[quote]JeffR wrote:
Hillary in 2004-2008-2012…Forever!!!
JeffR[/quote]
Hillary?
Why do you want Hillary to be President?
I would say she sucks but is obvious she does not and is not even that good.
[quote]Zeppelin795 wrote:
I’m not sure it really makes any difference. He would never be nominated or confirmed if he couldn’t be counted on to cover-up for the crimes of both parties and the corporations who own them.
[/quote]
The most important statement on this entire thread.
[quote]pookie wrote:
JeffR wrote:
That can only improve the outlook for 2006 and hasten the demise of the democrats once and for all.
JeffR
Are you advocating a single party system? No 4 year terms, no elections, just a lifetime president with hereditary succession? (Republican, of course.)[/quote]
Yes he is.
JeffR is our resident shakes.
Bolton will be a recess appointment as this will ensure the Democrats will fillabuster Roberts.
Taking the spot light off of Treason-gate.
Pure genius!
[quote]
JeffR wrote:
That can only improve the outlook for 2006 and hasten the demise of the democrats once and for all.
JeffR
pookie wrote:
Are you advocating a single party system? No 4 year terms, no elections, just a lifetime president with hereditary succession? (Republican, of course.)[/quote]
I don’t know about Jeff, but if we were to be advocating systemic change the one I’d want to see would be term limits for USSC justices – staggered, so that each president would get at least one appointment, and long (probably 15-20 years).
Robert’s confirmation hearings are set to begin September 6. This sets up a vote on Sept. 29 so that, if confirmed, Roberts can be sworn in and be on the bench for opening day in October.
Some very interesting observations – and while keeping in mind that the conclusion of the memo was pre-determined when it was assigned, I do like the reasoning.
http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_07_31-2005_08_06.shtml#1123083597
Orin Kerr, August 3, 2005 at 11:39am
John Roberts Internal Memo on the Role of the Courts and DOJ:
The National Archives has put up a page ( Records Pertaining to John G. Roberts, Jr. | National Archives ) with a bunch of the more interesting internal DOJ memos John Roberts wrote as a young lawyer, and Chris Geidner ( http://www.chrisgeidner.com/blog/archive/003620.html ) has found one memo in particular ( http://www.archives.gov/news/john-roberts/DOC048.PDF ) that paints a fascinating picture of how Roberts views judicial decisionmaking and government institutions (or at least how he did when he was a young lawyer).
The background of the 2/16/82 memo is that Roberts’ boss, Attorney General William French Smith, was scheduled to give a speech to conservative groups. Roberts was tasked with coming up with ideas for how to respond to criticisms from conservatives that the Reagan DOJ was not conservative enough. The National Review and the Heritage Foundation had been criticizing DOJ for not not taking consistently conservative views in cases, and for helping to select Sandra Day O’Connor as a Supreme Court nominee. Roberts wrote a memo on possible responses to this criticism; in the course of the memo, he offers some interesting suggestions about the role of the Supreme Court and government more generally:
[i] A related criticism [conservatives have made about the Reagan DOJ] focuses on the screening and appointment of federal judges, highlighted by the O'Connor debate. The assertion is that appointees are not ideologically committed to the President's policies, again with particular emphasis on the social agenda.
Here again I do not think we should respond with a "yes they are"; rather we should shift the debate and briefly touch on our judicial restraint themes (for which this audience should give us some credit). It really should not matter what the personal ideology of our appointees may be, so long as they recognize that their ideology should have no role in the decisional process ? i.e., so long as they believe in judicial restraint. This theme has to be glossed somewhat, because of the platform, but we can make the point that much criticism of our appointees has been misdirected. Judges do not implement policy in the true conservative view of things, and the hot issues of today will not be those of ten or fifteen years hence, when our judges will be confronted with new social issues. Our appointments process therefore looks beyond a laundry list of personal views to ascertain if the candidate has a proper appreciation of the judicial role.
