Transient Scribe

SCOTUS nominee... John Roberts

President Bush faked out most last night with his selection of Judge John Roberts.   Speculation focused on various candidates leading up to last nights announcement.   Many believed Judge Edith Clements was to be the pick, only to learn one hour prior to the Presidents press conference that Roberts was the one.

Roberts appears to be more in line with Judge Rehnquist concerning judicial temperament and philosophy according to those in the DC legal community.    Roberts resume and background is surpassed by no one, according to watchers on the left and right. 

It is assumed at this point, this nomination will move along quickly and Roberts will be on the bench in October. 

Please don't think for a minute - Senators Schumer, Kennedy, Durbin etc.,., will not attempt to derail or dirty up this process to make political hay.   That will happen... but to what ends?   

A good number of Democrats will vote for Roberts because he has a stellar background, record and resume.   He already achieved "unanimous consent" for his present position to the bench via the Senate and passed 5 previous FBI background checks.   He deserves a fair hearing and an up or down vote pronto.

Here are a few links worth reading about Roberts and the buzz surrounding his nomination.

Hugh Hewitt with Glenn Reynolds

NRO

Weekly Standard

Advice(!) from Ted Kennedy

What comes to mind when someone offers "expert" opinion on topics they have absolutely no expertise on?  A classic line from Jim Carrey's "The Grinch" movie pops into my head.  When the Grinch exclaims "the unmitigated gall!"

That was my reaction to the Wash Post running an Op-Ed on civility regarding Judicial Nominations to the Supreme Court from Ted Kennedy. 

Andrew McCarthy of NRO summarizes this joke of a column and senator here.    (For a taste read below..)

But if anyone really wants to know why the MSM is fading fast, consider one of the most recent classic examples: The decision by the Washington Post to run an op-ed by Ted Kennedy, of all people, about how we need to avoid the rank partisanship of a "divisive battle" over a new Supreme Court justice to replace the departing Sandra Day O'Connor. About how President Bush needs to be more like — are you sitting down for this? — President Reagan in wisely choosing a nominee to the high court.

We would need to dig up Yasser Arafat for an op-ed on fixing the "peace process" to concoct something this rich.

No one on Planet Earth is more singularly responsible for the poisonous state of the confirmations process than the senior senator from Massachusetts. Here is what Kennedy had to say in 1987 when the president he now so admires, Reagan, nominated to a seat on the Supreme Court Robert Bork, an accomplished legal scholar who was then a distinguished sitting judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit:"

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim or [sic] government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."