Archive: August 07, 2005 - August 13, 2005
Fallout from NARAL Ad
"Liberals have a harder time getting away with character assassination," says the Rutland (Vt.) Times in an editorial. "That's what NARAL Pro-Choice America learned after it aired an ad suggesting that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was somehow sympathetic to violent anti-abortion extremists." The Ad and its consequences for the Democratic Party are front and center this morning. Dana Milbank in TWP writes: The decision by the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America to pull an incendiary ad attacking President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court has produced a fresh round of recriminations within the Democratic Party and a return to a nagging question: Has the opposition lost its nerve? Andrew Cohen, in a CBS, commentary says: It ought to tell you something about the paucity of the legal and political "ammunition" against Roberts that these non-starters are all that anyone has come up with as the ritualistic deflation...
By Fred Barbash | August 13, 2005; 7:50 AM ET | Comments (1)
The Future of Roe
Trevor Morrison at the Cornell Law School suggests that focusing on whether Roberts might vote to overturn Roe is the "wrong question." The right question, says the onetime clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is whether he would participate in hollowing out Roe and related cases. The first opportunity will be in the upcoming term in the case of Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood. His essay is at Thinkprogress.org, published by the American Progress Action Fund of the Center for American Progress....
By Fred Barbash | August 12, 2005; 4:04 PM ET | Email a Comment
Committee Dems respond to AG on privilege claim
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have written the following letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, expressing concern about a reported delay in releasing documents and rejecting the privilege claim made by the administration. What follows is a press release from the office of ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.) Following is the text of the letter that all eight Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Friday to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asking him to reconsider his denial to the Senate Judiciary Committee of the Democratic senators' narrow request for work papers on 16 cases (out of hundreds of cases) from John Roberts's work in the Office of the Solicitor General during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. The senators cite precedents and several reasons why the records are important to the Senate's consideration of the Roberts nomination. They also suggest a meeting with AG Gonzales to...
By Fred Barbash | August 12, 2005; 3:34 PM ET | Comments (3)
'90s Roberts TV Interviews Aired on 'Newshour'
Public television's "Newshour" last night aired taped interviews Roberts gave during the '90s. In them, he discusses Supreme Court rulings in the Bray case, affirmative action, school prayer and partial-birth abortion. A transcript is available here....
By Fred Barbash | August 12, 2005; 8:25 AM ET | Comments (5)
NARAL Pulls Ad
NARAL has pulled the ad criticized for associating John G. Roberts Jr. with anti-abortion violence. Republicans and Democrats alike had attacked the ad and it had been called "false" by the nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check organization. (See previous posts for background.) NARAL sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who had condemned the ad, saying: This week, we began a television advertising campaign aimed at focusing greater public attention on an important aspect of Mr. Roberts' record. Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public. Therefore, we are changing from our current advertisement to one that examines Mr. Roberts' record on several points, including his advocacy for overturning Roe v. Wade, his statement questioning the right to privacy, and his arguments against using a federal civil rights law to protect women...
By Fred Barbash | August 12, 2005; 2:53 AM ET | Comments (1)
Document Dump: 8/15
On Aug. 15, the Reagan Library will release 5,383 pages of records from the files of John G. Roberts Jr., from 1982-1986, when he was associate counsel to President Reagan. His duties included counseling on the president's constitutional powers and responsibilities, as well as other legal issues affecting the executive branch. See details here. The archives release notes: The requirements for review and release of Presidential records are established by the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and Executive Order 13233. This process is very labor-intensive and requires that National Archives staff conduct a page by page, word for word review of all records in order to protect, as required by law, sensitive information such as national security, personal privacy and law enforcement information. Following the National Archives review, by law, both the representatives of the former and the incumbent Presidents must have an opportunity to review all of the...
By Fred Barbash | August 11, 2005; 7:17 PM ET | Comments (2)
Specter: Pull NARAL Ad
Jesse Holland of the Associated Press reports: An abortion-rights group should withdraw a "blatantly untrue and unfair" ad opposing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, says Sen. Arlen Specter, himself an abortion-rights supporter as well as leader of the panel that will consider the nomination....
By Fred Barbash | August 11, 2005; 5:43 PM ET | Comments (1)
Reuters: Evangelical rally criticized
From Reuters: Liberal religious leaders Thursday criticized Sunday's planned rally to back Supreme Court nominee John Roberts and said its Christian conservative organizers should not drag religion into his confirmation fight. "There is no one religious position on the Roberts nomination, no one religious view on the future of the court or the cases it will hear," Rev. Bill Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, told reporters in a conference call. Sinkford and other religious leaders criticized plans for the evangelical rally, which is designed to build support for Roberts' nomination and highlight what organizers say is the court's judicial activism and hostility to religion....
