cell. Maybe the space aliens are trying to help us, but I wish we knew that.
If the Senate were in Democrat hands, Roberts would be perfect. But why on earth would Bush waste a nomination on a person who is a complete blank slate when we have a majority in the Senate!
We also have a majority in the House, state legislatures, state governorships, and have won five of the last seven presidential elections — seven of the last ten!
We're the Harlem Globetrotters now - why do we have to play the Washington Generals every week?
Conservatism is sweeping the nation, we have a fully functioning alternative media, we’re ticked off and ready to avenge Robert Bork . . . and Bush nominates a Rorschach blot.
Even as they are losing voters, Democrats don’t hesitate to nominate reliable left-wing lunatics like Ruth Bader Ginsberg to lifetime sinecures on the High Court. And the vast majority of Americans loathe her views.
As I’ve said before, if a majority of Americans agreed with liberals on abortion, gay marriage, pornography, criminals’ rights, and property rights –liberals wouldn’t need the Supreme Court to give them everything they want through invented “constitutional” rights invisible to everyone but People For the American Way. It’s always good to remind voters that Democrats are the party of abortion, sodomy, and atheism and nothing presents an opportunity to do so like a Supreme Court nomination.
During the “filibuster” fracas, one lonely voice in the woods admonished Republicans: “Of your six minutes on TV, use 30 seconds to point out the Democrats are abusing the filibuster and the other 5 1/2 minutes to ask liberals to explain why they think Bush's judicial nominees are ‘extreme.’" Republicans ignored this advice, spent the next several weeks arguing about the history of the filibuster, and lost the fight.
Now we come to find out from last Sunday’s New York Times — the enemy’s own playbook! — that the Democrats actually took polls and determined that they could not defeat Bush’s conservative judicial nominees on ideological grounds. They could win majority support only if they argued turgid procedural points.
That’s why the entire nation had to be bored to death with arguments about the filibuster earlier this year.
The Democrats’ own polls showed voters are no longer fooled by claims that the Democrats are trying to block “judges who would roll back civil rights.” Borking is over.
And Bush responds by nominating a candidate who will allow Democrats to avoid fighting on their weakest ground – substance. He has given us a Supreme Court nomination that will placate no liberals and should please no conservatives.
Maybe Roberts will contravene the sordid history of “stealth nominees” and be the Scalia or Thomas Bush promised us when he was asking for our votes. Or maybe he won’t. The Supreme Court shouldn't be a game of Russian roulette.
Looks like you're the one offended by this column, maybe *your* feelings are hurt? Awww.....
Hope she is wrong. I was one to predict another souter but if Levin backs Roberts that is a darn good thing.
I'm with you...I find a lot of "generalizations" and Bravo Sierra - but not much in way of hard facts on this guy...
What gives...?
I don't think very many 2nd Amendment cases have gotten to the SC, so many judges never get around to addressing the issue or even thinking about it very much.
And I suspect Ann Coulter would have, too.
We've been so Souter-ized, we have trouble believing it when we win one.
She is always out for the publicitiy angle for herself. Like Mark Fuhrman and many others we see constantly making rash statements and often before the facts are known. But there are some on the right much like those on the left...they will NEVER be satisfied, and they take great pleasure in telling us all that.
No, the mischief was mine, not Ann's in the reference to Souter. Ann probably had Souter on the mind when she chose New Hampshire, but was not referring to Souter, but rather to a liberal's straw-man of a conservative. David Souter did live in the woods in North Weare, New Hampshire (a.k.a., the middle of "No Weare." *smirk*). Ann's liberal's straw man was not supposed to be gay, either, just fearsome of wily temptresses, so the fact Souter is married would, even if she had been referring to him, be moot.
Perhaps you should actually read some of his rulings.
I don't get people like you.
You're like the fat kid Dudley Dursly in Harry Potter who gets angry when his parent give him 37 birthday presents instead of 39.
Sheesh! Get over yourself already.
"'I am extremely disappointed that the President did not appoint a centrist woman to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the Supreme Court,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “We are now going back to tokenism for women on the highest court in the land.'”
"Now going back to tokenism"? Um, choosing on the basis of gender WOULD be tokenism. Sheesh. Do these people ever actually listen to themselves?
I understand some reservations about an appointment of someone who isn't widely known for his opinions. However, one would think it made more sense to investigate, talk to people who know him, look at who he worked for (Reagan, for goodness sake).
I just don't understand this column at all. If she needed to meet a deadline on a column, she could have done one about the press's befuddlement yesterday, or Schmer's long list of ridiculous questions, or the fact that the fax machines from Naral, Planned Parenthood, and NOW were churning out reams of paper the minute Roberts' name was known.
It's very puzzling. I honestly sat and read this with my mouth open in astonishment.
At any rate, she is wrong.
Roberts was billed as a strong conservative before he was selected, whereas Souter was an unknown who conservatives passed on becuase his mentor (forget his name - some new England Rhino) insisted he was a conservative. So I'm not sure where Coulter is coming from on this.
I'll find the list that was posted yesterday and repost it. Glad to do it.
Speaking of which, I just attempted to post a timely and, as usual, very well done piece on the Supreme Court's rape of the Constitution by lifelong conservative Joe Sobran.
Much to my surprise and disgust, I find that that is impossible here on FR.
Cyber book burning?
I guess I must swallow some of my earlier today praise for JimRob. I find this astonishingly narrow minded.
PS ... the "offensive" forbidden piece can be found via Drudge.
It could be that Bush went with Roberts to show the Dems for what they are, knowing that they'll filabuster. This will make them look like fools and when the next justice steps down, he'll pull out all the stops and put in Brown or Estrada.
If we don't get a majority of real, originalists on the SCOTUS immediately we end as a nation.
Like you said, we couldn't impeach the traitor, we couldn't prevent the backstabber from chairing the judiciary committee,
we can't/actually won't secure the nation.
If Roberts is a Souter clone the nation is finished.
It won't take but a few more years until there's nothing left.
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