posted on July 19, 2005 05:13:01 PM new
Never heard of him and am surprised that it was not a woman.
From what I have read is a not a moderate but a right leaning conservative. Should be an interesting nomination process. Can anyone say "nuclear"
posted on July 19, 2005 05:42:49 PM new
Not if the 'group of 14' keep their promise. They said being a conservative would NOT be a 'special' circumstance. Guess we'll see if they hold to that or not.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
Linda, your link gives little information that is not already known about Judge Roberts. It's a short biographical sketch and nothing more. My links cite decisions that Judge Roberts has made which may be an indication of how he will make judicial decisions if the Supreme Court appointment is confirmed. There is no unfair bias on those sites.
posted on July 19, 2005 07:33:35 PM new
Helen, oh, Helen. Have you forgotten that in the eyes of Linda, Bush can do no wrong and neither can anyone he may recommend? He could put a gun to someone's head and pull the trigger and Linda would find justification for it. I doubt she even read your links. She just ass*umed she knew what was in them. She can see no side, but her own. She used to be just a nusiance to me. Now it's so much more. I don't even read what she writes anymore. I just skim over it. Very quickly.
You know that Bush has to appease those right wing religious conservatives who got him into office. You know the ones I'm talking about. The ones who are teetering right off the edge of the invisible line? Tit for tat. This for that. You kiss mine and I'll kiss yours.
posted on July 19, 2005 08:20:12 PM new
I read a Time article in which it showed the liberal members of the SC were moderate liberals while the conservative members were extreme conservatives.
Bush's pick goes along with the rest of the conservative group.
You know that Bush has to appease those right wing religious conservatives who got him into office. You know the ones I'm talking about. The ones who are teetering right off the edge of the invisible line? Tit for tat. This for that. You kiss mine and I'll kiss yours.
Cheryl, you could not be more right. The following was in our Sunday paper:
Religious right wants its due from Bush, GOP
Court opening seen as golden moment
By Mike Dorning
Washington Bureau
Published July 17, 2005
WASHINGTON -- On a January morning in 1980, a day when thousands of abortion opponents protested the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade across from the White House, a group of conservative evangelical leaders sat down for breakfast with the born-again president, Jimmy Carter.
The responses they heard on abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, gay rights and other social issues left them unimpressed. A relationship that already had been strained was irretrievably broken.
By fall, white evangelicals, who four years earlier had supported the election of a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, a man quite open about the central role of faith in his life, instead voted overwhelmingly for his defeat, switching their loyalties to Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party.
Now, with an opening on the Supreme Court that offers President Bush the opportunity to alter the course of American jurisprudence, the alliance between Republicans and religious conservatives has reached a defining moment.
For a quarter-century, a politically awakened movement of conservative evangelicals and moral traditionalists of other faiths has played an increasingly important role in Republican electoral successes. In campaigns, they have knocked on doors, stuffed envelopes and dependably performed the other mundane but essential work behind winning elections. At the polling place, they have provided a crucial bloc of votes.
Bush would not be in the White House today without their support. Half of his votes in the 2004 election came from religious traditionalists, according to a survey by the politically independent Pew Research Center. And heavy support from evangelicals gave him the margin of victory in such battleground states as Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Missouri.
Yet religious conservatives so far have not had much success on the issues that matter most to them. Reagan gave them hope but little in the way of action. President George H.W. Bush never seemed quite comfortable talking about their issues.
Abortion is readily available, with few legal restrictions. The gay rights debate has moved from employment discrimination to marriage equality. Pornography is more accessible than ever. Popular entertainment is full of sex-drenched shows such as ABC's "Desperate Housewives." And the 10 Commandments were just thrown out of courthouses in Kentucky.
It is a source of frustration to some leaders of the movement.
And they have not been quiet in criticizing even a prospective Bush nominee to the Supreme Court whom they deem insufficiently devoted to their cause. A torrent of criticism from social conservatives flowed when news reports suggested Bush might nominate his friend Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, whose views on abortion rights are considered murky.