We have been criticized [by conservative groups] for not following Reagan policy in the Grove City, North Haven, and ERA cases. Perhaps without naming specific cases, we can make the point that we must defend acts of Congress in the courts (ERA) and must enforce the laws as written, not rewriting them to comport with policy desires (Grove City, North Haven). This is the role of the Department in the constitutional system, and [b]our[/b] conservativism believes in that system. Any other approach would be trying to use the courts to set policy, having policy set by the Executive rather than Congress (cf. Bob Jones), or inviting Congress or other intervenors to present the position of the United States in court.[/i]
(emphasis in original)
It’s hard to read too much into this one memo, but to me it’s consistent with the idea that Roberts is less a committed political conservative than a committed judicial conservative of the Harlan/Frankfurter school. If his views today are the same as they were in 1982, Roberts’ conservatism is a conservatism that “believes in the system” of institutions, not one that pushes the law to reach conservative results. That’s the sense I get from the memo, at least.
The Senate has published Roberts’ answers to his questionairre:
Here’s a summary article from the WSJ:
Roberts Presents
Measured Picture
To Senate Panel
By JESS BRAVIN and DAVID ROGERS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 3, 2005; Page A3
WASHINGTON – Supreme Court nominee John Roberts told senators he is an open-minded judge who strives for “modesty and humility” on the bench,
In written comments released yesterday, he offers a more-measured picture of himself than that emerging from Reagan administration documents, which depict a forceful conservative who as a young Justice Department and White House aide helped mold a legal counterrevolution against liberal judicial trends of the 1950s and 1960s.
The comments accompanied answers to a standard questionnaire from the Senate Judiciary Committee as it prepares for Judge Roberts’s confirmation hearings scheduled to begin after Labor Day.
Responding to a question on “judicial activism,” the judge wrote “it is difficult to comment … in the abstract, without reference to the particular facts and applicable law of a specific case.” He went on to say that while judges should recognize their “limited” role of deciding “cases before them according to the rule of law,” with the caveat that "judicial vigilance in upholding constitutional rights was in no sense improper ‘activism.’ "
“A good judge must be a thoughtful skeptic,” he wrote, must consider the views of fellow judges and possess “an ability to recognize that preliminary perceptions may turn out to be wrong, and a willingness to change position in light of later insights.”
At the hearings, Senate Democrats are likely to ask Judge Roberts to square that answer with the views he expressed in his late 20s, when he helped the Reagan Justice Department take a tougher stand. Documents released yesterday by the National Archives show Judge Roberts helping Attorney General William French Smith draft a speech on “the evils of judicial activism,” singling out court decisions that rely on “fundamental rights,” a device favored by the liberal Warren Court.
Citing the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case, in which the high court relied on a constitutional right to privacy in invalidating a state law restricting contraceptive sales, the draft article bemoaned “the broad range of rights which are now alleged to be ‘fundamental’ by litigants, with only the most tenuous connection to the Constitution.”
In the questionnaire, Judge Roberts revealed that he was first interviewed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as a possible court nominee on April 1, as speculation swirled about a possible resignation of the ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist and three months before Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement.
Judge Roberts told the committee that he returned for a group interview May 3, facing Mr. Gonzales along with Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, White House Counsel Harriet Miers and political adviser Karl Rove. Other meetings followed, culminating with an interview with President Bush on July 15.
Judge Roberts wrote that no one in the selection process asked for any express or implicit assurance about his position on any case or issue.
Many of his answers, detailing past cases on which he worked or his duties in government offices, repeat verbatim those he gave in 2003, when he submitted a similar questionnaire to the Judiciary Committee then considering his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. An updated financial disclosure lists his net worth together with his wife, Jane, a corporate lawyer, at $5.28 million. His only major liability is the $790,000 balance on the mortgage for his suburban home in Chevy Chase, Md., valued at about $1.3 million. He lists $1.35 million in cash on hand and in banks.
