Everyone Likes John Roberts

Republicans and Democrats alike noted Mr. Bush's shrewdness in promoting Mr. Roberts so fast. As the president put it: "For the past two months, members of the United States Senate and the American people have learned about the career and character of Judge Roberts. They like what they see." Journalists have delved deep into his closets without finding anything resembling a skeleton. Liberals find him personally likeable.

This passage from The Economist embodies the conventional wisdom on John Roberts: He's good enough, he's smart enough, and doggone it, people like him.

Though America is infatuated with the affable 50-year-old Court of Appeals judge, we're deciding whether to make a lifelong commitment here. Shouldn't we be in love with him first?

As Chief Justice, Roberts could be handed the keys to the Constitution for the next 30 years -- even longer if scientists figure out how to keep floating heads alive in jars. He may be the swing vote in deciding whether we can refuse end-of-life medical treatment, buy contraception, and bugger each other like minks in the privacy of our homes.

During a conference call I joined with other liberal bloggers last night, Sen. Ted Kennedy made the case for roughing up Roberts during the nomination hearings.

"Our Republican colleagues seem to be working from the same playbook ... he doesn't have to answer any questions," Kennedy said. "We can only wonder why they don't want us to know about him."

Tough questions will be regarded as unfair by conservatives, aside from the small number who join Ann Coulter in believing that Roberts is a stealth nominee as likely to be a Souter as a Scalia.

Though it might make Sen. Coburn cry, Democrats must stand in strong opposition to Roberts until he demonstrates that he deserves the job. There's only one correct answer to the question, "do Americans have a right to privacy?," and it isn't "I won't tell you because I want it to be a surprise."

In 1928, Justice Louis Brandeis was alone on the Supreme Court in believing that the government could not wiretap its citizens without a warrant, writing in dissent:

The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality -- the right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

We live in the future predicted by Brandeis, who recognized that "the progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire tapping." Roberts must demonstrate, without equivocation, that he will affirm the right of Americans to be left the hell alone.

Anyone who would give him the benefit of the doubt -- in deference to President Bush -- should ask themselves whether an administration that believed Mike Brown could lead the country through disaster has any idea what it's getting in John Roberts.

Politics · 2005/09/13 · 17 COMMENTS · Link

Oklahoma Senator Cries Justice

Freshman Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma cried during his opening remarks at the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for John Roberts, which you can see on C-Span (RealPlayer link), right around the time he delivered this passage:

The opportunity to sit on this committee at this time in our nation’s history will be among my most important tasks as an elected official. When I ponder our country and its greatness, its weaknesses, and its potential, my heart aches for less divisiveness, less polarization, less finger pointing, less bitterness and less mindless partisanship, which, at times, sounds almost hateful to the ears of ordinary Americans.

Coburn's an odd bird in the Senate, a practicing family physician and rigid social and fiscal conservative who once used his Judiciary Committee seat to tout breast implants:

If you have them, you're healthier than if you don't. That is what the ultimate science shows. ... In fact, there's no science that shows that silicone breast implants are detrimental and, in fact, they make you healthier.

I don't know what he has to cry about, with two seats on the Supreme Court in the easy reach of the Republican majority in D.C. Unless Roberts forgot to tell anyone he murdered a series of drifters along the Potomac in the '80s, the guy seems like a lock for the chief justiceship.

My fellow Democrats are the ones who should be crying.

2005/09/12 · 10 COMMENTS · Link

C-Span has begun podcasting on a trial basis, offering three weekly programs: The current events interview shows American Perspective and Q&A and the Book TV interview show After Words.

The copyright notice for the podcasts makes note of something that's often misunderstood about C-Span -- the programs are not in the public domain:

Except as specifically permitted by this policy, C-SPAN's RSS feeds and audio files may not be used for any political, commercial or otherwise unauthorized purpose. Any posting, retransmission, sale, public performance or other unauthorized duplication of the audio files is strictly prohibited.

C-Span is produced by a non-profit corporation set up by the cable industry that receives no government funding. All of its content is protected by copyright and the network explicitly forbids redistribution on the Internet.

Politics · Podcasting · Journalism · 2005/09/12 · Comment · Link

Reports of Euthanasia in New Orleans

The international press is reporting today that some doctors in New Orleans overdosed critically ill patients with morphine during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, believing they couldn't make it out alive during a hospital evacuation.

A doctor, whose identity was protected by the paper, explained the decision:

We divided patients into three categories: those who were traumatised but medically fit enough to survive, those who needed urgent care, and the dying. People would find it impossible to understand the situation. I had to make life-or-death decisions in a split second. It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity.

The only source named in the article, William "Forest" McQueen, was mentioned earlier in other British accounts as the husband of a British woman. From the way he's described in various articles, he appears to have been working for power companies clearing downed electric lines north of Lake Pontchartrain.

2005/09/12 · 20 COMMENTS · Link

Ophelia has moved away from Florida and taken all of our storm clouds, leaving behind a picture-perfect Saturday in Jacksonville. I played softball this morning, pulling muscles in my back I didn't even know I had.

The storm's latest projected track appears to foretell a Tuesday landfall in North Carolina as a category 2 hurricane, according to Jeff Masters:

As usual, all this is subject to a high degree of uncertainty. South Carolina is still at high risk, and Georgia still at some risk. Remember that a hurricane is not a point, and the effects of this hurricane will be felt over a wide area.

Today marks the halfway point of the hurricane season, which is expected to bring another three major hurricanes of category 3 strength or higher.

I'm thinking about starting a new ecommerce site selling "The End is Nigh" signs.

Florida · 2005/09/10 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

A columnist for the Orlando Sentinel ponders the political impact of having so many New Orleans-area voters living in other states, perhaps permanently.

Even while carrying the state in 2004, Bush lost Orleans Parish by almost 110,000 votes out of fewer than 200,000 cast. Without Orleans Parish, Landrieu would not be in the Senate, and Blanco's election could have been very, very close.

Hurricane Katrina · Politics · 2005/09/10 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Police Trapped Thousands in New Orleans

As the situation grew steadily worse in New Orleans last week, you might have wondered why people didn't just leave on foot. The Louisiana Superdome is less than two miles from a bridge that leads over the Mississippi River out of the city.

The answer: Any crowd that tried to do so was met by suburban police, some of whom fired guns to disperse the group and seized their water.

Around 500 people stuck in downtown New Orleans after the storm banded together for self-preservation, making sure the oldest and youngest among them were taken care of before looking after their own needs.

Two San Francisco paramedics who were staying in the French Quarter for a convention have written a first-hand account that describes their appalling treatment at the hands of Louisiana police, a story confirmed today by the San Francisco Chronicle, UPI, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

When buses charted by the group to escape New Orleans never showed up, they camped out beside a police command center on Canal Street, believing it was the best place to get aid, protection, and information. They were told they could not stay there and should leave the city on foot over Highway 90, which crosses the Mississippi River from New Orleans to the suburb of Gretna, a city of 17,500 people.

Running out of food and water, they walked to the bridge, growing in number to around 800 people as word spread of a safe way out:

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.

In an interview with UPI, Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed that his department shut down the bridge to pedestrians: "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."

The increasingly desperate group set up camp on the New Orleans side of the bridge, where they were seen by several media outlets, until they were chased off at gunpoint by Gretna police:

Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The paramedics believe that race played a factor in the decision to block evacuees on foot. Gretna's population is 56 percent white and 36 percent black, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

Politics · Hurricane Katrina · 2005/09/09 · 324 COMMENTS · Link

Read More Entries