posted on August 19, 2005 02:00:25 PM new
Associated Press - Hatchet Job:
Roberts Hometown was Exclusively White;
Therefore His Values are Skewed?
ALEXANDRIA, Va.
In an amazing leap of illogic and an exercise in poor journalism, AP writers Tom Coyne and Ashley Heher brand Supreme Court nominee John Roberts a possible racist because he grew up in a town that banned the sale of homes to blacks and Jews.
The exclusive lakefront community where Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. grew up during the racially turbulent 1960s and '70s once banned the sale of homes to nonwhites and Jews. Just three miles from the nearly all-white community of Long Beach, two days of looting and vandalism erupted when Roberts was 15, barely intruding on the Mayberry-like community that was largely insulated from the racial strife of that era.. {Associated Press, 8/17/05}
The AP is pulling a sly trick on the American public.
The writers are not bold enough to say Roberts was influenced by his hometown's laws -- but it's certainly implied. They paint such a picture of exclusion and discrimination by his hometown that it marks Roberts as guilty by association, said Media Research Center President Brent Bozell.
Clearly, some media will do anything to help defeat Roberts as they tried with Clarence Thomas and this vicious smear is aimed at a John Roberts who was all of 15 years old.
Is this what the AP is reduced to?
The article goes to great lengths to explain why Roberts hometown was an inappropriate place for a future Supreme Court justice to be raised by quoting a Long Beach resident who said, what they didn't like, they'd restrict.
Guilt by association can be seen by AP's mentioning, the Roberts property did not include a racially restrictive covenant, according to LaPorte County deed records, and the restrictions had begun fading away by then.
What does this have to do with whether John Roberts is suited to serve on the Supreme Court today asked Bozell. The AP's sleazy and insipid bias is obvious.
What will they do next? Report that one of his neighbors used a racial epithet when Roberts was 5 years old??....concluded Bozell.
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It appears SOME people think there should now be a litmus test on whether the candidate who's nominated was born or lived in the right part of town.
how funny....but how sad there are people who actually think like these two AP writers do.
"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 August 19, 2005 02:25:09 PM new
OK - now that we have read the review do we get to see the article and see for ourselves if it is as inflamatory as the review would lead us to believe or if this is just another conservative hatchet job?
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An intelligent deaf-mute is better than an ignorant person who can speak.
posted on August 19, 2005 02:57:46 PM new
Sure Linda- next time someone posts a printed article that rips another printed article without actually providing at least a link to the original article I will ask them for that link. That said, I don't actually remember that happening previously so you might have to excuse me.
That said, I agree that the original article really is a lesson in the irrelevent... it's also poorly organized.
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An intelligent deaf-mute is better than an ignorant person who can speak.
[ edited by fenix03 on Aug 19, 2005 03:00 PM ]
posted on August 19, 2005 02:59:41 PM new
This is the A.P. story. It seems like a fair report by Coyne and Heher on the effort of some to cast aspersions on Roberts because his hometown was racist. The reporters are simply reporting the story...It's not a hatchet job.
Roberts' Ind. Hometown Draws Scrutiny
By TOM COYNE and ASHLEY M. HEHER, Associated Press Writers
LONG BEACH, Ind. -- Like many towns across America, the exclusive lakefront community where Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. grew up during the racially turbulent 1960s and '70s once banned the sale of homes to nonwhites and Jews.
Just three miles from the nearly all-white community of Long Beach, two days of looting and vandalism erupted when Roberts was 15, barely intruding on the Mayberry-like community that was largely insulated from the racial strife of that era.
It was here that the 50-year-old Roberts lived from elementary school until he went away to Harvard in 1973, and that decade -- as well as the rest of his life -- is receiving intense scrutiny as the Senate gears up for its Sept. 6 confirmation hearings on President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee.
Some of the attention focuses on Roberts' civil rights record as Bush replaces retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the key swing voter on affirmative action issues.
Roberts' criticism of racial "quotas" in some documents from his work as a White House lawyer has alarmed civil rights groups and some Democrats, who say he may be a partisan for conservative causes. Other memos from his time in the Reagan Justice Department portray an attorney who urged his bosses to restrict affirmative action and Title IX sex discrimination lawsuits.
It is hard to know how much Roberts' upbringing in this northern Indiana community on the shores of Lake Michigan influenced his views. Some say the fact that there were riots and restrictions on home ownership is not relevant at all.
"I don't think that would have had any bearing on John Roberts' life," said Micky Gallas, a local real estate agent who attended grade school with Roberts, referring to the racial covenants.
Roberts' father, a manager at a Bethlehem Steel mill in nearby Burns Harbor, moved the family to Long Beach in the early 1960s.
The family purchased land a few blocks from the beach in 1966 and built an unassuming tri-level house. The Roberts property did not include a racially restrictive covenant, according to LaPorte County deed records, and the restrictions had begun fading away by then.
Other homes built decades earlier in the town had covenants. Deeds on file from the 1940s in Long Beach ban the sale or lease of houses to "any person who is not a Caucasian gentile."
