Liberals Beside Themselves Over Roberts Votes

Roberts Draws 22 Democratic Votes
John Nichols
The Nation
Thu Sep 29, 6:06 PM ET

The stampede to confirm Judge John Roberts as the 17th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court roared through the full Senate Thursday as the chamber voted 78-22 to give President Bush's 50-year-old nominee a lifetime sinecure at the head of the nation's highest and most powerful court.

Roberts's record of opposing expansion of the Voting Rights Act, unyielding allegiance to the corporate interests he served as an attorney in private practice and extreme deference to executive power he served as an aide to President's Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush drew broad grassroots opposition.

People For the American Way, the National Organization for Women, the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Human Rights Campaign, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Americans with Disabilities Watch, the National Council of Women's Organizations, the National Council of Jewish Women, Rainbow PUSH, the Fund for the Feminist Majority, Legal Momentum, the National Association of Social Workers, the National Abortion Federation, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and MoveOn.org all expressed strong opposition to the Roberts nomination.

But most senators listened less to the grassroots than they did to Inside-the-Beltway chatter. And the easy confirmation of Roberts indicated that he met the exceptionally low standards that now represent the two-party consensus in Washington when it comes to judicial selection.

Every member of the Senate Republican Caucus voted for Roberts, including Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee, a frequent dissenter from the party's conservative doctrines who is running for reelection in 2006 with the endorsement of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the reproductive rights advocacy group that strongly opposed the nomination because of Roberts's repeated refusal to answer questions about whether the Constitution's privacy protections extend to a woman's right to choose. (Notably, one Republican who is facing the voters this year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was an outspoken opponent of confirming Roberts because, Bloomberg indicated, he feared that the nominee could turn out to be a judicial activist who would use his position and attack precedents that guarantee reproductive rights.)

I LOVE IT! The Lie-berals at the Nation have got to be having kittens here. HAR-HAR-HAR-HAR. This is great. I can't wait when President George Bush nominates Janice Rogers Brown, Michael Luttig, or Priscilla Owen. The socialists at the Nation will probably implode. Filibuster? Bring it on!

Full Article: Vanden Huevals Nation Laments

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