Mrs. SCOTUS Nominee Works for "Feminists for Life"

Anti-Abortion Advocacy of Wife of Court Nominee Draws Interest

WASHINGTON, July 22 - Judge John G. Roberts has left little hard evidence of his views on abortion in recent years and is widely expected to try to avoid the issue in his coming confirmation hearings.

But there is little mystery about the views of his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, a Roman Catholic lawyer from the Bronx whose pro bono work for Feminists for Life is drawing intense interest in the ideologically charged environment of a Supreme Court confirmation debate.

Some abortion opponents view her activities as a clear signal that the Robertses are committed to their cause; supporters of abortion rights fear the same thing. Others say that drawing a direct line from her activities to how her husband might rule on the Supreme Court - assuming that he not only shares her views, but would also act on them to overturn 32 years of legal precedents - is both politically risky and in bad form.

No less a Democratic stalwart than Senator Edward M. Kennedy said, at a breakfast meeting with reporters on Friday, that Mrs. Roberts's work "ought to be out of bounds."

Ah, my blustering old senator. This is foolish on Uncle Ted's part. Democrats should rule out no line of questioning until they find out where it leads. We can't afford to ignore the evidence that exists, paltry as it is, that points to Roberts' real views on Roe v. Wade.

Do you think they could let a real trial lawyer question Roberts? I could clear my calendar.

Spare the Big Fat Idiot

John Tierney is at it again, constructing the wingnut defense for when Rush Limbaugh goes to court for his drug crimes:

Handcuffs and Stethoscopes

Why are those mean police after poor Rush? After all, he needed the Oxycontin for his back pain/pilonidal cysts/football knee from high school. Hey, he probably needed it just to squeeze himself into the same house with his ego!

Another candidate for frogmarching.

Bush Taps White Man

So it's John Roberts for the SCOTUS job. James Dobson of Focus on the Family is happy, so we know he's baaaaaaaad. (Steve Gilliard calls Dobson "Focus on the Fuhrer", hehehe)

One Partisan Hack for Another tells us that Roberts worked for the RNC on the 2000 Florida recount (makes him a friend of John Bolton), was one of Ken Starr's deputies under HWBush, and was one of Reagan's White House counsels.

The New York Times, Scrutinizing John Roberts, says we don't know enough about the guy & the Senate must question him closely. Hah, good joke, as that's snowball in hell unlikely. Who on the Judiciary Committee will do the questioning? Those jamokes couldn't cross-examine a mynah bird that could only say yes.


And, obviously, the timing of the nomination is meant to take the heat off Traitor Karl Rove. Looks like Karl could be looking at his own Camp Cupcake as it appears he lied to FBI investigators when he was first interviewed:

An Unlikely Story
Karl Rove's alibi would be easier to believe if he hadn't hidden it from FBI investigators in 2003.

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

How many crimes does Traitor Karl have to commit for Commander Codpiece to fire him? Let's see, treason and lying to federal investigators seem serious enough to me.

Rove must go.

Too Hot To Blog

So I'll just offer some interesting links:

Wingnuttia predictions on SCOTUS nominee: The Hedgehog Report Supreme Court Nomination Challenge

The stupidest article ever written on Title IX: Women Athletes Don't Need Big Brother's Help

Chelsea has signed English wunderkind Shaun Wright Phillips for a 21 million euro transfer fee from Manchester City. He'll make his debut on US soil during Chelsea's US tour next week. Hopefully he'll play at Foxboro on Sunday!

The US's best field player, Damarcus Beasley, has begun to get his due: Beasley is a big-time performer: He's not held back by small stature

Iraq is even worse now for women: Iraq’s war on women

John Tierney writes a column in the NYTimes today supporting people in jail for prescription drug abuse: Punishing Pain Obviously, this is the opening salvo in the right wing war to defend Rush Limbaugh.

Stay cool.

Double Super Secret Background

Matt Cooper says "double super secret background" is his own private joking reference to what other journalists would call deep background.

For a real laugh, read Charlie Pierce:

Rove to the Rescue
He's from the government, and he's here to help.

Corporate Media Gets a Clue

Why the Leak Probe Matters

[Bush's]....leadership on Iraq has been a fiasco. He didn't plan for it: the early decisions that allowed the insurgency to get going were breathtakingly incompetent. He didn't pay for it: Bush is the first president in history to cut taxes during a war, this one now costing nearly $1 billion a week. And most important of all, he didn't tell the American people the truth about it: taking a nation to war is the most solemn duty of a president, and he'd better make certain there's no alternative and no doubt about the evidence.

**********

The GOP's spinners are making it seem that because Plame had a desk job in Langley at the time she was outed, she wasn't truly undercover. As Mahle says, that reflects a total ignorance about the way the CIA works. Being outed doesn't just waste millions of taxpayer dollars; it compromises hundreds of other people in the field you may have worked with in the past.

If Bush isn't a hypocrite on national security, he needs, at a minimum, to yank Rove's security clearance. "Whether you do it [discuss the identity of CIA operatives] intentionally or unintentionally, you have not met the requirements of that security clearance," Mahle told me.

The bigger question is what this scandal does to the CIA's ability to develop essential "humint" (human intelligence). Here's where the Iraq war comes in again. The sooner we beef up our intelligence, the sooner we crack the insurgency and get to bring our troops home. What does it say to the people doing the painstaking work of building those spy networks when the identity of one of their own becomes just another weapon in the partisan wars of Washington? For a smart guy, Karl Rove was awfully stupid.