Judge Roberts’s $1.61 million in listed securities shows a heavy bent for computer and media stocks such as Dell Inc., $264,256; Microsoft Corp., $205,440; and Time Warner Inc., $212,992. His most valuable holding is $291,200 in XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. Mrs. Roberts, whose clients included XM, was among more than 100 insiders afforded the chance to buy company stock at its initial public offering price in 1999, the company said.
Judge Roberts listed $1.7 million invested in about 34 funds, with the single largest being $319,186 in the Fidelity Low Priced Stock Fund, whose stated strategy is to seeks capital appreciation by investing 80% of its money in lower priced stocks, typically less than $35 a share.
–Sarah McBride contributed to this article
Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin@wsj.com and David Rogers at david.rogers@wsj.com
The fact remains that the Roberts appointment and perhaps one more Bush Supreme Court appointment will turn the court to the right!
Goodbye Roe V Wade!
No those liberals aren’t mean spirited. They are really good guys. You know the kind that drag a guys kids into something.
NY TIMES INVESTIGATES ADOPTION RECORDS OF SUPREME COURT NOMINEE’S CHILDREN
Exclusive
The NEW YORK TIMES is looking into the adoption records of the children of Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
The TIMES has investigative reporter Glen Justice hot on the case to investigate the status of adoption records of Judge Roberts? two young children, Josie age 5 and Jack age 4, a top source reveals.
Judge Roberts and his wife Jane adopted the children when they each were infants.
Both children were adopted from Latin America.
A TIMES insider claims the look into the adoption papers are part of the paper’s “standard background check.”
Bill Borders, NYT senior editor, explains: “Our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions, as they did about many other aspects of his background. They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue.”
Roberts? young son Jack delighted millions of Americans during his father?s Supreme Court nomination announcement ceremony when he wouldn?t stop dancing while the President and his father spoke to a national television audience.
Previously the WASHINGTON POST Style section had published a story criticizing the outfits Mrs. Roberts had them wear at the announcement ceremony.
One top Washington official with knowledge of the NEW YORK TIMES action declared: ?Trying to pry into the lives of the Roberts? family like this is despicable. Children?s lives should be off limits. The TIMES is putting politics over fundamental decency.?
One top Republican official when told of the situation was incredulous. ?This can?t possibly be true??
hedo:
Perhaps they are trying to find out how the kids voted for class President?
Seriously, what could they be looking for? An illegal adoption perhaps?
[quote]ZEB wrote:
hedo:
Perhaps they are trying to find out how the kids voted for class President?
Seriously, what could they be looking for? An illegal adoption perhaps?[/quote]
Simply looking for anything to discredit the man. Fairly straightforward politics.
The pokey quebecois wrote:
“Are you advocating a single party system? No 4 year terms, no elections, just a lifetime president with hereditary succession? (Republican, of course.)”
You would fit right in with the democrats here in our country. Think about it: You blame W. for the tsunamis, you don’t like the exercise of American power, you admire the french, on and on and on.
You are also like my democratic friends when you take what I said and “extrapolate” it to fit your preconceived notion of my thinking.
As my friends can attest, I am in favor of a STRONG and VIBRANT two party system. If you read my posts (it would do you good) you would see me routinely praising moderate democrats like Joe Lieberman. I’ve even admitted that I was wrong about him initially.
Where did you get the hereditary title thing?
On second thought, the idea of W. being President for another twenty years doesn’t sound too bad. He is the rock that the democrats are beating themselves to death upon.
BB,
I agree with you about the Supreme Court. I say give them enough time on the court (ala twenty years) to be an independent judiciary without insulating them to the point (ala college professors) that they aren’t accountable to anyone.
JeffR
Let’s get right to one of the democrats’ favorite tag lines: “Bush is dumb.”
Here is Dick Morris:
"With deft Roberts choice, Bush plays judicial jujitsu
Who says President Bush isn?t brilliant? His maneuver in appointing Judge John Roberts has completely throttled the Democrats in the highest-stakes game of his second term.
