Just in: AP reports that the choice is John Roberts of the Washington appeals court.

On MSNBC now...John Roberts (?) Bedrock conservative(?) Hahvahd (?)

Yep. Anti-reproductive rights. Helped with the court briefs that gave the 2000 election to Bush.

WELL...SO much for da ladies.

Dumb move, Chimp.

CNN just reported that Roberts worked for the Bush's Solicitor General and argued many court cases to the SCOTUS. He wrote a brief arguing that abortion should be illegal but the analyst didn't know if that was his own opinion or the government's.

THE WORST OF THE WORST!!!

Details to follow.

This is what I thought he would do-to divert attention, pick the utmost worst-
he wants Roe V. wade overturned.

Maybe Americans concerned about their basic liberties will now wake up?  Ya think?

D.C. Circuit Judge Gets on Supreme Court Short List

Tony Mauro
Legal Times
02-22-2005



John Roberts Jr., the newest judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was hanging back.

During a typical oral argument last week, colleague Harry Edwards fussed and fumed at the lawyers before him, while David Sentelle tossed out avuncular one-liners in his thick Southern drawl.

But Roberts, the third judge on the panel, was quiet. When he did speak finally, he was barely audible, politely asking a question or two, but never tipping his hand. To anyone watching for the first time, Roberts barely made an impression.

Suddenly, though, a lot of people are talking about this quiet judge, who just turned 50. The fickle spotlight on possible nominees to the Supreme Court if Chief Justice William Rehnquist departs has swung toward Roberts, and seems to be lingering.

In spite of Roberts' quiet manner, his credentials -- former Rehnquist law clerk, deputy solicitor general, top-flight practitioner at Hogan & Hartson and, in the estimation of some, the finest oral advocate before the high court in the last decade -- are speaking for him and winning fans. Add to that a brief 20-month tenure on the court that provides few targets for Democrats, and Roberts is emerging as a top candidate for the high court.

"He is well in the running, and he is superb," says C. Boyden Gray, partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and chairman of the Committee for Justice, which fights for President George W. Bush's judicial nominees.

"He's a great judge here, but I think we're going to lose him" to the Supreme Court, says a fellow D.C. Circuit judge who asked not to be named.

At a recent discussion before the local chapter of the Corporate Counsel Association, Roberts got considerable mention when a panel of Supreme Court experts was asked to handicap possible nominees.

"I think it will be John Roberts," said Latham & Watkins partner Maureen Mahoney, who is on some lists herself. "He has the brilliance, dedication and temperament to emerge as an intellectual leader of the Court," she said afterward.

Getting to this point has been a long and steady climb for Roberts, who was first nominated to the D.C. Circuit while he was in the Office of the Solicitor General in 1992. His nomination died, prompting Roberts to return to Hogan and build an esteemed and lucrative Supreme Court practice. He argued 39 cases before the Court in both the private and public sector, winning 25.

The current President Bush nominated him again in 2001, and again Roberts languished until finally winning unanimous confirmation in 2003. His pay cut is breathtaking: According to his financial disclosure form, Hogan paid Roberts just over $1 million in 2003, a combination of salary plus the payout representing a departing partner's ownership interest in the firm. As an appeals court judge, Roberts makes $171,800 a year.

ON THE SHORT LIST

With all the recent talk, Roberts has joined 4th Circuit Judges J. Michael Luttig and J. Harvie Wilkinson III and 10th Circuit Judge Michael McConnell on the short list of those who might get the nod, especially if President Bush replaces Rehnquist as chief justice with Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas.

But there is one way in which Roberts stands apart from -- and possibly ahead of -- the others. Luttig, with 13 years on the 4th Circuit, and Wilkinson with 20 have written enough opinions that it is easy to chart how conservative they are. McConnell has only two years on the 10th Circuit, but he has a provocative paper trail from his 17 years as a prolific conservative law school professor.

By contrast, Roberts, with 20 months on the D.C. Circuit, has few opinions or other writings that have attracted enemies. As a result, some conservatives have made unflattering comparisons between Roberts and Supreme Court Justice David Souter, whose short stint on the 1st Circuit before being appointed in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush failed to reveal Souter's moderate-to-liberal leanings on some issues.

