SCOTUS IONUS ROBERTUS

[erikred]

If you wanted to take the heat off of Rove long enough for people to forget that you said that anyone involved in leaking the name of a CIA operative to the press would be fired, surely you could not have chosen a more controversial method than to nominate to the Supreme Court a practicing Catholic and arch-conservative with outspoken views against the right to abortion and the rights of private citizens to sue the government to prevent the wholesale destruction of mountain-tops in the pursuit of coal.

Short of nuking Iran, of course.

Comments

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

I don't think that one opinion written on behalf of a superior constitutes an outspoken view against the right to abortion. I think this nomination is a tricky one as Schumer noted, because this fellow hasn't written a helluva whole lot on his person views; instead, he has been doing client advocacy. Give it a few days for the political machine to run him through the shredder and then I think we'll have more informative data.

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

According to The Independent Judiciary (left-leaning, I admit), the brief Roberts and others wrote actually argued that Roe v Wade was wrongly decided. That argument was not a necessary point in the case they were hearing, it was an unnecessary opinion they inserted into the brief. That sounds like someone who is "outspoken" against abortion.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

I sure hope that a comment that I write in one of the books for my boss (that reflects the opinions of my boss) doesn't qualify me as outspoken on the merits of python over perl even though his advocacy of python over perl is barely relevant to the topic of the book.

And I sure hope that my multi-clause sentences on LJ are never held up as representative of my tech writing. ;)

[erikred.livejournal.com]

If you're ever nominated to a programming judgement board or an LJ grammar standardization board, you know I'll print this out and haunt you with it.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

PYTHON SUX!!! PERL PROGRAMMERS ARE HAWT!!!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You might be right.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

I think not. There are those individuals who, once free from the onerous shackles of the fear of being removed from office (or employment), find leave to follow their inner, reasonable voices; these rare people bring intellectual honesty to the seething emotional debates that grip the legislators and the lobbiests, and the rulings they make are just and fair, and we erect statues to celebrate their wisdom.

Very rarely, though. A law clerk for Rehnquist; a Reagan appointee; a political insider who know how to act to win support for his boss; this man does not inspire in me great confidence that he will shine with wisdom and fairness if appointed. This man makes me doubt. This man makes me believe that he has been selected to draw attention away from the Administration's current embarassment, Karl Rove.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

I was referring to the lack of papertrail making it difficult to say he's things like an outspoken opponent or proponent of thisandsuch (for the moment) as opposed to his merits.

This man makes me believe that he has been selected to draw attention away from the Administration's current embarassment, Karl Rove.

I have a very hard time with this assertion because I don't think it makes sense. Really, what is the name of the person Drinky McDumbass could submit and not be accused of attempting to divert attention? Supreme Court nominations are always a huge deal -- one out of five gets rejected and even Washington experienced the humiliation of defeat on this front. There is no person, rightie or leftie or in-betweenie-weenie, that he could nominate that would not cause headlines to talk about the nominee and the nomination process. Nor could he wait to put forward the nomination for the purposes of letting politics and the media finish playing with Rove -- that is an irresponsible reason.

I don't this assertion working because there is no way for the nomination process to be uncontroversial and to wait for a quiet newsday only for the purpose of a quiet newsday is to pay too much attention to public relations.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

You can paint me with my tinfoil hat on if you want to, but I stand by my assertion. Sure, he's going to get controversy no matter whom he nominates, but this guy is like not even trying hard. This guy is gunpowder in an attractive-looking barrel, and he's been thrust into a room full of guys just itching to practice their flaming knife throwing.

And that's O'Doul'sie McDumbass to you.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the abortion stuff doesn't bother me half as much as the environmental stuff.

[tagryn]

Would a non-practicing Catholic be better, then?

I thought we put the days of automatically disqualifying Catholics behind us when JFK was elected. Its not like we're talking a guy who's an active member of Opus Dei - at least, I don't think he is.

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Pax, Tom, hear me out: I think that the choice of a practicing Catholic (or even a non-practicing Catholic), while fine by me, will engender some controversy among those traditionally in the President's camp. I further think that controversy is what the President wants right now. Whether or not controversy over his religion would translate into utter non-support is something that I, like you, hope is well and truly behind us; appoint or deny a nominee on the basis of ability to judge fairly, wisely, and without poltical bias, I say.

[tagryn]

To be sure, there's a segment of Christianity who don't consider Catholics to be Christian, and their prejudice may preclude them from supporting any "follower of Popery." However, I think he'll take more heat from folks who automatically see Catholics as unsuitable because of their own abortion stances. Unfortunately, I've heard enough with my own ears from otherwise intelligent folks who should know better to know that anti-Catholic prejudice is alive and at least somewhat well, even in the age we live in.

If you were just copying and pasting from the Wikipedia entry on the "practicing Catholic" part, then my bad. My problem is more with the Wiki entry re: relevance of Catholicism in that case. By the time the hearings are done, he'll likely have had his views dissected up the wazoo enough so that there'll be little need to use his religion to guess at where he stands on abortion for folks for whom abortion is a make-or-break issue.