Roberts

*screams incoherently and starts throwing heavy objects*

Just goes along with the rest of my day today.

Roberts should be opposed all the way.

This has been a hot topic of discussion on a lot of the blogs of late. I've been assembling a list of all the reasons Roberts should NOT be confirmed to the Supreme Court. Let's see...

The Imperial Presidency
In Hamdon v. Rumsfeld, Roberts essentially ruled -- this is a DC Circuit Court of Appeals case he actually DID write an opinion on, so it's straight from the horse's mouth -- that given a state of "war," the Commander in Chief can do whatever the hell he wants, and the Constitution be damned. In other words, those "enemy combatants" down at Gitmo are his do to with as he wills.

This is what Arthur Silver over at The Light of Reason has to say about Judge Roberts' support for the Imperial Presidency. (Note: Silber is a liberterian with a broad background in philosophy, law and politics -- and boy can he write up a storm on a topic like this. He's worth reading at any time, because he makes you THINK, but check this one out at least for starters.). And this one on Why Roberts Will Be Confirmed, and History Will Not Forgive Us.

Roberts is not a Constitutioanal scholar
Eternal Hope, writing over at Booman Tribune, takes Silber's post a step further: Roberts is not a Constitutional scholar: he does not support the balance of powers between the three branches of government.

Anti-Judicial Radical
From the Concord Monitor:

Roberts presented a defense of bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases; he argued for a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the landmark law that bars sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs; and he even counseled his boss on how to tell the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow that the administration was cutting off federal funding for the Atlanta center that bears his name.

A Charter Member of Reagan Vanguard
Court Nominee Was Part of Legal Team Seeking to Shift Course on Civil Rights Laws

From today's Washington Post:
In the early 1980s, a young intellectual lawyer named John G. Roberts Jr. was part of the vanguard of a conservative political revolution in civil rights, advocating new legal theories and helping enforce the Reagan administration's effort to curtail the use of courts to remedy racial and sexual discrimination.

What would YOU ask Judge Roberts?
Senator Mikulski of Maryland and a number of the other female Democrat Senators have set up a website: http://democrats.senate.gov/askroberts/ for whoever wants to post whatever question they think John Roberts ought to be asked during his confirmation hearings. (Okay, Mikulski is MY Senator and I like her...) I did wonder why it was only the women -- are they going to push their opposition to Roberts purely on "women's issues"? That's a dangerous road... it narrows the debate too much, when the danger is so very much broader and affects far more than just women's reproduction rights.

Too much attention on Roe of late -- not that Roe isn't vitally important, but it's one issue out of a long list of civil liberties that are at risk should a corporate, neocon shill like Roberts be appointed to a lifetime positon on the Supreme Court.