Yet those who know Roberts say he, unlike Souter, is a reliable conservative who can be counted on to undermine if not immediately overturn liberal landmarks like abortion rights and affirmative action. Indicators of his true stripes cited by friends include: clerking for Rehnquist, membership in the Federalist Society, laboring in the Ronald Reagan White House counsel's office and at the Justice Department into the Bush years, working with Kenneth Starr among others, and even his lunchtime conversations at Hogan & Hartson. "He is as conservative as you can get," one friend puts it. In short, Roberts may combine the stealth appeal of Souter with the unwavering ideology of Scalia and Thomas.

But this take on Roberts puts some of his biggest boosters in a quandary. They praise Roberts as a brilliant, fair-minded lawyer with a perfect judicial temperament. But can that image as an open-minded jurist co-exist with also being viewed as a predictable conservative?

Florida personal injury lawyer Dean Colson of Colson Hicks Eidson in Coral Gables, who has known Roberts since they clerked for Rehnquist together in 1980, side-steps the question.

Colson calls Roberts "the smartest lawyer in America," someone who will "approach the cases with an intellectual viewpoint. I don't view him as having an agenda to promote."

But does that mean conservatives can't count on Roberts? "I don't know the answer as to how he would vote on specific issues," says Colson. "I would never ask him, and I hope he never tells anybody what he would do."

Mark Levin, author of "Men in Black," a new conservative critique of the Supreme Court, sees no conflict and is a fan of Roberts. "In the short period he has been on the court, John Roberts has shown he does not bring a personal agenda to his work. He follows the Constitution, and he is excellent."

E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., a longtime Roberts fan and lifelong Democrat who worked with him for years at Hogan, says that if anyone can be both judicious and predictable, Roberts can.

"He respects the Court greatly, and would not ignore precedent," says Prettyman. "But if there's a loophole or a distinguishing factor, he'd find it."

Roberts himself declined to comment for this story, but during his January 2003 Senate confirmation hearing, he made it clear that he prefers impartiality over predictability. For example, he criticized the press for identifying judges according to whether they were appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents.

"That gives so little credit to the work that they put into the case," he said. "They work very hard, and all of a sudden the report is, well, they just decided that way because of politics. That is a disservice to them."

NOT ALWAYS PREDICTABLE

So far on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts' votes have mainly fallen on the conservative side, but not always.

Last December, in United States v. Mellen, Roberts ruled in favor of a criminal defendant who challenged his sentence in a fraud case. Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson -- yes, an appointee of the first President Bush -- dissented.

In the July 2004 decision Barbour v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), Roberts joined Merrick Garland -- a Clinton appointee -- in deciding that sovereign immunity did not bar a D.C employee with bipolar disorder from suing the transit agency under federal laws barring discrimination against the disabled. Conservative Sentelle dissented.

But then there was another WMATA case -- known as the french fry case -- which some critics point to as a sign of a certain hard-heartedness in Roberts' decision making.

In the unanimous ruling last October in Hedgepeth v. WMATA, Roberts upheld the arrest, handcuffing and detention of a 12-year-old girl for eating a single french fry inside a D.C. Metrorail station. "No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation," Roberts acknowledged in the decision, but he ruled that nothing the police did violated the girl's Fourth Amendment or Fifth Amendment rights.

Roberts also displayed what some viewed as insouciance toward arroyo toads in a 2003 case, Rancho Viejo v. Norton. Roberts wanted the full D.C. Circuit to reconsider a panel's decision that upheld a Fish and Wildlife Service regulation protecting the toads under the Endangered Species Act. Roberts said there could be no interstate commerce rationale for protecting the toad, which, he said, "for reasons of its own lives its entire life in California."

In another decision last June, Roberts went even further than his colleagues in supporting the Bush administration in a case that pitted the government against veterans of the first Gulf War. American soldiers captured and tortured by the Iraqi government during the first Gulf War sued the Iraqi government in U.S. court and won nearly $1 billion in damages at the district court level.

But once Saddam was toppled in 2003, the Bush administration wanted to protect the new Iraqi government from liability and intervened to block the award. Roberts, alone among the circuit judges who ruled with the government, said the federal courts did not even have jurisdiction to consider the victims' claim. An appeal is before the Supreme Court.

"These decisions are troubling in a lot of ways," says Elliot Mincberg of the liberal People for the American Way, a point person in any battle over Supreme Court nominees.

