John Roberts: Ignore Almost Everything I've Written

The morning session of Roberts' confirmation hearing is over. Sen. Kennedy failed to land any blows and looked less-than-effective by asking lengthy questions and interrupting Roberts before the nominee could get two words out. Sen. Biden did a little better by mocking Roberts' assertion that his memos just reflect the opinion of his bosses. As Biden points out, Roberts in one memo writes "...and I strongly agree," making the obvious point that this sure SOUNDS like a staffer's personal opinion. Roberts danced away. But one interesting point:

The White House has trumpeted the tens of thousands of documents released from Roberts' work in the Reagan administration and elsewhere as proof of how thoroughly vetted this nominee is. But Roberts has repeatedly made clear he believes we can draw ZERO assumptions about his personal views from any of it. No matter how passionately he may argue an issue or urge a stance in private memos, Roberts insists those statements merely reflect the position of his bosses that he was hired to work for and not necessarily his own.

In short, since Roberts says we have to ignore virtually all of the 50,000+ pages of documents as revealing nothing about him and since his judicial career is extremely short, we are being asked to nominate someone that we know virtually nothing about. That should make EVERYONE uneasy (including the far right) so why is the left the only side that thinks we should know SOMETHING about what a nominee for the Supreme Court believes in?