Judge Roberts Bats A Thousand (I smell a 'RAT, do you?)

It was a battle of the sound bites yesterday at the Senate Supreme Court nomination hearings. The score? Judge John G. Roberts 1, Democrats 0.

Each of the senators got first licks yesterday in a round of ceremonial speeches, but last up was Roberts himself, and he hit the ball out of the park: In his opening statement, Roberts made his role crystal clear by a homey analogy. "Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. ... Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire." Then he promised, "And I will remember that it's my job to calls balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat."

Good thing, too, the senators must be saying, after watching Roberts go to bat for himself.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., meanwhile, set sail in a sea of lofty rhetoric, noting the chief justice's future responsibilities were "awesome" -- not "in the way my teenage daughter would use the word," but in the biblical sense, like "angels trembling in the presence of God."

Like, wow, man. Just when you were wondering how high Schumer might soar (especially while sailing), suddenly the good senator beached himself in a big, wet mess of metaphor: "(The American people) need to know -- above all -- that if you take stewardship of the high court, you will not steer it so far out of the mainstream that it founders in the shallow waters of extremist ideology. As far as your own views go, however, we have only scratched the surface. In a sense, we have seen maybe 10 percent of you -- just the visible tip of the iceberg, not the 90 percent that is still submerged. And we all know that it is the ice beneath the surface that can sink the ship."

While Schumer was scratching his surface looking for the rest of Roberts, in order to sink him, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., movingly reminded us that She Is A Woman -- A Woman A Lot Older Than You: "As a college student at Stanford, I watched the passing of the plate to collect money so a young woman could go to Tijuana for a back-alley abortion." (Just watched, senator?) Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., digressed into something about "the price of gasoline and the safety of prescription drugs." (Now there's a guy who knows how to use 15 minutes on national TV.) Republican senators mostly used their time to hand Roberts free passes, as in Do Not Answer Question, Judge, Do Pass Go, Collect Supreme Court Seat.

I noticed only one new development: an attempt by left-leaning senators to borrow the right-wing judicial tyranny rhetoric and apply it to decisions by the Supreme Court striking down laws liberals favored. A successful new "framing"? I doubt it. This rhetoric no longer works for conservatives, because the game of politics has become so visibly nasty, partisan and uncivil that few Americans feel very good about the democratic branches of government.

Senators will no doubt continue to speak of themselves in the third person plural, as the voice of We the People. Meanwhile, public approval of the Senate, as Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), R-S.C., himself pointed out, hovers in the 30s.

Americans want some public spaces that "rise above" partisan politics. They want an institution that they can be proud of, and if Congress won't or can't comply, the Supreme Court will do.

Prediction: This is bad news in the long run for America, and for conservatives who have been on the receiving end of the Supreme Court's gradual expansion of its own institutional power and authority. The good news for conservatives is that this same trend will gently buoy Judge Roberts above the iceberg of Chuck Schumer's animosity and onto the placid sea of a seat on the Supreme Court.

-----"The Democrats are so deluded by their own convoluted logic that they think the "right" to abortion stems from the right to privacy. John Roberts does not."

I have to kind of agree on this one point. He danced very effectively around this right to privacy question, and absolutely didn't refer to Blackmum's statements regarding privacy in RvW. But given how cagey he was, that doesn't mean anything really. But he sure was clever and funny. The democrats were laughing ... alot. When Thomas was nominated, no one was laughing. -----

One thing I don't get...

This "Right to privacy" is not outlined ANYWHERE in the constitution. It is clear that search and siezure is allowed, if done within certain constraints.

If WE THE PEOPLE decide that we want a broader right to privacy, what the hell happened to the old fashioned way of simply creating a constitutional amendment. In other words, follow the existing constitutional process.

For the SC to "decide that one exists", is not constitutional, pure and simple.

Ted Baxter: for the young ones out there, that comes from the Mary Tyler Moore show, about a reporterette in a big city news room ... a comedy, and Ted was an overacting fool...

And yep, he is kind of like that...

Btw, whenever I read about a Hollywood man who was Married to one woman all the while and kept hold of a family ...

well:

PLYMOUTH-The nation knew him as Ted Baxter, the bumbling newscaster on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, but Terryville will always remember him as Teddy Konopka, the bright, young Polish boy who worked his way to Hollywood and made it big.

Ted Knight, Terryville's favorite son, died of cancer Tuesday at his Pacific Palisades home, his wife and three children at his side. He was 62.

He was born Dec. 7, 1923, on Allen Street in Terryville as Tadeus Wladyslaw Konopka. Town residents and family said this morning that Knight never forgot his Polish heritage or his roots.

Most fondly remember the day when in 1976, when he returned here and was the Grand Marshal for the town's bicentennial parade. During the festivities over 500 Terryville residents celebrated his success at a testimonial dinner that was sold out three months in advance.

"Everyone knew Ted, of course, as the showman," the actor's cousin, Matilda Levandoski, of Plymouth said this morning. "But he was a family person too. He loved his family very, very much and he was always proud of being from Terryville."

Knight was hospitalized last year for removal of a cancerous growth from his urinary tract. Levandoski said he had been ill with cancer for some time. He returned to the hospital earlier this month for treatments, she said.

Family members had planned to visit Knight in September, Levandoski said, estimating that Knight had 80100 relatives in the PlymouthBristolWaterbury area.

"He was proud to be from this town. It didn't matter to him that he was from a small town. Anybody could talk to him," Mayor Donna Warkoski said this morning. "He was so proud of his heritage. "

Warkoski said flags at town offices would fly at half mast until Friday when a private memorial service will be held in the Los Angeles area.

Knight was raised at a small house at 18 Allen St. His father was a Polish immigrant and was a bartender in town for many years. His mother was a housewife.

He graduated from Terryville High School in 1943. Henry Kornacki, a lifelong friend of Knight's, who was the toastmaster at the testimonial dinner in 1976, said he best remembers Knight "as an incredibly funloving person."

Kornacki, who attended grade school to high school with Knight, said he knew when they were in high school that his friend would have a future in show business.

"He was always pulling jokes and mimicking people. He was a great imitator," he said. "He was always a very bright person. The town will miss him dearly. "

The parade and testimonial dinner, he said, "were shining moments in Terryville history."

From a local paper obit in 1986

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