But Mincberg's criticism of Roberts may be muted somewhat by the fact that he worked with Roberts at Hogan years back and likes him personally. "He's a very smart lawyer and easy to work with, but there is no question he is very, very conservative," says Mincberg.

Another person who might otherwise be a critic of Roberts is a longtime friend. Georgetown University Law Center professor Richard Lazarus, an environmental law advocate, was a classmate of Roberts at Harvard Law School and roomed with him when they first came to Washington 25 years ago.

"John Roberts and I are very good friends, and I think very highly of him as a person, lawyer and judge," says Lazarus with care. "After that, I have to bow out."

Lazarus would not comment further, but other friends say the roots of Roberts' conservatism can be traced to his days as a Harvard undergraduate, toward the end of the Vietnam War. Seeing fellow students demonstrate in sympathy with Ho Chi Minh, one said, did not sit well with Roberts, who grew up in Indiana.

As unassuming as Roberts is, he also has a keen sense of humor, friends say. When Roberts was deputy solicitor general in 1990, he and Hogan friend Prettyman were adversaries in Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, a case that turned out to be a landmark decision narrowing the doctrine of standing. Prettyman's federation clients claimed they had standing to challenge certain Interior Department land management decisions because they used nearby land for recreational purposes. Roberts argued that was not a specific enough injury to achieve standing.

Before the argument, Prettyman says, Roberts went out West to look over the public lands at issue in the case. "He sent me a postcard from out there," Prettyman recalls. "He wrote that he had looked and looked for my client, but couldn't find her."

As it turned out, neither could the Supreme Court. It ruled 5-4 that Prettyman's clients had no right to sue. Roberts' argument won the day.

Anyone familiar with this martial artform?

You use the energy/momentum of your attacker to DISARM/DEFEAT him. In other words, if a person attacks you, their attack attacks them with as much energy as they've put out...*boink *ouch!

Bush will RELISH the fight of Roberts being a main player thru his lawfirm in the 2000 Election going to derBush.

"Impeccable Credentials" - you'll get sick of this phrase.

"John Roberts is in the ballpark" - LIEBERMAN OF THE GANG OF 14...

Pssssst! DON'T GIVE ANY MONEY TO THE SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS TRYING TO SWAY ONE WAY OR THE OTHER!....Waste of time and $$$$$$.

I say - PUT THE ATTENTION BACK WHERE IT BELONGS:

DSM
Rove/Plame
Cheney & Co.
Delay & Co.

FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus

THE WORST OF THE WORST!!!

Details to follow.

This is what I thought he would do-to divert attention, pick the utmost worst-
he wants Roe V. wade overturned.

Nope.  It'll take a lot more than this and perhaps more than is left in the kitty to give.

I think that I'll skip tv tonight and watch a movie instead.

Anyone familiar with this martial artform?

You use the energy/momentum of your attacker to DISARM/DEFEAT him. In other words, if a person attacks you, their attack attacks them with as much energy as they've put out...*boink *ouch!

Bush will RELISH the fight of Roberts being a main player thru his lawfirm in the 2000 Election going to derBush.

"Impeccable Credentials" - you'll get sick of this phrase.

"John Roberts is in the ballpark" - LIEBERMAN OF THE GANG OF 14...

Pssssst! DON'T GIVE ANY MONEY TO THE SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS TRYING TO SWAY ONE WAY OR THE OTHER!....Waste of time and $$$$$$.

I say - PUT THE ATTENTION BACK WHERE IT BELONGS:

DSM
Rove/Plame
Cheney & Co.
Delay & Co.

FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus
FocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocusFocus

I agree.  Dems should simply hold a normal process of debate, then allow a vote.  The debate should serve mainly to hilite to dumb Americans everywhere what kind of person they have caused to be put in the USSC (because of their blind support of Bush).

No pain, no gain.

So let the pain begin.

Aikido focuses not on punching or kicking opponents, but rather on using their own energy to gain control of them or to throw them away from you.

