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.
A grain of salt. All I know is the Coulter article which mentions this. I suspect it is true because nobody has bothered to refute or even address this point besides you!
I don't know what the legal issues were in that case.
Ann, eat a burger would ya. Because where is the beef in your non support for this Justice?
Lots of rants on lots of things but little to justify not supporting this guy.
Of course there will always be a few who wouldn't be pleased unless it was a "real" conservative. You know like Goldwater...oh that's right he did nothing bug critique conservatives in his last 15 yrs....or Reagan....oh yeah that's right he increased budget deficits and increased the Social Security tax and pulled out of Lebanon like Clinton pulled out of Somalia...er maybe Coulter...er that's right she doesn't eat meat and she refuses to get married....conservatives unite.
The reason I say Bush Bush is a "genuine" moderate is becasue the term "moderate" has been misused by the media and the left deliberately to refer to liberals. Since the term "liberal" has been discredited in the public mind, the leftist media refers to all liberals as "moderates" which they most certainly are not.
The reason I refer to Bush as a genuine "moderate" rather than a "conservative" is due to a number of issues:
signing McCain-Feingold, indicating support for an assault rifle ban, referring to Islam as a "peaceful" religion, and his apparent inability to recognize the seriousness of the border issue.
On the other hand, he most certainly not a "liberal" as his position on the Second Amendment generally, the death penalty, his foreign policy, his fiscal policies, and his attempts to rectify the social security system indicate.
The liberal left loves to abuse terms to their on advantage. Just as they refer to real liberals as "moderates", all conservatives as "extreme right wingers", they have recently taken to calling illegal aliens and illegal invaders as "immigrants".
Its all Orwellian double-speak designed to blurr distinctions and advacne their agendas.
But a real moderate like Bush is infinitely preferable to a phoney "moderate - liberal" like McCain, for instance.
Having lawyers and a judge in the family, I assure they are all manipulaters of the law for profit or gain. The judge is the most corrupt of all.
All I'm really interested in is the truth of the matter. It's very odd to see FReepers so suddenly and viciously turn on Ann Coulter this way, as if they have researched it better than she has. She knows her stuff.
Oh I make plenty of mistakes, but most things I am not wrong about, and this is one I am 100% certain of and I am more than willing to back it up with money.
That's a good start and reassuring, but Ann's point that Bush and Republicans don't need to (and shouldn't) pull any punches still stands. She lists all our political successes and demonstrates the clear contrast between what Shmuck Shumer thinks is mainstream and what the average American thinks is mainstream.
He shouldn't have nominated a question mark. There was no need to. He should have nominated a sure thing. Roberts is not a sure thing.
We know that Roberts co-authored a brief 15 years ago in which one paragraph that he very well may not even have written expressed the administration's opposition to Roe v Wade. That's it. We also know that his wife is a pro-life activist, which doesn't necessarily mean a thing. I had a starkly different view of abortion and Roe v Wade than did my ex-wives, fwiw.
We also know he has a solid Republican resume (note I said "Republican"; I didn't say "conservative"), which was precisely what one said about Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor when they were nominated. How quickly we forget that Anthony Kennedy was once regarded as the leader of a conservative bastion in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The GOP has struck out 4-1 when it comes to 'stealth' nominees on the current court. Let's hope for another happy accident!
Wow...what an honor to see you posting!
How are you doing, Jack?
BTW, I had a nice conversation with Adam Hasner at the YR Convention last week?
He filled me in on the PB comings & goings.
The case was Barry v. Little. Here is what I found. There is very little about it on the web:
http://www.welfarelaw.org/contents/webbul/96jan.htm
but she's wrong on this one and hasn't done her homework wow , you said that about ann on freerepublic? oh my. of course, on the other hand, coulter saying something against what bush is for could cause a freeper's skull to implode :)
Thanks for that information.
No, he's doing exactly what Souter did. Souter was picked precisely for the lack of a substantial record and he apparently assured the White House during interviews that he was either a conservative or an originalist. He was neither. While it may just as well be true that Judge Roberts is, in fact, an originalist and just lacks a substantial record, it could just as easily be true that he's not. That's the point. We just don't know. If it turns out that he is, in point of fact, an originalist, no one will be happier than I will. But I think that appointments to the Supreme Court should be based on an actual record of decisions rather than assurances of the President and various "conservative" groups that he's "our kind of guy". We got those assurances with Souter and look what we ended up with. And it's not as if there weren't choices out there who are avowed originalists willing to stand up for their belief in that judicial philosophy. And to those who would say "well, I've got sources in the know who have assured me that Judge Roberts is a conservative or an originalist", just think back over the last 24 hours. How many posts did we read from people in the know assuring us that the nominee was Judge Clement or Judge Alito or Judge McConnell or Judge Edith Jones, and so on and so on and so on. I am all for gambling, but I'd like a little better odds than someone's personal assurances that a certain person believes in a certain way, especially when we're gambling with a lifetime appointment (which in this case could amount to 30 years or more) to a body capable of overturning acts of the Legislature elected by the People. While no pick would be certain, someone with a substantial record to look at and decide wouldn't be better. The point of this article and the point of many posts in the last few weeks arguing against a safe choice boil down to the position that we don't need a stealth candidate. An originalist interpretation of the Constitution is a valid judicial philosophy and can be defended against attack. It is the same with conservative political philosophy. If your position is grounded in logic, you can defend it. You don't need to pretend to be something you're not in the hopes that you'll slip under tha radar so you can work your true agenda later. That is the strategy of liberals, um, progessives, um...whatever they are calling themselves this week so that we don't call them socialists.
I don't believe he was on the appellate panel that actually heard "the Toad case".
Agreed on that. Does he have a son? ;-)
Ain't dat da troof
Try to imagine how much I value your opinion.
And that belief is based on ... just what?
oh the irony, now the libs will have to be siding with Ann
LOL
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