By Fred Barbash | August 11, 2005; 4:03 PM ET | Comments (7)
Pro-choice protesters
From the Associated Press: A small group of pro-choice advocates protested the selection of John Roberts as the Supreme Court nominee Thursday morning, waving signs on an intersection in the Roberts' hometown during the morning rush hour. Four demonstrators from the Maryland branch of NARAL Pro Choice held up signs that read "Honk 4 Choice" and "Keep Abortion Legal" at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and East-West Highway. Roberts, a federal appeals court judge in Washington, lives in Chevy Chase....
By Fred Barbash | August 11, 2005; 11:41 AM ET | Comments (2)
Sen. Wyden, Terri Schiavo, the White House and the New York Times
See the Lyle Denniston posting on the Supreme Court Nomination Blog for the story of the exchange between the White House and the New York Times regarding an article concerning Sen. Ron Wyden's (D-Ore.) meeting with Judge Roberts and purported discussions in that meeting involving the actions of Congress in the Terri Schiavo case. See this piece on the subject in the Times today. See also several corrections in today's New York Times on other matters involving Roberts's opinions....
By Fred Barbash | August 11, 2005; 8:38 AM ET | Email a Comment
More Documents
Some newly released documents from Judge Roberts's early DOJ years are now available through the National Archives. I have only skimmed a few at this point. At the very least, they offer an interesting albeit limited glimpse at the internal debates and decision making within William French Smith's Justice Department as it tried to implement changes in civil rights law and policy. Many of the document cover the same ground as one released earlier. (One for my personal scrapbook is Roberts's memo to Smith entitled "preparation for interview with Fred Barbash.") The Los Angeles Times notes that great numbers of documents are still unreleased as White House lawyers look over them, exercising authority under a "little-noticed order issued by President Bush almost four years ago" that asserts the right of the incumbent president "to approve the release of papers from the presidential libraries of his father, George H.W. Bush,...
By Fred Barbash | August 11, 2005; 2:45 AM ET | Email a Comment
Ads, especially NARAL's
The Associated Press quotes Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, as saying that advocay groups are "wasting their money on ads." Advocacy groups running ads for and against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts are wasting their money, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat says..... "These outside lobbying group, whether on the right or the left, have become, for me anyway, basically irrelevant," Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) said. "They will probably be offended by that and I am not saying they shouldn't do what they do. I just wish they didn't." Linda Greenhouse, in the New York Times, reports that some who are ordinarily friendly to NARAL's cause are uneasy about the ad the organization is running attempting to associate Roberts with abortion clinic violence. Within the larger liberal coalition of which Naral is a part, there was considerable uneasiness about the advertisement, although...
By Fred Barbash | August 11, 2005; 2:31 AM ET | Email a Comment
Press Release: NARAL responds to criticism
Here is a copy of a lengthy response by NARAL Pro-Choice America to Factcheck.org's criticism of its ad: FACTCHECK.ORG COULD USE A GOOD FACTCHECKER Factcheck.org's analysis of the television advertisement released by NARAL Pro-Choice America on August 8, 2005 is deeply flawed, and its conclusion that the "ad is false" is unsubstantiated and should be retracted. The analysis, written by Matthew Barge, identified as a recent college graduate(1), is riddled with legal and factual errors and in many instances virtually mirrors the White House's talking points. One might disagree with the opinions stated in the ad or even have a different view of how John Roberts' role in a particular case should be characterized; however, every factual statement made in NARAL Pro-Choice America's ad is completely accurate and supported by objective documents. The ad is not "false." John Roberts did indeed file briefs supporting violent fringe groups, with the...
By Fred Barbash | August 10, 2005; 4:07 PM ET | Comments (2)
Press Release: NAM
The National Association of Manufacturers endorses Roberts. See press release here....
By Fred Barbash | August 10, 2005; 1:26 PM ET | Email a Comment
Roberts's Wake Forest Speech
Maura Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times has obtained a video of a speech Judge Roberts gave to Wake Forest University law students in February. Nothing startling, but: When a student asked Roberts to name his favorite justices, Scalia and Thomas were not on the list. Roberts reached back in history, praising Robert Jackson for his writings and Felix Frankfurter and John Marshall Harlan for their "analytical clarity." He said he also admired the "collegiality" of William J. Brennan and the current chief justice, William H. Rehnquist, for whom he once clerked....
