Roberts and College

[erpowers]

Rachel Maddow reported this morning that the comment that President Bush made when he was introducing John Roberts on Tuesday was misleading. During the intriduction Bush claimed that Roberts worked summers in a steel mill to pay for college. This is somewhat true in that Roberts did work in a steel mill during college and the money may have gone to his college tution. However, Roberts worked in the steel mill under a program in which the children of the executive of the mill worked in the mill during the summer. Roberts was actually the son of the mill manager. So in the words of Rachel Maddow this guy was not a mill worker like John Edwards who swept the floor of the mill.

[bunny planet]

1. You mean he wasn't a sharecropper's daughter.

[bballny]

2. He is

your typical business republican. His father was management and he has all the disdain that management has for union people. He is no blue collar guy and has zero understanding of the common man. I worked in a factory in the summer and my father was the typical union guy except he was the union representative that helped negotiate the contact for the longshoreman against CPC The children of the management people worked upstairs and not with the union workers. I wonder if it was the same at Bethlehem steel

[Gidney N Cloyd]

3. These SOBs lie even when it's totally unnecessary!

If you take a tough steel mill job in the summer when you apparently don't have to, when you probably could sponge off your comfortable parents or pull a few strings to get a cushier job, to me that could suggest quite a bit of character. Why do these guys feel so compelled to gin up the facts even when the facts are just fine?

[Supersedeas]

5. thus, how much can we believe?

[erpowers]

6. That What Happened

He did not take a tough steel mill job. He was one of the kids of the executives. He was able to get one of those cushy jobs. That is why Bush had to gin it up.

[Norquist Nemesis]

4. I'm glad there is some time for us to scrutinize Roberts

The hearings will be late August at the earliest. But I wonder if they'll push them back a bit...I also heard last night that the Fitzgerald investigation should be wrapped up in October. With that decision/report coming out, there's nothing like a live Senate hearing followed up by floor debate to distract the public.

Personally, I think the way to go about hitting Roberts is to side-step Roe (in other words, not make it the #1 focus), and push him hard on other issues. Show the American people that Democrats are concerned about his decisions on the environment, healthcare, education, affirmative action, equal branches of government with equal powers, voting rights, labor rights, etc. There are ways to ask the questions about "precedent", and if he side steps as he did in his previous hearing that needs to be put to the front and center.

When we have a SC nominee hand-picked by a President who wants to keep his base content, and that same President is the only one who is privy to an "honest" and "open" errr....'discussion' on the nominees views, well, we have a problem. This nominee will be a part of deciding the "Law of the Land" well after his nominator is no longer calling the shots.