First Door on the Left

There are no depths to which the right wing of the Republican party will not sink. It’s becoming just plain ridiculous. It’s like a game to them, and it’s getting really, really sad.

So what if John Roberts is gay? So what if he did wait until he was in his forties to get married and have [adopt] kids? Look at Ken Mehlman. It seems to be a developing trend among conservatives.

Let’s get this perfectly clear once and for all… being gay has no effect whatsoever upon your ability to perform your job… even if that job is Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Seriously.

Oh, brother!

Supreme Court Pick Shifts Attention From Rove, Agent Disclosure

July 20 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush’s nomination of a new Supreme Court justice may give White House adviser Karl Rove a temporary reprieve from public scrutiny of his role in the disclosure of an intelligence operative’s identity.

About six in 10 Americans who are paying close attention to reports about who leaked information that helped unmask a covert intelligence agent say Rove should resign, according to a poll conducted last week by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The Supreme Court announcement may freeze things, “and that’s probably a good thing for the White House,” said Carroll Doherty, an editor at the Washington-based Pew Center.

Bush accelerated his search for a Supreme Court nominee in part because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of a CIA agent’s name, according to Republicans familiar with administration strategy.

Bush originally had planned to announce a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on July 26 or 27, just before his planned July 28 departure for a month-long vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, said two administration officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named.

The officials said those plans changed because Rove has become a focus of Fitzgerald’s interest and of news accounts about the matter.

This administration will rush something as important as who is going to sit on the Supreme Court for the next 20 or 30 years just to maybe save Rove’s ass for a few days? Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

It’s no wonder they came up with such a sloppy nominee.

Not that it counts for a hill of beans, but my first impression of John G. Roberts was this: a sheep in wolf’s clothing. The packaging isn’t bad, but I think we’ll be a bit shocked after the package is unwrapped.

Then this morning I received this in my e-mail. It’s from the PAC that the right loves to hate, MoveOn.org…

In the past weeks, Republicans and Democrats have called on President Bush to nominate a moderate for the Supreme Court�someone who would honor the legacy of independent Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. But last night, President Bush nominated Judge John Roberts, a far-right lawyer and corporate lobbyist, to fill her post on the Supreme Court.

We’ve got to stop Roberts. He opposed clean air rules and worked to help coal companies strip-mine mountaintops. He worked with Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr), and tried to keep Congress from defending the Voting Rights Act. He wrote that Roe v. Wade should be “overruled,” and as a lawyer argued (and won) the case that stopped some doctors from even discussing abortion…

This is one of the most important domestic fights of President Bush’s career. We can win�Americans overwhelmingly want a moderate judge. But to win, we need to get the word out early that Roberts is out of the mainstream…

We need to fight back against the misinformation that the Bush administration is putting out.

John Roberts has little experience as a judge�he was only appointed in 2003. But he’s got a lot of experience as a corporate lobbyist and lawyer, consistently favoring wealthy corporations over regular Americans.

Here’s a list of some of the things that make Roberts the wrong pick for the Supreme Court:

• Wrong on environmental protection: Roberts appears to want to limit the scope of the Endangered Species Act, and in papers he wrote while in law school he supported far-right legal theories about “takings” which would make it almost impossible for the government to enforce most environmental legislation.
• Wrong on civil rights: Roberts worked to keep Congress from defending parts of the Voting Rights Act.
• Wrong on human rights: As a appeals court judge, Roberts ruled that the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to some prisoners of war.
• Wrong on our right to religious freedom: Roberts argued that schools should be able to impose religious speech on attendees.
• Wrong on women’s rights: Roberts wrote that “Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled.” He also weighed in on behalf of Operation Rescue, a violent anti-abortion group, in a federal case.

President Bush could have chosen many fair-minded and independent jurists to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. Instead, he chose a corporate partisan loved by Bush’s right-wing base but out of step with the rest of the country.

Then I read this, and my mind is pretty much made up…

“The president is a man of his word,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. “He promised to nominate someone along the lines of a Scalia or a Thomas, and that is exactly what he has done.”

If a hate monger like Tony Perkins is in favor of the guy, how can I not, in good conscience, oppose him?

Bush Nominates Judge John C. Roberts

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush chose federal appeals court judge John G. Roberts Jr. on Tuesday as his first nominee for the Supreme Court, selecting a rock solid conservative whose nomination could trigger a tumultuous battle over the direction of the nation’s highest court, a senior administration official said.