`Little to show'
"We have very little to show for all these years of electing Republicans. If we don't get a decent nominee, we've got to ask ourselves what we have been doing," said Paul Weyrich, a longtime leader of social conservatives who helped found the Moral Majority and is now chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
"For President Bush, social conservatives and the senators they helped elect, the moment of truth has arrived," said Richard Land, head of the public policy agency for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest non-Catholic denomination.
Religious conservatives heard Bush the candidate regularly tout Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as models for a judicial nominee. They understood that to mean someone who, like Scalia and Thomas, adheres to a narrow "strict constructionist" reading of the Constitution that does not find a basis for rights to abortion, homosexual sex or sale of pornography and allows a greater role for religion in public life.
Anything less, or any effort to split the difference by picking one strong conservative and one more-moderate candidate if conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist should resign this summer, "would be a grave error, a missed opportunity and a betrayal," said Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum.
This president won religious conservatives and especially evangelicals in part through the fluent way he incorporates his personal faith into his public life. Perhaps no modern president has had as profound and overt adult religious experience as Bush, who turned to faith at least in part to overcome a problem with alcohol.
Bush uses the right words
He unabashedly cites as his favorite political philosopher "Christ, because he changed my heart." His speeches make deft use of the language and imagery of the Bible. He draws on phrases that ring clear to the evangelical ear, such as the title of his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep," taken from a Methodist hymn.
And he offers a worldview cast in spiritual themes: good versus evil, lightness against darkness.
All of which is no small thing to believers who yearn for a greater place for religious expression in public life and often feel alienated from contemporary American culture, said Steven Waldman, editor in chief of Beliefnet.com, an independent multifaith Web site
"A lot of what they've gotten are soft benefits. They've gotten a place at the table," Waldman said. "I think it's made them feel less alone. But I'm not sure it has translated into progress on the key social issues they care most about."
To be sure, religious conservatives can count achievements under the Bush administration and from the Republican-controlled Congress. The ban on federal funding for stem cell research. Funding for abstinence-only sex education. Bush's "faith-based initiative," which gives government support to social programs provided by religious institutions. A regulatory stall on permitting over-the-counter sale of morning-after contraceptives.
But their agenda has not moved forward in the same way as the policy goals of other key groups in the Bush coalition. Economic conservatives, for instance, received big tax cuts and an easing of environmental regulations. And neoconservatives achieved one of their most cherished foreign policy goals: a war to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
By contrast, Bush has offered what is seen as only modest backing for the proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual union, a cause that has stirred passionate support among Christian conservatives angered by court decisions on gay marriage. He has given tepid support for private school vouchers.
He has declined to call outright for the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, instead offering code words such as his promises to appoint strict constructionist judges. At the same time, he assures abortion rights supporters that he has no litmus test on the issue for judicial appointees. Even Bush's signature accomplishment for religious conservatives--the federal ban on what critics call partial-birth abortions--could amount to an empty gesture without the right nominee to the court. A similar state ban was overturned on a 5-4 vote, with retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor providing the deciding vote against. A challenge to the federal ban is working its way through the courts.
Social conservatives have had mixed success with the Supreme Court nominations of the Republican presidents they supported. Reagan gave them the strongly conservative Scalia but also O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, both moderates. The first President Bush appointed Thomas but also the solidly liberal David Souter.
The math on Roe vs. Wade
The replacement of O'Connor with a justice who rules against abortion rights would not in itself be sufficient to overturn Roe vs. Wade, for which there appears to be a 6-3 majority among current members of the court.
But such an appointment seems necessary if the decision is to be overturned in the near future. The ailing chief justice votes against abortion rights anyway. Besides O'Connor, the only Roe supporter on the court who seems likely to leave soon is 85-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens. The others who vote to uphold Roe are much younger.
"When you look at the arithmetic and actuarial tables, if Mrs. O'Connor is not replaced by a strong, strict constructionist conservative, then it's hard to see how the court will be turned around in this generation," said the Southern Baptist Convention's Land.
More immediately, Bush's nominee to replace O'Connor could play a pivotal role on church-state issues. O'Connor provided the decisive vote in last month's 5-4 ruling removing the 10 Commandments from Kentucky courthouses as well as an earlier 5-4 ruling banning prayer at public school graduations.