Aikido is a Japanese martial way founded by Master Morihei Ueshiba (1883 - 1969). The techniques of Aikido depend not on physical strength, but on circular motions that blend with the energy of the attacker. Practitioners of Aikido gain not only the benefit of a powerful system of self-defense, but also a set of values and attitudes that seek to make conflict unnecessary. The founder, whom we refer to as "O Sensei" (Great Teacher), was a powerful man who mastered many traditional fighting arts before developing Aikido. He said "Aikido is not a technique to fight with or to defeat the enemy. It is a way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family"

Overturning a woman’s right to choose was a cornerstone of the first Bush Administration as signaled by the fact that Solicitor General Kenneth Starr
himself argued reproductive rights cases before the Supreme Court.4 The
Court was so accustomed to the Solicitor General and the Deputy Solicitor
General arguing for the overturn of Roe that during John Roberts’ oral
argument before the Supreme Court in Bray, a Justice asked, “Mr. Roberts, in
this case are you asking that Roe v. Wade be overruled?” He responded,
“No, your honor, the issue doesn’t even come up.” To this the justice said,
“Well that hasn’t prevented the Solicitor General from taking that position in
prior cases.”5

Bush's number one constituency is big business and this guy should fit the bill very well.

I tend to agree.  Go on record about what a poor choice it is ........... in fact, get a 100% REPUBLICAN vote .......... not one Democrat should vote for this man.    But they have to let it come to a vote. 

If you can't win the fight, make a stand that people will remember.  That way, if we're right and he's conservative to the hilt, it'll give Democrats a strong campaign issue.

Sometimes the only way to win is to lose.

John G. Roberts Jr.
From dKosopedia, the free political encyclopedia.



John G. Roberts Jr. (born in Buffalo, New York, 1955) is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, having been nominated by President George W. Bush on May 9, 2001, and confirmed by the United States Senate on May 8, 2003.

Roberts graduated from Harvard College in 1976. Roberts receivied his Juris Doctorate from the Harvard Law School in 1979.

He was a law clerk for Henry Friendly, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 1979-1980, and for Associate Justice William Rehnquist, Supreme Court of the United States, 1980-1981. He then took a job as special assistant to William French Smith, the attorney general, U.S. Department of Justice, 1981-1982, before being appointed associate counsel to President Ronald Reagan, White House Counsel's Office, 1982-1986.

He entered private practice in 1986 as an associate at the Washington D.C. law firm of Hogan & Hartson, but left to serve from 1989-1993 as Principal Deputy Solicitor General under Kenneth Starr, U.S. Department of Justice. He returned to Hogan and Harston in 1993 as a partner where he remained until he was appointed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In private practice and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General he has argued more than 30 cases in front of the United States Supreme Court.

Roberts has been mentioned frequently as being near the top of the list of potential nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States, should one of the current justices leave the Court during George W. Bush's presidency.

Judicial outlook and record
Roberts has been floated as a nominee who could win widespread support in the Senate. Not so likely. He hasn't been on the bench long enough for his judicial opinions to provide much ammunition for liberal opposition groups. But his record as a lawyer for the Reagan and first Bush administrations and in private practice is down-the-line conservative on key contested fronts, including abortion, separation of church and state, and environmental protection.

As noted on Law.com Many who know Roberts say he, unlike Souter, is a reliable conservative who can be counted on to undermine if not immediately overturn liberal landmarks like abortion rights and affirmative action. Indicators of his true stripes cited by friends include: clerking for Rehnquist, membership in the Federalist Society, laboring in the Ronald Reagan White House counsel's office and at the Justice Department into the Bush years, working with Kenneth Starr among others, and even his lunchtime conversations at Hogan & Hartson. "He is as conservative as you can get," one friend puts it. In short, Roberts may combine the stealth appeal of Souter with the unwavering ideology of Scalia and Thomas.


Civil Rights and Liberties
For a unanimous panel, denied the weak civil rights claims of a 12-year-old girl who was arrested and handcuffed in a Washington, D.C., Metro station for eating a French fry. Roberts noted that "no one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation" and that the Metro authority had changed the policy that led to her arrest. (Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 2004).
In private practice, wrote a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that Congress had failed to justify a Department of Transportation affirmative action program. (Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Mineta, 2001). He also argued against Title IX as applied to the NCAA in NCAA v. Smith.

For Reagan, opposed a congressional effort—in the wake of the 1980 Supreme Court decision Mobile v. Bolden—to make it easier for minorities to successfully argue that their votes had been diluted under the Voting Rights Act.


