President Bush has moved Judge Brown up already, and no doubt will do so again. She's top notch. Fierce. Smart. Patriotic. Wonderful.
Roberts is even better.
Life is good.
President Bush has moved Judge Brown up already, and no doubt will do so again. She's top notch. Fierce. Smart. Patriotic. Wonderful.
Roberts is even better.
Life is good.
Mr. McCONNELL. Is it not the case, I ask my friend from Utah, that both John Roberts and Miguel Estrada worked in the Solicitor's Office?
Mr. HATCH. They both worked there. They both were excellent appellate lawyers. By the way, Estrada worked not only with the Bush administration but with the Clinton administration. And he had high marks.
Mr. McCONNELL. The same two gentlemen we just discussed, who were nominated on the same day back in May of 2001, by President Bush, for the very same court?
Mr. HATCH. Right.
Mr. McCONNELL. Nominated to the same court, the same experience in the Solicitor's Office. And is it not the case, I say to my friend from Utah, that John Roberts was passed out of committee and subsequently confirmed on a voice vote in the Senate?
Mr. HATCH. A unanimous voice vote on the floor, but only after waiting 12 years through three nominations by two different Presidents.
Mr. McCONNELL. He certainly had to wait a while, did he not?
Mr. HATCH. Right.
Mr. McCONNELL. Is it not the case that you had two nominees nominated on the same day, to the same court, having had the same experience in the Solicitor's Office, and one nominee was rejected because internal papers in the Solicitor's Office were requested and not turned over, and no such request for the same kind of office papers were made of now Judge Roberts?
Mr. HATCH. John Roberts, who was one of the finest appellate lawyers in the country, as was Miguel Estrada, was treated completely differently once the Judiciary Committee considered him. And I had to force them to consider him. Yet he passed this body by unanimous consent.
Mr. McCONNELL. So the request was made for certain papers of one nominee and the precise same papers of the other nominee were not requested?
Mr. HATCH. That is exactly right. They treated Miguel Estrada differently from John Roberts.
Mr. McCONNELL. Let me ask my friend from Utah, is there any conceivable basis for such disparate treatment for the same two people, nominated for the very same court on the very same day, going through the very same Judiciary Committee? Can the Senator from Utah think of any rational reason for this kind of disparate treatment?
Mr. HATCH. Not a legitimate reason. The only reason was they believed him to be pro-life. I don't know whether he is to this day because we do not ask those questions.
Mr. McCONNELL. But the stated reason, I would say to my friend from Utah, you just confirmed a moment ago. The stated reason for not confirming Miguel Estrada was that he would not turn over these papers or the administration would not turn over these papers.
Mr. HATCH. The phony reason.
Mr. McCONNELL. That was the stated reason.
Mr. HATCH. The phony reason they hid behind.
But let me make this point. Miguel Estrada, as great an attorney as he is, having argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, having the highest recommendation of the American Bar Association, their gold standard, they did not want him to come through this process because they knew, or at least they perceived, that he was on the fast track to become the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court and they just cannot tolerate having a conservative Hispanic on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, let alone on the Supreme Court.
Mr. McCONNELL. So I say to my friend from Utah, what we have is a situation where a white male nominee, to the very same court, with the very same experience, was treated one way and a Hispanic-American nominee, nominated to the very same court, on the very same day, was treated differently?
Mr. HATCH. That is absolutely right. But even Roberts had to go through a lot of pain to get there--12 years waiting, nominated three times by two different Presidents.
We put him out of the committee after a 12-hour hearing. You hardly have that much for Supreme Court nominees. There were two others on that list. They complained because there were three on one day's hearing. They ignored the fact that TED KENNEDY, when he was chairman, had seven circuit nominees one day, and another four. We had at least 10 other times when we had three.
Then once we put him out of the committee, I had to bring him back in the committee so they could have another crack at him. They could not touch him. He was that good. So he had to go through an inordinate process to get there. But they knew they did not have anything on him.
They know they didn't have anything on Miguel Estrada.
Mr. McCONNELL. It sounds to this Senator, I wonder if the chairman concurs, that there was a sort of rule created and applied to Miguel Estrada----
Mr. HATCH. It was a double standard.
Mr. McCONNELL. That was not applied to John Roberts, two nominees considered for the same court at the same time.
Mr. HATCH. Absolutely right. Roberts was treated like all other nominees during the Reagan years, Bush 1 years, and the Clinton years. He was not asked to give his opinions on future issues that might come before the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia.
Because Miguel Estrada answered the same way basically as all the other people who had passed in prior years, they held that against him. The big phony issue was knowing that the Solicitor General's Office did not give the most privileged, private documents in that department without making that department unworkable.
Mr. McCONNELL. Which is why, I say to my friend, they didn't ask for those papers on John Roberts.
Mr. HATCH. That is right. They did treat Roberts differently, no question about it. They gave him a rough time, too. Miguel Estrada is in a league of his own in the way he was mistreated, but Roberts was mistreated, too. Roberts sits on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after having been unanimously approved here.
Looks like they will revert and now ask for his private papers from his days as a solicitor as they did to Estrada. Ain't gonna work this time folks.
Follow me. Let's say with this confirmation, Roe v. Wade comes before the SCOTUS before '08, and it is stricken. Abortion then goes back to the several States.
Now let's say that somehow, Condi does indeed win the GOP nomination for President for 2008. What would be the gripe against her then?