Rev. Tim LaHaye, author of the popular "Left Behind" Christian book series and one of the evangelical leaders who 25 years ago left the meeting with Carter deeply disappointed, said the importance of the choice facing Bush is unmistakable.
"This is a very, very significant moment, and it will become more and more significant," LaHaye said.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
----------------------------------
President George Bush: "Over time the truth will come out."
President George Bush: "Our people are going to find out the truth, and the truth will say that this intelligence was good intelligence. There's no doubt in my mind."
Bush was right. The truth did come out and the facts are he misled Congress and the American people about the reasons we should go to war in Iraq.
posted on July 19, 2005 11:10:28 PM new
And some wonder why I've said cheryl is delusional? 'Cause she makes things up.
She just ass*umed she knew what was in them.
And she KNOWS this, how???
Boy, that 'spiritual' advisor must really have some special talents - wonder if they both use the same broken crystal ball.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
------------------
The ultra-left/progressives/socialists are going to have a hard time explaining why Robert's shouldn't be confirmed......after all....just two years ago....
Unlike some of the judges put forward by Mr. Bush, Judge Roberts was considered so noncontroversial when he was nominated to the federal court in May 2003 that the Senate skipped a recorded vote and approved him by unanimous consent.
[washingtontimes - today]
[ edited by Linda_K on Jul 19, 2005 11:31 PM ]
There was nothing one-sided about Helen's links and the information contained in them. They were facts that are available elsewhere as well. Had you really read the information, you would have seen that and therefore would have had not reason to make the comment you did to her.
posted on July 20, 2005 05:17:03 AM new
Right, Cheryl
The sites contain factual information about Roberts and the most thorough information that I was able to find throughout the net. I asked exactly what data she considers unfair and she had NO response to that question.
As usual, she leaps to conclusions without reading.
posted on July 20, 2005 06:14:33 AM new
Well you're BOTH wrong....once again. Neither of you know what I read or didn't read.
As I said....your crystal balls are broken.
Seems to have upset you both so much that I pointed they were "progressive" sites. Don't want BOTH sides presented it appears.
And if anyone else reads the links helen provided...their 'about us' pages....they too will see these sites are just as I stated....PROGRESSIVE.
From the first one:
The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) is one of the nation’s leading progressive legal organizations.Founded in 2001......
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
[ edited by Linda_K on Jul 20, 2005 06:25 AM ]
She is being replaced by a man who has no sympathy for any of the things she stood for. In particular, he wants to have men dictate to women whether they will carry to term babies that men impregnate them with. If abortion ends up being outlawed altogether, it will mean that rapists can in essence force their victims to bear their babies. In short, the more absolute forms of anti-reproductive rights philosophy is an active ally of these men against women (the daughters, nieces, wives and mothers of men):
"The same juvenilization of women, the rendering of them wards of men, can be seen in Bush's Iraq. Contrary to the propaganda Bush's team is so good at producing, the secular, Arab nationalist Baath Party had passed some of the more progressive laws and regulations about women in the Middle East. Iraqi women in the 1970s had unprecedented opportunities for education and entry into the professions. The Bushies like to pose as liberators of Muslim women, but they have brought to power Muslim fundamentalists who are obsessed with subjugating women."
What's the matter helen, didn't READ your own link?
I know this is a tough time for you ultra-ultra-lefties/progressives.....having to watch a conservative that will uphold what our Constitution actually says....rather than all the far left BS.
Just consider this nomination a practice run.....in the-not-to-distant future we may have another USSC justice seated when Rehnquist retires.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
posted on July 20, 2005 06:48:58 AM new
HOW IRONIC....The Bush administration was elected by the Supreme Court, and now it is now trying to elect a member of its campaign team to the Supreme Court in order to deflect attention away from ethics violations by the head of its campaign team, Karl Rove. This is partisan hackery at its best. The Bush administration has decided to treat the Supreme Court as an ambassadorship.