Separation of Church and State
For Bush I, co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that public high-school graduation programs could include religious ceremonies. The Supreme Court disagreed by a vote of 5-4. (Lee v. Weisman, 1992)

Environmental Protection and Property Rights
Voted for rehearing in a case about whether a developer had to take down a fence so that the arroyo toad could move freely through its habitat. Roberts argued that the panel was wrong to rule against the developer because the regulations on behalf of the toad, promulgated under the Endangered Species Act, overstepped the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce. At the end of his opinion, Roberts suggested that rehearing would allow the court to "consider alternative grounds" for protecting the toad that are "more consistent with Supreme Court precedent." (Rancho Viejo v. Nortion, 2003)
For Bush I, argued that environmental groups concerned about mining on public lands had not proved enough about the impact of the government's actions to give them standing to sue. The Supreme Court adopted this argument. (Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 1990)


Criminal Law
Joined a unanimous opinion ruling that a police officer who searched the trunk of a car without saying that he was looking for evidence of a crime (the standard for constitutionality) still conducted the search legally, because there was a reasonable basis to think contraband was in the trunk, regardless of whether the officer was thinking in those terms. (U.S. v. Brown, 2004)

Habeas Corpus
Joined a unanimous opinion denying the claim of a prisoner who argued that by tightening parole rules in the middle of his sentence, the government subjected him to an unconstitutional after-the-fact punishment. The panel reversed its decision after a Supreme Court ruling directly contradicted it. (Fletcher v. District of Columbia, 2004)

Abortion
For Bush I, successfully helped argue that doctors and clinics receiving federal funds may not talk to patients about abortion. (Rust v. Sullivan, 1991)
Overturning Roe was such a primary focus of the Reagan Administration's Justice Department while Roberts was in the admisnitration, that during an oral argument by the nominee to the Supreme Court a Justice asked, "Mr. Roberts, in this case, are you asking that Roe v. Wade be overruled?" His reply was, "No your honor, the issue doesn't even come up." To this the justice replied, "Well that hasn't prevented the Solicitor General from taking that position in prior cases."

As Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts argued in a brief before the Supreme Court that "we continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled. The Court’s conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion...finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."

As Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts filed an amicus curiae brief in support of Operation Rescue and named individuals who routinely blocked access to clinics. The brief argued that the protesters’ behavior did not discriminate against women and that blockades and clinic protests were protected speech under the First Amendment. This case, Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, spurred the Congress to enact the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.


Judicial Philosophy
Concurring in a decision allowing President Bush to halt suits by Americans against Iraq as the country rebuilds, Roberts called for deference to the executive and for a literal reading of the relevant statute. (Acree v. Republic of Iraq, 2004)
In an article written as a law student, argued that the phrase "just compensation" in the Fifth Amendment, which limits the government in the taking of private property, should be "informed by changing norms of justice." This sounds like a nod to liberal constitutional theory, but Rogers' alternative interpretation was more protective of property interests than Supreme Court law at the time.

Lead counsel for Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Ky, Inc. v. Williams. The case involved a woman who was fired after asking Toyota for accommodations to do her job after being diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. The court ruled that while this condition impaired her ability to work, it did not impair her ability to perform major life activities. Disability rights groups fear that this decision may erode the Americans with Disabilities Act.


References
Department of Justice Biography


Affiliations
Republican Party
Federalist Society

External links
John G Roberts's federal campaign contributions - Newsmeat
The Supreme Court Shortlist - Slate magazine, Friday, July 1, 2005

Roberts, again as Deputy Solicitor General, argued as amicus curiae for the United States supporting Operation Rescue and six other individuals who routinely blocked access to reproductive health care clinics, arguing that the protesters’ behavior did not amount to discrimination against women even though only women could exercise the right to seek an abortion. Intervening as amicus is a wholly discretionary decision on the part of the Solicitor General. Here the government chose to involve itself in a case in support of those who sought to deprive women of the right to choose. Roberts argued that the protesters’ blockade and protests merely amounted to an expression of their opposition to abortion and that a civil rights remedy was therefore inappropriate.8 The case – Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic9 – NARAL: REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM & CHOICE JUNE 2001 presented the Supreme Court with the question of whether the Civil Rights Act of 1871 provided a federal cause of action against persons obstructing access to abortion clinics. The year after Bray was rendered, Congress enacted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act to protect women and health care providers from violence and harassment.