Newsweek: "So far, John Roberts hasn't held back on charm or humor."

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Roberts: Ready for His Close-Up

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9023929/site/newsweek/

Aug. 29 - Sept. 5, 2005 issue - As interest groups and senators squabble over his old memos, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has spent most of August sequestered in the Justice Department preparing for his September hearings. A small cadre of administration lawyers—several of whom are former Supreme Court clerks—have been quietly meeting to quiz Roberts on constitutional law. According to three sources familiar with the preparations (who would not be identified because of the confidential nature of the process), this week Roberts will formally start his "murder boards"—practice sessions before a team of outside legal and congressional experts playing the parts of Judiciary Committee senators. The mock hearings are taking place in extraordinary secrecy. White House officials won't disclose the names of outside participants or reveal particular lines of questioning. The questioners are mostly veterans of previous confirmation battles or experienced Supreme Court advocates, and even they have not been told much. The outside lawyers have been told to show up at the Justice Department and given little further instruction. Volunteers received a thick packet of briefing materials from DOJ. They have not been told who else will be on the murder boards. "I've been told to show up at a particular conference room at 9 a.m. and that's about it," says one participant who declined to be identified so as not to antagonize the White House.

While the mock hearings don't strive to replicate the setting and atmospherics of the real deal, the participants have been studying for their parts and will try to anticipate the senators' questions. Roberts is no novice when it comes to prep sessions. In 2003, he went through a similar process, albeit less grueling, before his confirmation hearing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where he currently sits. And Roberts has done dozens of moot courts to ready himself for oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Colleagues say he has particular methods he's likely to use this week. He'll ask "senators" to stay in role as long as possible. "He views this as an endurance test and a way of sharpening his mind," says David Leitch, a recently departed deputy White House counsel who will participate in the sessions. Leitch, who has a long history with Roberts from their shared days at both the Justice Department and in private practice, won't go easy on his friend. "Someone has to be willing to put him through his paces," Leitch says.

Since Roberts has argued an impressive 39 cases before the Supreme Court, his advisers believe his practice rounds do not need to be overly rehearsed. So far, Roberts hasn't held back on charm or humor. His team thinks there's no need for him to review the hearings of Clinton appointees Stephen Breyer or Ruth Bader Ginsberg, both of whom deftly deflected politically treacherous questions. Roberts already knows which questions not to answer: he played a senator in Sandra Day O'Connor's mock hearing more than 20 years ago.

—Tamara Lipper and Daniel Klaidman

[VOX]

1. It's true:Think "funny" or "charming" & Roberts comes immediately to mind.

RIGHT! :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:
:sarcasm: Whom are you kidding, Newsweek??? :sarcasm: :sarcasm:
:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[glitch]

3. At this point - they are only kidding themselves.

Poor rag.

[realFedUp]

2. This opinion from dailykos is more on target...Roberts is Bork redux

http://categorically-imperative.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/22/18180/3617

John Roberts: A Bork in Sheep's Clothing (Part I of II)
by Categorically Imperative

John Roberts could change all that. Whatever any media outlet or conservative pundit has to say about Judge Roberts being "kind," "brilliant," "family man," he's the Trojan horse that Bush wants to send to the Supreme Court to dismantle seventy years of jurisprudence. John Roberts on the Supreme Court will fundamentally change the nature of the United States. That is why he is the issue, and why we must all do whatever we can to keep him off of the Court. Why? Hopefully, the rest of this diary will provide the answer. First, our starting point: John Roberts is purportedly an originalist and a textualist. For many here, he already shapes up as a disastrous Justice based on that description alone. I disagree, being that when it comes to constitutional interpretation, I am a textualist and (when the text is vague) an originalist. "Textualist" and "originalist" need not be code words for "wingnut." But even I think Roberts is a disaster. Because in his case, his supposed interpretive style is merely a code. He is not a brilliant jurist, simply a clever one who Bush knows will use the trappings of constitutional interpretation to advance the agenda of the right wing. Roberts is cuddly, friendly version of Robert Bork. To illustrate the point, I will proceed by example, demonstrating why Roberts is neither a serious textualist nor a serious originalist, but merely a very serious right-wing hack.

Hamden v. Rumsfeld

To be fair, Roberts did not write this opinion. But he joined it in full, without writing a separate concurrence, so it is fair to assume that he agrees with it. Which is so much the worse for Roberts, because the Hamden opinion is about as absurd a piece of tripe as one will ever see entered into the Federal Reporter. For those who are not aware of the issue in Hamden, the primary question before the D.C. Circuit was whether a Guantanamo prisoner whose status as an enemy combatant had been affirmed by an independent tribunal could be tried by a military tribunal without a prior determination that he was not a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions. There are two aspects of the panel's holding on which I want to focus. First, its holding that the Geneva Conventions do not supply any rights enforceable against the United States in federal court (which would have been enough to decide the case). Second, and probably most important as far as Roberts' qualifications to sit on the Court, the panel's pernicious dicta which, as Yale Law Professor Robert Gordon wrote over at TPM Café, went out of its way to confirm every power the administration claimed for the executive, including the authority to set up military tribunals to try people he designates as "enemy combatants", with no protections of due process, exempt from the protections of the Geneva conventions, military justice, and the Constitution.

As for the panel's holding on the Geneva Conventions, its "reasoning" was that "treaties...do not create judicially enforceable individual rights." Which ought to seem bizarre to a thoroughgoing textualist or originalist, given that treaties, like the Constitution and federal laws (both of which inarguably create judicially enforceable individual rights), are "the supreme Law of the Land."

continued

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Yeah, those racist, sexist remarks in the memos were a laugh riot...

and oh-so-charming. If he were a Dem, the press would have made sure every American could quote them by now, and Roberts would be disqualified from the federal bench.

[Gloria]

5. "He knows which questions not to answer"===so there you go...

the state of juris prudence in the US is all down to this phony game.

[omega minimo]

6. Isn't his lack of judicial experience relevant to this appointment?

Where is the discussion of how 2 years as a judge qualifies him (or does not) to the highest court in the (home)land?


Charm? Humor? He looks TOTALLY DEMENTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CityDem]

7. I will bet

Roberts is not going to answer a single substantive question and the dems on the judiciary committee will roll over and vote for him. Sure, our old war horses like Kennedy and Leahy will challenge Roberts, but don't count on many others to take up the challenge. Roberts is a very sharp guy who knows constitutional law better than anyone in the hearing room and he will dance around any serious questions. Mark my word, he will be confirmed with over 70 votes. We are going to rue the day this guy is sent to the bench.