The key is that Bush has used the Democrats? opposition to his district and circuit-court judicial appointments against them and made it a ratification of the Roberts candidacy. Simply put, by choosing a judge whom the Democrats confirmed unanimously when he was nominated for the D.C. Circuit Court ? and whom they did not filibuster ? Bush has made the Democrats impotent.
The Democrats thought they were preparing for the Supreme Court battle when they hit on their strategy of filibustering Bush?s judicial nominations. They saw these battles as spring training to get them in shape for the real fight that would come when Bush made his Supreme Court nomination.
Instead, their strategy has backfired massively. By lending such a high profile to their opposition to Bush?s lower-court appointments, the Democrats have effectively denied themselves the ability to filibuster anyone of whom they have approved in the past.
When the Democrats singled out certain of Bush?s appointees to the courts for filibusters and strident opposition, they, in effect, gave their seal of approval to those whom they did not filibuster. Their silence is like the classic case in Sherlock Holmes of the dog that didn?t bark.
And when the Democratic Senators agreed to a voice vote on Roberts, in effect confirming him unanimously, their seal of approval was made even more explicit. Now, having voted for Roberts and having not filibustered his nomination, the Democrats cannot come back and suddenly discover reasons to oppose him.
Obviously, if Roberts says the wrong things at his confirmation hearings or abandons the wise strategy laid out by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in refusing to spell out her likely decisions on cases that will come before the court, then all bets are off.
But if Roberts handles himself well and avoids explicitly committing himself on Roe v. Wade and other issues, Bush has succeeded in putting him over and dodging the bullet that seemed to be marked for him when Sandra Day O?Connor resigned.
Has Bush fooled the left or the right? Will Roberts be the reliable pro-life vote that the Christian right hopes, or will he be the judicial conservative, respectful of precedent ? including Roe ? that the left hopes? We won?t know until after he takes his seat and casts his vote.
But Bush has threaded his way through a minefield in selecting the most conservative judge who has already received recent Senate approval ? and garnered a unanimous Democratic vote.
It is very interesting to see how Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) will vote on the Roberts nomination. Should she back him, she will be defying her core constituency ? the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America. For now, her vote for Roberts might win her points in moving to the center.
But if Roberts votes against Roe, Hillary will have a very hard time explaining her support for him, especially if Sens. John Kerry (Mass.), Evan Bayh (Ind.) and Joe Biden (Del.) ? her potential Democratic rivals in 2008 ? vote against his confirmation.
On the other hand, if Hillary joins what is likely to be a small minority of Democrats in opposing Roberts, she is belying her supposed move to the center and showing that, when the chips are down, she will tack to the left. In posing such a dilemma for Mrs. Clinton, Bush has again shown his capacity for deft political maneuver.
Bush can just follow the Roberts playbook as future Supreme Court vacancies come up. Just appoint the most conservative available jurist whom the Democrats did not filibuster and he can escape political damage while appeasing his hard-right followers.
Bush is brilliant. There is no other way to read it."
That last sentence (from a former clinton insider) should really get this thread rolling!!!
I happen to agree with everything he said!!!
JeffR
Jeff:
Dick Morris is not the only person to point out that GW is much smarter than his critics give him credit for.
Bill Clinton also stated before the previous Presidential election that democrats underestimate GW at their own peril!
Personally, I think there is a “street smarts” about the President that is always over looked.
Harvard Business School is about as selective as it gets. They overlook that a lot too.
The smear campaign has begun. The only thing that allows groups like NARAL to get away with this crap is the fact that 99 percent of people aren’t going to be familiar with anything they’re claiming, and won’t check.
http://bench.nationalreview.com/archives/072303.asp
NARAL?s Lies
[Edward Whelan 08/08 12:29 PM]
Even by the standards of the pro-abortion movement, the new television ad (which Kathryn links to here: http://bench.nationalreview.com/archives/072287.asp ) that the group now calling itself NARAL Pro-Choice America has unleashed is particularly mendacious. The ad features a woman injured in the 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic, attempts to link her injury to an amicus brief that Roberts filed in 1991, and says that Americans should oppose a nominee “whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans.” NARAL’s press release disingenuously claims that “we are not suggesting Mr. Roberts condones or supports clinic violence” when that of course is exactly what its ad does.