As usual, your replies are not on topic but rather on your perception of my "mood" and other nebulous concerns such as your fear of progress. So the desperation is clearly in YOUR corner, linda. Soon, you will be using your MOST desperate word..."delusional". LOL....
posted on July 20, 2005 07:17:55 AM new
Since it's obvious that you can't handle the topic linda, I'll leave you with a photo of your president as he nominates an ultra right-wing judge to the Supreme Court. Right now he is trying to talk on Tee Vee.
posted on July 20, 2005 07:19:31 AM new
No helen.....I just see you and other progressives as being VERY desperate. Trying to find anything you can to discredit J. Roberts....who has had the total respect from both sides of the aisle in regards to his character, qualifications, etc.
Even going so far as to speak like you actually supported O'Connor. Making her sound so much better than the angry left EVER did before when discussing her rulings.
And like I said....it's going to be a hard battle for the far left to NOW prove why Roberts received FULL approval from the Senate and a vote of 16-3 from the sentate judiciary committee just two years ago....but NOW...he'd be the WORST choice of all.
Judge Roberts was considered so noncontroversial when he was nominated to the federal court in May 2003 that the Senate skipped a recorded vote and approved him by unanimous consent.
[washingtontimes - today]
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
posted on July 20, 2005 07:54:32 AM new
Again you say, "No helen.....I just see you and other progressives as being VERY desperate
And again I repeat, As usual, your replies are not on topic but rather on your perception of my "mood" and other nebulous concerns such as your FEAR OF PROGRESS. So the desperation is clearly in YOUR corner, linda. Soon, you will be using your MOST desperate word..."delusional".
You have no facts, and nothing to say on topic. You have become monotonous, tedious, irksome, tiresome, humdrum...BORING.
posted on July 20, 2005 08:28:41 AM new
"Judge Roberts is a brilliant lawyer, a brilliant judge," David Boies, the lawyer who represented former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election, said on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" last night. "He is a very careful judge, a thoughtful judge."
Mr. Boies, who predicted that Judge Roberts will net the 60 Senate votes needed to override any filibuster, added: "He is a conservative, but we were not going to get anybody who wasn't a conservative from this president."
Even fair minded dems see the 'writing on the wall' helen.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
posted on July 20, 2005 08:33:37 AM new
Don't worry Linda,
Helen simply doesn't get it. Sort of like those crystal balls, she doesn't get them either.
It is pretty clear this nomination is going to be good for America. Bush did his homework on this one. Consulting with member of congress and the senate from both sides of the aisle. It is pretty clear that this is going to uphold the law instead of making the laws.
.
.
.
Alive in 2005
posted on July 20, 2005 08:43:03 AM new
That's what's got the far left so upset, stonecold, he did pick a Judge with integrity, intelligence and who lawyers from both sides of the aisle hold in VERY high esteem.
Heck...some republicans are suggesting at Robert's confirmation hearing that democratic lawyers who have argued in court against Robert's be called on to speak their opinions on just how they hold him in such high esteem and how they recognize his qualifications for the USSC.
I hope they do just that.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
posted on July 20, 2005 10:21:14 AM new The Stakes in Roberts' Nomination
Bruce Shapiro
Judge John Roberts is a white male who has spent his entire adult life in Washington. Those facts themselves mean nothing, but they do beg a question: What could be so compelling about Judge Roberts as a Supreme Court candidate that the White House was willing to forswear all claims on ethnic diversity and all geographical political advantage, not to mention to the express desire of Laura Bush and countless other women to see a nominee of their gender?
To understand Judge Roberts' unique appeal, forget for a moment "conservative," "textualist," "original intent" and the other shorthand with which get-ahead Republican law school grads watermark their resumes. Look instead at a single case decided by Judge Roberts and two other members of the DC Court of Appeals less than a week ago. As it happened, the day before that ruling was released, President Bush interviewed Judge Roberts at the White House. Judge Roberts, it is widely reported, aced his interview; but his appeals court decision due for publication just 24 hours later--about the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay--was, in effect, the essay question.
Here is the question: Do the obligations of the Geneva Conventions apply to prisoners seized in Afghanistan? And can the president convene military trials, unreviewable by any courts and Congress? The case involves Salim Ahmed Hamdan, allegedly a driver for Osama Bin-Laden, captured on the post-9/11 battlefield and held in Camp Delta. Last year a federal judge shut down Hamdan's trial and up to a dozen other military tribunals. As convened by the Pentagon, those drumhead tribunals, wrote the lower court,amounted to a violation of the Geneva Treaty and an unconstitutional seizure of power by the President.
