phobes scared by judge?

i'm not too worried about john roberts. he's obviously more knowledgeable than the guy who nominated him and most of the senate too.

let's face it, roberts is the best we're going to get this year or next. dems shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking they'll show strategic strength by voting against him either in committee or on the senate floor. gwb's next nominee(s) will likely perch on the edge of the antediluvian tar pit. those throwback judges-to-be will be used to placate phobes like today's first caller on washington journal, who threatened not to "carry water" for bush anymore if he continues in the direction implied by roberts' nomination. dems should show how reasonable they can be now and save their ammo for the fight to oppose real enemies of fair play.

i was relieved roberts had no problem repudiating his reagan-era memo belittling the right of privacy. a lot of cons must've felt shaken when he stated unequivocally that the constitution protects privacy and the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments deal with various aspects of privacy rights.

those are the key amendments in the area. i'd say the 2nd also is more-or-less a privacy right, and the 9th basically says it's not really up to the government to say we don't have it. in any case, roberts' understanding of the constitution has progressed in the last 20 years.

the basis of roe v wade is the privacy implied by "liberty" in the due process clause of the 5th and 14th amendments, so pro-choicers couldn't hope for a better answer than roberts gave, given that everybody knows he'll never answer a direct question on roe.

he quite rightly defined a judge's job as deciding cases, not making law, and pointed out that interpreting the law is necessary to decide cases.

his baseball example was a little silly tho. umpires make rulings during a game, but they don't get together at the end and pick the winner, so it's as false as most analogies. maybe he should've used gymnastics or figure skating instead. those officials aren't called umpires tho. they're called judges.

roberts subtly reminded some senators that a decision is "judicial activism" only if it goes beyond what is needed to decide a case, not because it's a bad decision or folk disagree with it. he gave the dred scott case as an example: apparently the court went a lot further than what was necessary to keep scott in chains.

on another key issue, roberts said it's generally best to follow precedent, but there can be exceptions—for instance, the passage of time may've made a precedent unworkable, or a precedent may've been eroded by intervening precedents.

i'm as confused as anyone on how and when the commerce clause is relevant in a case. i would've thought women and folk with disabilities were guaranteed equal rights primarily by the equal protection clause. using the commerce clause to violate equal protection sounds scary and weird.

a federal law barring guns in schools was also overturned because it didn't specify guns in interstate commerce. boy is that dumb! every damn gun maker in the country—if not the world—puts its products into interstate commerce. can you imagine narrowing it down to banning from schools only those guns that had crossed state lines? well, that's what the courts said the law must do.

i'm not sure which way roberts would've voted on those cases, but it was interesting to hear them discussed. it's almost comforting to know the law is just as much "a ass" as it was to mr.bumble in oliver twist.

you can't really talk about roberts without mentioning his demeanor. he's just so nice! admittedly that could be a mask. we always need to be alert to the possibility that a likable person—like bush—will turn out to be dangerous. the big difference twixt the judge and the prez is roberts really understands the law. i feel confident that if he were prez, we wouldn't've invaded iraq—but that's a hypothesis contrary to fact, so forget it.

roberts picked robert jackson as his most-admired justice, strongly hinting that he won't be bush's man on the bench. fdr elevated jackson to the court after a short stint as attorney general. the new justice soon showed his independence of the white house.

the question i still think they should ask roberts is whether the advice and consent clause requires the senate to vote on a nominee.

hint: it doesn't.

[note to senator brownback: you're a ass too. "is an unborn child a person or a piece of property?" is a totally false dichotomy. there's at least one more category: parasite. you can relate to that, can't you, senator?]