By Fred Barbash | August 10, 2005; 7:53 AM ET | Comments (6)
NARAL Ad Controversy
For a straightforward analysis of the Bray case referenced in the NARAL ad, see the Supreme Court Nomination Blog article by Kevin Russell. Also new today: "NARAL Falsely Accuses Supreme Court Nominee Roberts" says the Annenberg Political Fact Check at the University of Pennsylvania. Fact Check says: The ad is false. And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn't deal with bombing at all. Roberts argued that abortion clinics who brought the suit had no right use an 1871 federal anti-discrimination statute against anti-abortion protesters who tried to blockade clinics. Eventually a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed, too. Roberts argued that blockades were already illegal under state law. The images used in the ad are especially misleading. The pictures are of a...
By Fred Barbash | August 10, 2005; 6:58 AM ET | Comments (2)
AP Adwatch: Progress for America
Associated Press adwatch regarding Progress for America's ad responding to NARAL ad: Details of a television ad released Tuesday by the conservative interest group Progress for America supporting President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, John G. Roberts: TITLE: "How Low?'' LENGTH: 30 seconds. AIRING: Cable channels Fox, CNN. Broadcast networks CBS, NBC and ABC in Rhode Island and Maine. SCRIPT: Announcer: "When John Roberts was nominated for the Supreme Court, he was met with wide praise from Democrats and Republicans. But with little to attack in Roberts' superb record, liberals are taking the low road that newspapers are calling a 'witch hunt.' A far left Democratic group is making a desperate and false attack, recklessly distorting Judge Roberts' record. But the Senate unanimously approved Judge Roberts after a thorough review of his record just two years ago. How low can these frustrated liberals sink?''...
By Fred Barbash | August 9, 2005; 6:54 PM ET | Comments (2)
Press Release: Feminist Majority Foundation
The following press release comes from the Feminist Majority Foundation regarding Bray case: Leading women's groups, including the Feminist Majority, held a press conference at the US Capitol today on John Roberts' role in a clinic violence case in the early 1990s, when Roberts was deputy solicitor general under the first Bush Administration....
By Fred Barbash | August 9, 2005; 4:36 PM ET | Comments (5)
Right-wing views, right-wing views, right-wing views.
On the subject of letters-to-the-editor, see moveon.org: The White House is banking on a strategy of hiding Roberts' right-wing views and focusing on his non-confrontational personality. And then see: The Boca-Raton News: The White House is banking on a strategy of hiding Roberts' right-wing views and focusing on his non-confrontational personality. Billy Van Ee, North Palm Beach And the Argus Leader: The White House is banking on a strategy of hiding Roberts' right-wing views and focusing on his non-confrontational personality.....Steven D. Burge, Eagle Butte And the Tri-Valley Herald: The White House is banking on a strategy of hiding Roberts' right-wing views and focusing on his non-confrontational personality......Paula Aiello, San Ramon And the Valencia County News Bulletin: The White House is banking on a strategy of hiding Roberts' right-wing views and focusing on his non-confrontational personality.....Cathy Neumann And here. See also previous post: a keen mind, a keen mind, a keen...
By Fred Barbash | August 9, 2005; 10:13 AM ET | Comments (4)
NARAL Ad: Coverage and Reaction
The NARAL ad (see previous posts) was the subject of considerable coverage this morning. It concerns Roberts's friend-of-the-court advocacy before the Supreme Court on behalf of the USG in a 1991 case involving the rights of protesters to block access to abortion clinics. Here is the amicus brief submitted by the solicitor general in Jayne Bray, et al v. Alexandria Women's Clinic, et al. Here is the court's opinion in the case. Here is some of the coverage this morning: USA Today The first TV ad opposing federal Judge John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court ignited controversy Monday by accusing him of supporting violent anti-abortion "fringe groups" in a case before the court in 1991. Dan Balz in The Washington Post : A prominent abortion rights group launched a television ad yesterday that accuses Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. of siding with violent extremists and a...
By Fred Barbash | August 9, 2005; 1:46 AM ET | Comments (18)
AP Adwatch: NARAL Pro Choice America
From the Associated Press Details of a television ad released Monday by the liberal interest group NARAL Pro-Choice America opposing President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, John G. Roberts: TITLE: "Speaking out." LENGTH: 30 seconds. AIRING: Cable channels Fox, CNN. Broadcast networks CBS, NBC and ABC in Rhode Island and Maine. SCRIPT: Announcer: "Seven years ago, a bomb destroyed a woman's health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama." Emily Lyons: "When a bomb ripped through my clinic I almost lost my life. I will never be the same." Announcer: "Supreme Court nominee John Roberts filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber." Emily Lyons: "I'm determined to stop this violence so I'm speaking out."...