The covenants date to the community's early days in the 1920s as a summer getaway for Chicagoans.
"Every time you would go to an area you would find there were restrictions against a certain type," said Phyllis Waters, who moved to Long Beach in 1958 and bought Century 21 Long Beach Real Estate in 1967. "What they didn't like, they'd restrict."
Fern Eddy Schultz, the county historian, said the covenants were common for property near Lake Michigan. "They didn't want particular people to have homes around the lake areas," Schultz said.
Covenants have gotten attention in the past. President Bush purchased a house in 1988 in Dallas with a covenant restricting blacks from buying the property. His staff said Bush was unaware of the deed restriction, which was void under Texas law, when he purchased the home.
In Long Beach, nearly all residents were white when Roberts was growing up, a makeup that has changed little in four decades. Today, nearly 98 percent of the town's 1,500 residents are white.
The median income in 1970 topped $18,000, nearly twice that of neighboring communities; today it is more than $71,000, nearly double the state median.
That environment may have sheltered residents from the events of July 1970, when the arrests of three black men over a parking violation outside a bar in Michigan City set off two days of looting, vandalism and fires.
The Associated Press reported in a July 13, 1970, story that a police officer addressed one of those arrested as "boy" and that the man vowed to get some of his friends and "take this town apart."
The mayor declared a state of emergency, and Indiana National Guard troops were called in to restore order.
The News-Dispatch of Michigan City reported more than a dozen people were arrested for violating a curfew imposed to quell the violence. Those detained included several who worked in a job-training program for Bethlehem Steel's Burns Harbor plant, where the younger Roberts worked summers to help pay for Harvard.
David Myers, a University of Notre Dame sociology professor who studies race riots, said the uprising was typical of an industrial area that had seen an influx of blacks from the South.
"There were a lot of labor market tension and lots of unemployment issues that were driving unrest," he said.
Waters said many Long Beach residents were unaware of the disturbances until they picked up the Michigan City newspaper.
"We didn't even know it happened," she said.
That insulation extended to the all-boys Catholic boarding school Roberts attended in nearby LaPorte.
Bob MacLaverty, a longtime friend and Roberts' roommate at La Lumiere School, said students rarely discussed race and the civil rights movement.
The school admitted its first black students in 1970. By Roberts' graduation in 1973, about 7 percent of its roughly 100 students were minorities, he said.
Richard Freer, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta who has studied the Senate confirmation process, says Roberts' life experiences are relevant if they speak to his character and ability to be impartial. But he said there should be limits.
"I think it's legitimate to look at the past if it tells you anything about the person. But so what if there were race riots? Did he cause them? No. He was a 15-year-old kid. We don't shape the events that take place in our hometown."
posted on August 19, 2005 03:15:45 PM new
LOL helen....wonder if old Linda Blair going to come in a make a snide remark to you for posting what COULD be found in the link I provided.
But for some reason do you think posters here don't know HOW to click on my AP link?
you guys are too funny.....
"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 August 19, 2005 05:37:17 PM newSome liberals may prefer to read the article here because they are too lazy to click your link.
"Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers. I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper." --Robert E. Lee
posted on August 19, 2005 05:54:27 PM new
Whether or not the town he grew up in is all-white or rascist should have no bearing on his consideration.
We moved to an all-white town when I was in the fourth grade, extremely rascist, (still is, to some extent) and I'm not a rascist. (You should have seen Jazz's face the first time she heard someone say the "n" word!) When I moved back with the kids 12 years ago, not much had changed.
posted on August 19, 2005 07:06:52 PM new
I think it WAS a 'hatchet job'. Those two AP writers are most likely liberals who oppose his nomination.
The angle they took to discredit him was VERY un-necessary imo.
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But on another AP report....there was GREAT news.
Bar Assn. Approves Roberts for High Court
From Associated Press
August 18, 2005
WASHINGTON
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. earned a "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Assn. on Wednesday, clearing one hurdle in his path to joining the high court.
The rating by unanimous vote of a bar association committee was disclosed as the Senate Judiciary Committee announced plans for the start of confirmation hearings Sept. 6.
Roberts will face about an hour of questioning from each of the 18 senators on the committee.
The committee will hold one hearing that will be closed to the public.
For about 50 years, the bar association has evaluated the credentials of nominees for the federal bench, though the nation's largest lawyers' group has no official standing in the process. Supreme Court nominees get the most scrutiny.
This is the fourth time the association has rated Roberts.
He was designated as well qualified in 2001 when he was nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He earned the same rating in 2003 when he was nominated again for the appeals courts and then confirmed. He was rated as qualified as an appeals court nominee in 1992, but the Senate never took up the nomination.
Roberts, 50, would succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
A 15-member bar association committee handled the work, including a review of opinions and legal briefs. Spokeswoman Nancy Slonim said the vote was unanimous.
The possible ratings are "well qualified," "qualified" and "not qualified."
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"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!!!
