And It’s Only July!

“As the first nominee of the Internet age, [Judge John] Roberts will now be strip-searched by uncountable bloggers and interest groups even before the Senate starts confirmation hearings, probably in September."
   Nancy Gibbs, Time Magazine, July 24 

"He's the most--he is the most prepared person I think I've almost ever seen before the Supreme Court."
   NPR's Nina Totenberg, on Meet the Press, July 24

"None of this means that Roberts is unfit due to his faith."
   Jonathan Turley, Los Angeles Times, July 25.

Depending on whom you read, as Judge John Roberts's nomination to the Supreme Court wends its way through the thicket of Washington DC, he will treated either as prince or a piñata.

That is to say, his intellect, his credentials, and his deportment will be more than enough to overcome the do-or-die resistance of pro-abortion Democrats, loathe to allow any candidate of President Bush's to sit on the High Court. Judge Roberts, in this reading, is such an incredibly competent nominee that the hearings will be more like a coronation than a confrontation.

The other, diametrically opposed view is that with pro-abortion Democrats losing and losing and losing, they aren't about to stand on formality when their last bastion--the Supreme Court--hangs in the balance. They will use their friends in the media and the impressive number of sympathetic blogs to turn Judge Roberts into such a caricature his own mother wouldn't recognize him.

We talked last week about how right out of the box Judge Roberts' wife was improperly pulled into the fray. Jane Sullivan Roberts, a first-rate attorney in her own right, served as the executive vice president of Feminists for Life from 1995 to 1999 and who currently serves pro bono as FFL's legal counsel.

Those who believe Judge Roberts will have an easy time of it point to a couple of very complimentary newspaper articles which treated Mrs. Roberts and FFL kindly. Those who believe Judge Roberts will be required to run the worst kind of gauntlet look at the response of NPR's Nina Totenberg, appearing yesterday on Meet the Press.

Host Tim Russert asked her, "Do you think his wife's views or wife's activities will be involved in any way, shape, or form in the hearings?" She responded (resisting an impulse to smirk, as I saw it), "Not publicly. I think, you know, it's consciously in everybody's mind. But nobody's going to say, 'Well, gee, your wife is a member of a pro-life organization. How can you be different than her when you're on the court?'"

To be sure, Totenberg concluded, "Nobody's going to say that. They may think that. But that's--you know, they need to get re-elected. They're not going to do that to him." But she was either being naive or, more likely, disingenuous.

Pro-abortion groups are already beginning to do the dirty work for pro-abortion Senate Democrats. They've already posted any number of (from their point of view) guilt by association messages on the web and elsewhere.

But anyone who thinks that the Charles Schumers of this world won't find a way to justify asking Judge Roberts about his wife's involvement in a pro-life organization has not listened very carefully to the senior senator from New York.

Likewise, Law Professor Jonathan Turley wrote a piece for today's Los Angeles Times, repeating what he said were comments Judge Roberts supposedly made in an "informal discussion" with one of the pro-abortionists' meanest attack dogs, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). I will not repeat them for obvious reasons.

Note, first, that the "source" of this exchange was "two [unidentified] people who attended the meeting." Now THAT's reliable. Note, second, on the basis of this anonymous source, by the end of the first paragraphTurley is already floating the idea that this "could raise a question of his fitness to serve as the 109th Supreme Court justice."

Dragging in Judge Roberts' wife, trafficking in allegations from anonymous sources. Next thing you know they'll be trying to turn the fact that he is a Catholic against Roberts.

Excuse me, they already have. Turley's intimations about a "question of fitness" relate to Roberts "deep-seated conflict of faith and public duties." It's enough to make us oldster think of the vicious anti-Catholic slanders we heard when John F. Kennedy ran for President.

Ironically, Durbin was on "Meet the Press" yesterday. Tim Russert, who is famous for exposing inconsistency and (far worse) hypocrisy, read Durbin excerpts from what Durbin wrote in 1983.

He reminded Durbin, "You filled out a questionnaire calling for a constitutional limit to ban all abortions. You wrote a constitute saying that "The right to an abortion is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.'" Durbin responded with various iterations of the "I've-grown-since-then" nonsense, but Russert wouldn't let him off the hook.

Russert asked, "If John Roberts said to you that his views on abortion were exactly those that you had in 1983, would you vote for his confirmation?" What viewers then saw was some major league tap dancing around the question.

I'm do my best to keep you up to date on a portion of what's going on. I say portion, because the commentary is beyond any one individual's capacity to read.

But let conclude for today by noting that opponents are already slithering around in the muck of innuendo and the mire of religious bigotry. And we have over a month before the confirmation hearings begin! 

Please send any comments to me, Dave Andrusko, at dandrusko@nrlc.org.