By Fred Barbash | August 8, 2005; 6:41 PM ET | Comments (3)
Reuters: Specter Writes Roberts re: Questions
Susan Cornwell of Reuters reports: U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was warned Monday that he will face questions at his confirmation hearings about whether he agreed with "judicial activism" on the court that sought to scale back Congress' authority. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, who will be running the hearings, wrote to the nominee to say he would be asking about two landmark Supreme Court decisions in the last decade that limited Congress' powers under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. "What is your thinking on the jurisprudence of U.S. v. Lopez and U.S. v. Morrison, which overturned almost 60 years of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause?" Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, asked....
By Fred Barbash | August 8, 2005; 6:30 PM ET | Comments (3)
Reid Seeks Documents
Reuters reports: The Senate's leading Democrat asked the Bush administration Monday to reconsider its refusal to release internal documents written by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts while at the Justice Department. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said senators needed to see the documents from the years Roberts served as deputy solicitor general in order to examine 50-year-old conservative's candidacy effectively....
By Fred Barbash | August 8, 2005; 5:17 PM ET | Email a Comment
Press Release: ACLJ
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) issues press release headlined: "ACLJ: Naral Ad on John Roberts Outrageous - Ad Distorts Truth about Supreme Court Case"...
By Fred Barbash | August 8, 2005; 3:53 PM ET | Email a Comment
Press Release and Ad: NARAL Pro Choice
NARAL Pro-Choice America "Unveils Television Ad Focusing on John Roberts Record of Siding with Violent Anti-Choice Fringe Groups"...
By Fred Barbash | August 8, 2005; 3:45 PM ET | Email a Comment
Press Release: Progress for America
Progress for America (PFA) "today announced the formation of 20 state ad hoc coalitions, led by over 100 state chairs and steering committee members, in support of the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court. PFA also announced the launch of 20 individualized state websites along with a $60,000 promotional banner ad buy on top state political and news websites."...
By Fred Barbash | August 8, 2005; 3:41 PM ET | Email a Comment
Morning Papers
Good Morning. In The Washington Post this morning Mike Allen's story is headlined:Conservatives Remain Steady in Support of Roberts Work on Gay Rights Case Fails to Change Stance on NominationSam Coates in The Post writes of the ABC interview with Roberts when he was in private practice, in a story headlined:Justices Often Are Not Politically Predictable, Nominee Has SaidFor a transcript of that article see post below....
By Fred Barbash | August 8, 2005; 1:03 AM ET | Email a Comment
Roberts Interview from 7/2000 via ABC This Week
Below are some excerpts from George Stephanopoulos's ABC "This Week," featuring a videotape of John Roberts speaking in a July 2000 interview, in which Roberts gives his views on a number of cases from the just-concluded Supreme Court term, on subjects including abortion, school prayer and the direction of the court: STEPHANOPOULOS: And we begin today with that exclusive look at Judge John Roberts. Ever since President Bush picked him for the Supreme Court, we've seen a lot of him -- thanking the president, schmoozing senators, hopping in and out of cars. We've also heard a lot of people talking about Roberts and what kind of Supreme Court justice he'd be -- but barely a word from the judge. That's the tradition. Supreme Court nominees don't speak out until their hearings, and those don't begin until early next month. But this morning, for the first time on national television, we...
By Fred Barbash | August 8, 2005; 12:47 AM ET | Comments (12)
The Morning Papers
Good Morning. The Washington Post's Outlook section has two analyses of the Roberts nomination. One, by Robert F. Bauer, is headlined: A Court Too Supreme For Our Good As Congress prepares to probe Supreme Court nominee John Roberts's leanings on this or that constitutional question, it should not overlook a larger concern about the Supreme Court as an institution. The court is in desperate need of reform; it has become increasingly isolated, imperious and opaque. The other, by David Franklin, says: With his Supreme Court confirmation hearings less than a month away, John G. Roberts Jr. has already amply established his credentials, competence and conservatism. The main question that remains for the Senate, and the country, is simple: How would a Justice Roberts change the landscape of constitutional law? To answer that question, politicians, columnists and bloggers on the right and the left have been struggling to discern where...
By Fred Barbash | August 7, 2005; 8:49 AM ET | Email a Comment
