Wednesday, July 27, 2005
If Bush's Supreme Court Nominee Is So Exemplary, Why the Cover-Up?
- from an article by Melanie Hunter - CNSNews.com Senior Editor
The White House refused to turn over documents related to cases that nominee John Roberts argued on behalf of the Bush administration in its first term. White House press secretary Scott McClellan cited client-attorney privilege. However, Ted Kennedy dismissed McClellan's comments saying, "There is no privilege, there is no rule, and there is no logic that would bar us from getting these documents." Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) wondered if this refusal was "...intended to unilaterally pre-empt a discussion about documents the Senate may need and is entitled to".
However, the White House did agree to release around 75,000 pages of documents concerning Roberts' work in the Reagan administration. But, even they betray Roberts' extreme right wing tendencies that Bush wants hidden from the Senate and the American people.
These records from the National archives depict Roberts, then a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, as a young man in his mid-twenties engaged in the conservative restructuring of government that the newly elected Ronald Reagan had promised.
Much of Roberts' time at the Justice Department was taken up by the debate over GOP-sponsored bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases. He wrote repeatedly in opposition to the view, advanced by then-Assistant Attorney General Theodore B. Olson, that the bills were unconstitutional.
Roberts' reported stances on specific cases were telling. He argued for a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the law barring sex discrimination in college sports. He recommend not intervening on behalf of female prison inmates in a sex discrimination case involving job training. He argued for restrictions on the rights of prisoners to litigate their grievances. He called for limits on a lower court's order requiring a sign-language interpreter for a hearing-impaired public school student. And, he supported a wider latitude for prosecutors and police to question suspects without their attorneys present.
Roberts' records from the Reagan years expose him as being routinely opposed to citizen rights and supportive of overbearing government and corporate power. Furthermore, they do suggest that his documents from Bush W's first term denied to the Senate must be even more damming.
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- from an article by Melanie Hunter - CNSNews.com Senior Editor
The White House refused to turn over documents related to cases that nominee John Roberts argued on behalf of the Bush administration in its first term. White House press secretary Scott McClellan cited client-attorney privilege. However, Ted Kennedy dismissed McClellan's comments saying, "There is no privilege, there is no rule, and there is no logic that would bar us from getting these documents." Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) wondered if this refusal was "...intended to unilaterally pre-empt a discussion about documents the Senate may need and is entitled to".
However, the White House did agree to release around 75,000 pages of documents concerning Roberts' work in the Reagan administration. But, even they betray Roberts' extreme right wing tendencies that Bush wants hidden from the Senate and the American people.
These records from the National archives depict Roberts, then a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, as a young man in his mid-twenties engaged in the conservative restructuring of government that the newly elected Ronald Reagan had promised.
Much of Roberts' time at the Justice Department was taken up by the debate over GOP-sponsored bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases. He wrote repeatedly in opposition to the view, advanced by then-Assistant Attorney General Theodore B. Olson, that the bills were unconstitutional.
Roberts' reported stances on specific cases were telling. He argued for a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the law barring sex discrimination in college sports. He recommend not intervening on behalf of female prison inmates in a sex discrimination case involving job training. He argued for restrictions on the rights of prisoners to litigate their grievances. He called for limits on a lower court's order requiring a sign-language interpreter for a hearing-impaired public school student. And, he supported a wider latitude for prosecutors and police to question suspects without their attorneys present.
Roberts' records from the Reagan years expose him as being routinely opposed to citizen rights and supportive of overbearing government and corporate power. Furthermore, they do suggest that his documents from Bush W's first term denied to the Senate must be even more damming.
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