Talking Under Pressure, part 2
Wow. John Roberts totally cleaned Senator Kennedy’s clock this morning. Says Will Malven from Men’s News Daily:
On one side we have the soon to be new Chief Justice Roberts sitting with no notes or props and on the other side we have eighteen Senators the various staff members, and all of their accumulated paper work, notes, letters and the like. The results, no contest. For two days now Judge Roberts has taken the Senate Committee to law school.
Listening to excerpts of Roberts over the past four days has made my jaw drop on numerous occasions. Consider Kennedy’s pathetic excuse for a question, and Robert’s answer:
KENNEDY: You mentioned in your memoranda that we should — you’re familiar, I think, with these words. They’ve been written up in the journals and you can probably recognize them. “We should ignore the assertion that the EEOC is unAmerican, the truth of the matter notwithstanding.” Is there anything — is there some reason that you would make a comment like that..
ROBERTS: Well, Senator, you do have to read the memo, I think, in its entirety to put it in context. That was not my language. That was the language — the unAmerican reference was the language that was employed by an individual who had a case before the EEOC. He actually won his case before the EEOC but he didn’t like the difficulty and the time involved.
He wrote to the president. He said two things: one, that his treatment at the hands of the EEOC was unAmerican; and, two, that the president had promised in the campaign to abolish the EEOC, and he wanted to hold the president to that promise. It was my responsibility to figure out how to respond to this complaint that had been received. And how we responded was by protecting the EEOC from interference by the president in any political way, by protecting the EEOC from this sort of complaint.
. . .
And the point of the letter — when you read the whole memorandum, you see two points. The first is that I was unable to determine, in the short time I had to respond, whether or not the president had made such a pledge to abolish the EEOC. I simply didn’t know. And I said that in the paragraph, if you read it. And that’s what the truth of the matter notwithstanding is referring to: the question of whether or not the president had promised to abolish the EEOC.I say right in the memo that we cannot determine that. And whether his treatment was unAmerican or not is beside the point; we don’t interfere with the activities of the EEOC. That was the conclusion and that’s what we did in that case.
I couldn’t have come up with a better answer had I had months to research and prepare! Totally astounding. Later, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked a question which amounted to “Will you do anything to extend freedoms and correct injustices?” The slam-dunk answer from Roberts:
I had someone ask me in this process — I don’t remember who it was, but somebody asked me, you know, Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?
And you obviously want to give an immediate answer, but, as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy’s going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy’s going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution. That’s the oath.
The oath that a judge takes is not that, “I’ll look out for particular interests, I’ll be on the side of particular interests.” The oath is to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States. And that’s what I would do.
Be still my beating heart! The Supreme Court will be in good hands when Roberts in confirmed.