Whatever Judge Roberts' performance in his interview with the president, whatever his sterling report card as litigator and jurist, we can be sure there was only one acceptable answer to the Guantanamo essay question, and the judge gave it. He voted, along with with his two Appeals Court colleagues, all three of them Reagan or Bush appointees, against Geneva Convention protections for Guantanmo captives, in scathing language ordering the military tribunals forward, empowering the president, and the president alone, to determine those prisoners' fate.
More than anything else, to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court, the Bush White House sought an advocate for ever-expanding executive branch powers. With a raft of antiterrorism and Patriot Act cases in the judicial pipeline, seeking relief from federal laws and international standards on interrogation, torture and the treatment of prisoners, the Bush Administration badly needs a friend like Roberts on the Supreme Court--a friend who shares its view that the president's authority in the War on Terror is above judicial review, and counts more than acts of Congress or international treaties. In other words, if you like the Patriot Act and Guantanamo, you'll love John Roberts.
Roberts started his career as a protege of Justice Rehnquist. The Chief Justice's distinctly activist vision of conservative means expanding the authority of presidents while stripping back federal regulations on business and civil rights shaped Roberts' views. Then Roberts spent years embedded in the executive branch, arguing cases in the Supreme Court on behalf of the Reagan and first Bush Administration's efforts to promote school prayer, restrict abortion and punish flag-desecrators.
Perhaps most telling is Roberts' brief track record on the federal bench on individual rights, a threshold issue not just for the left but conservative libertarians. A few years back, Washington, DC police arrested a child for eating a single french fry on the Metro, during a zero-tolerance crackdown on subway-rule violators. Arrrested her, handcuffed her, fingerprinted her, threw her in the back of a squad car and held that 12-year old in lockup for three hours. The child's mother sensibly pointed out in a lawsuit that an adult committing the same offense would have been issued a ticket, not treated like a dangerous felon. Judge Roberts rejected the mother's plea for sanity: arresting a 12 year old like a suspect on Cops for eating on the subway, Roberts wrote, advanced "the legitimate goal of promoting parental awareness and involvement with children who commit delinquent acts." Even in red states, parents may not spare much enthusiasm for a judge who would lock up their 12 year old for public consumption of McDonald's fries.
The french-fry case suggests that behind Judge Roberts' famous amiablity--which has won him influential friends in both parties--lies a far more doctrinaire personality. Whiffs of that ideological rigidity leak out of his careful opinions and briefs. Hostility to environmental regulation? Yes, at least if his ruling in a California land-development case in which he sought to weaken the endangered species act. Hostility to reproductive rights? As a deputy to solicitor general Ken Starr in the Reagan years he curried favor with the antiabortion right by adding an irrelevant footnote to his briefs in a family-planning-funding case, arguing that Roe v. Wade was "wrongly decided and should be overturned." In his appeals-court confirmation hearings Roberts said this footnote simply reflected administration policy, and he regards Roe as settled law; but his willingness to go beyond the call of duty and politicize his briefs suggests, at a minimum, enthusiasm for revisiting the issue.
President Bush may not have had a "litmus test" on Roe v. Wade, but there was one very clear litmus test: membership in the insular GOP judicial patronage network. Of the names floated as Supreme Court finalists in the past week, most were members of the Federalist Society, a GOP employment agency masquerading as conservative counterweight to the ABA. Judge Roberts--whose Supreme Court aspirations have long been widely known in Washington--is a prince of the rightwing legal family.
The president has also, after a long search, managed to find a Supreme Court candidate who in many ways looks remarkably like himself: born in the Northeast (in Roberts' case Buffalo), heir to old-line power (his father was a US Steel executive), moved to a Red State (Indiana), Ivy League educated (Harvard, Harvard Law). From the day of his graduation from law school, Judge Roberts has held no job except those secured through conservative Republican patronage. With the selection of Judge Roberts, President Bush hopes that the Rehnquist Revolution will continue long after the ailing Chief Justice retires. The stakes in Roberts' nomination could not be higher.