A few comments: 1. The case in which Roberts submitted an amicus brief on behalf of the United States, Bray v. Alexandria Clinic, presented the question whether the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 provides a federal cause of action against persons obstructing access to abortion clinics. The particular provision at issue had long been construed to require showing of a “class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus.” Relying on precedent and logic, the Supreme Court easily determined that opposition to abortion does not reflect an animus against women as a class, “as is evident from the fact that men and women are on both sides of the issue, just as men and women are on both sides of petitioners? unlawful demonstrations.”
-
Roberts never “excuse[d] violence against other Americans.” There are plenty of laws that criminalize violence outside abortion clinics. Roberts never took any action to undermine any of them. It is NARAL that has the “ideology” that every law should be distorted to advance the cause of abortion.
-
Following the Bray decision, Congress enacted into law in 1994 the so-called FACE Act, which imposes far more comprehensive and severe penalties against those obstructing access to abortion clinics. The fact that this law failed to deter the 1998 bombing that injured the clinic worker featured in NARAL’s ad makes it all the more ludicrous to suggest that Roberts’s proper reading of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 in 1991 is somehow responsible.
[quote]hedo wrote:
Harvard Business School is about as selective as it gets. They overlook that a lot too.[/quote]
They don’t usually overlook it – they just claim, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that H.W. Bush pulled strings to get W in.
Unsurprising – and exactly as predicted. They have no claim on these documents, which are covered by executive privilege, and many of which are likley also covered by attorney-client privilege.
U.S. Senate Democrats Renew
Request for Roberts Documents
Associated Press
August 12, 2005 5:00 p.m.
WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats on Friday renewed their push for documents from John Roberts’ service as deputy solicitor general, saying the material is critical to gauge the Supreme Court nominee’s position on civil rights.
In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked him to reconsider last week’s Justice Department refusal to release material on 16 cases Mr. Roberts handled from 1989 to 1993 under the first President Bush.
The Democrats said the documents should not be protected under attorney-client privilege because they were prepared by the U.S. office of the solicitor general, or OSG, which was “acting for the American people.” They offered to meet with Mr. Gonzales to try to reach an agreement.
“Of the various administration positions he held, his service as the ‘political’ deputy in the OSG may well be the most relevant for evaluating the Supreme Court nomination,” the Judiciary Democrats wrote.
The Justice Department said Friday it had received the Democrats’ request. “As seven former solicitors general have stated previously, the confidentiality that enables the solicitor general’s office to vigorously defend the United States’ interests should not be sacrificed as a part of the confirmation process,” spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said.
The Bush administration said it has worked to give the Senate thousands of documents from Mr. Roberts’s time at the White House counsel’s office under President Reagan and as an assistant to Attorney General William French Smith.
But it has hedged on material from Mr. Roberts’s time in the solicitor general’s office, which supervises and conducts government litigation in the Supreme Court, citing the danger of setting precedent that would inhibit that office’s frank internal discussions of pending cases. The 16 cases cover a wide range of issues, from abortion and affirmative action to school prayer and capital punishment.
Separately, an abortion-rights group is withdrawing a heavily criticized television ad that linked Mr. Roberts to violent antiabortion activists, saying its attempt to illuminate the Supreme Court nominee’s record has been “misconstrued.”
After protests by conservatives, Naral Pro-Choice America said Thursday night it would pull the ad that began running this week. “We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts’s record,” Naral President Nancy Keenan said.
“Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public,” she said in a letter Thursday to Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, who earlier in the day had urged the group to withdraw the ad.
Mr. Specter, himself an abortion-rights supporter as well as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will question Mr. Roberts next month, said the ad was “blatantly untrue and unfair.”
Copyright ? 2005 Associated Press