| Thursday, September 15, 2005 |
| Roberts for the Court |
Let's be frank: the closest John G. Roberts probably has ever gotten to a person without means is sending the maid out to deliver special pruning requests to the gardener. And when Sen. Chuck Schumer pointed out the pros and cons of Roberts' nomination as Chief Justice, with the cons being the Bush administration's refusal to provide certain documents from Roberts' tenure as deputy solicitor general during the Reagan administration (something Schumer properly said is obviously beyond Roberts' control), his reticence in answering specific questions posed by the Democrats on the committee, and his seeming lack of overt compassion for those less fortunate and who thus require the special protection of the law, Roberts didn't even pretend to answer number three. At least he isn't phony.
Roberts did make one point that's sure to aggravate the right: He said plainly that he is no ideologue, and that an ideologue would not be the kind of person we want on the nation's highest court. And the "pros" of his nomination: his clear intelligence (Schumer said he just might be the most brilliant mind to come before the committee in a long, long time -- a clear dis to the most recent nominees, including the qualification- and behavior-challenged Clarence Thomas), his expansive knowledge of, and respect for, the law, and his moderate-seeming temperament, to my ears seem significant enough to make his nomination all-but a sure thing.
He may not be the kind of guy who'd put a dollar in your tin cup if you were on the street, but I just can't see anything obvious about the guy that would merit turning him down. Roberts clearly has the knowledge and the temperament to be on the court. He's conservative for sure, but he's no raging Freeper. (And he's a Harvard man and not a Yale man, so I have a special bias there...) If in some alternate reality I was a member of the Senate, I'd vote for him and sleep like a baby that night.
Prediction: Roberts will pass the committee and then he'll sail through the Senate with around 72 votes, including Hillary's. (Schumer and Biden will probably vote no, particularly since Biden is running for president and could use the lefty street cred.) Either way, his nomination is probably bad news for Michael Newdow and for federal gay marriage proponents, but I don't think women need to start preparing their passports for an imminent evacuation of the United States any time soon ...
Tags: john roberts, supreme court |
posted by JReid @ 10:59 AM   |
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