Posted on 07/27/2005 8:02:43 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
WASHINGTON, July 27 - The early 1980's were a heady time for conservatives in Washington.
Ronald Reagan was president, and after years on the outside, some of the strongest voices in the conservative movement - men like Edwin Meese III, James G. Watt, William Bradford Reynolds and Theodore B. Olson - were in high positions in the government and were determined to reverse what they believed to be years of liberal policies in areas like civil rights, environmental protection, criminal law and immigration.
John G. Roberts, a young lawyer in the Justice Department in 1981 and 1982 and on the White House counsel's staff from 1982 to 1986, held positions too junior for him to set policy in those days.
But his internal memorandums, some of which have become public in recent days, reveal a philosophy every bit as conservative as that of the policy makers on the front lines of the Reagan revolution and give more definition to his image than was apparent in the first days after President Bush picked him last week to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Fred's main complaint was that Roberts was not a 'movement conservative". Unlikely to even consider overturning precedent, though he never thought him comparable to Souter.
Fred was starting to glow tonight when he spoke of Roberts and these revealing documents. IMO, these documents were more to satisfy some on the right than for the Left.
"Immigration Mr. Roberts took strong issue with a Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas law that had allowed school districts to deny enrollment to children who were in the country illegally. The court had overreached its authority, he wrote, and the Justice Department had made a mistake by not entering the case on the state's side."
This was a key USSC decision that has "helped" create the immigration crisis we have today, since it opened up the floodgates to requiring all sorts of Government services to illegal immigrants.
It's good that Roberts saw this as a wrong decision. It was.
John Roberts is sounding more and more like a great pick.
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