Bush offered the position to Roberts in a telephone call at 12:35 p.m. after a luncheon with the visiting prime minister of Australia, John Howard. He was to announce it later with a flourish in a nationally broadcast speech to the nation.

Roberts has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since June 2003 after being picked for that seat by Bush.

Advocacy groups on the right say that Roberts, a 50-year-old native of Buffalo, N.Y., who attended Harvard Law School, is a bright judge with strong conservative credentials he burnished in the administrations of former Presidents Bush and Reagan. While he has been a federal judge for just a little more than two years, legal experts say that whatever experience he lacks on the bench is offset by his many years arguing cases before the Supreme Court.

Liberal groups, however, say Roberts has taken positions in cases involving free speech and religious liberty that endanger those rights. Abortion rights groups allege that Roberts is hostile to women’s reproductive freedom and cite a brief he co-wrote in 1990 that suggested the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 high court decision that legalized abortion.

Employment/background:
2003-present: Judge, DC Circuit Court;
1993-2003: Partner, Hogan & Hartson LLP;
1989-93: Principal Deputy Solicitor General, US DoJ;
1986-89: Associate, Hogan & Hartson LLP;
1982-86: Associate Counsel to the President, White House Counsel’s Office;
1981-82: Special Asst to the AG in the US DoJ;
1980 -81 Supreme Court of the United States, Law Clerk to Hon. Wm. H. Rehnquist

Mr. Bush said he was willing to look outside of the judiciary for a nominee, and for all practical purposes he did. Judge Roberts has been a judge for just two years, and it was George W. Bush who made him a judge in the first place.

The buzz today appears to be that George W. will be announcing his nominee for the Supreme Court today in an effort to deflect some of the media attention away from leaker Karl Rove.

The odds-on favorite seems to be Judge Edith Brown Clement from the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

GeorgeCo is willing to bet that our media giants will not be able to cover more than one story at a time. Given recent history, they are probably correct.

Update: The announcement has been scheduled for 9 p.m. EDT tonight. The White House is asking the major TV networks to carry it live.

Why?

A new ABC News poll…

The same poll shows that only about 25% of Americans think the White House is fully cooperating in the federal investigation of the leak of a CIA operative’s identity. Not a surprising result given this administration’s reputation for secrecy.

Even the White House Press Corps is waking up to the fact that this whole thing is really nothing but a sham. This from today’s “press conference“…

Q Mr. President, you said you don’t want to talk about an ongoing investigation, so I’d like to ask you, regardless of whether a crime was committed, do you still intend to fire anyone found to be involved in the CIA leak case? And are you displeased that Karl Rove told a reporter that Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the Agency on WMD issues?

PRESIDENT BUSH: We have a serious ongoing investigation here. (Laughter.)

Oh, and should the federal grand jury investigating this case have any questions, they need only check with Matt Margolis…

Karl Rove has not been charged with any crime, nor is he guilty of any crime.

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman on CNN Late Edition today…

The NAACP unfortunately in the 2000 campaign likened the president to James Byrd, who was a racist killer in east Texas, who the president brought to justice. [link]

James Byrd was the victim, not the killer. It would be interesting to find out how George W. Bush “brought him to justice.”

Must these people be wrong about everything?

If you can force yourself to set aside the new Harry Potter book for a few moments, you really should read Frank Rich’s column today…

Follow the Uranium

“I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which I referred to, they would not be working here.”
- Ron Ziegler, press secretary to Richard Nixon, defending the presidential aide Dwight Chapin on Oct. 18, 1972. Chapin was convicted in April 1974 of perjury in connection with his relationship to the political saboteur Donald Segretti.

“Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn’t be working here at the White House if they didn’t have the president’s confidence.”
- Scott McClellan, press secretary to George W. Bush, defending Karl Rove on Tuesday.

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there’s no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper’s e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove’s own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain’s wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor’s race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.

Even so, we shouldn’t get hung up on him – or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

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“If I ran the [Los Angeles] Times, I’d hire Patterico. But then, if I ran the Times, I’d be trying to get the facts right, not just engage in partisan warfare.” — A right wing blogger who does nothing but engage in partisan warfare.