September 23, 2005, A toy surprise in every box
By a not unexpected 13-5 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the President's nominee to be Chief Justice of the United States, Judge John Roberts. Voting against confirmation were senators either from uber-liberal states seeking to head off possible attacks (some day) from their left flank (Schumer of my home state and Feinstein of California, and Durbin of Illinois, as well as chief uber liberal Kennedy of Massachusetts) or possibly running for President (Biden of Delaware). All Republicans (surprise, surprise) voted to confirm, as did Democrats Leahy of Vermont, and Kohl and Feingold both of Wisconsin. Given that the committee chairman is Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania... am I missing something, or aren't the Jewish people a tad overrepresented on the Senate Judiciary Committee? This might explain our representation on the Supreme Court (2 of 9). But I digress.
Elections have consequences (even when stolen with the help of John Roberts somewhat controversial). And not only did the Republicans win the Presidency in 2000 and again in 2004, they managed to expand their lead in the Senate. As such, they get to appoint judges, and other governmental officials, barring really unusual or insane circumstances (like Bernard Kerik).
To the extent that the Democrats had a reasonable basis to oppose Judge Roberts, it would not be, as Senator Feinstein (and the other "nay" voters) so whinily offered, for his likely vote to repeal Roe v. Wade (a decision in which the man he clerked for, and is replacing, dissented), but for the fact that his view of the Constitution is that it consists of Article II (the power of the executive branch) and little else, as envisioned in his outrageous decision in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case permitting military tribunals to go forward at Guantanimo Bay for no other reason than the President says so.
Of course, did our great liberal heroes Kennedy and Schumer and Biden and Durbin and Feinstein manage to force Judge Roberts into a defense of this outrageous willingness to toss the Bill of Rights out with the bathwater in the interest of expanding the power of the guy who appointed him? You kind of know the answer...
Judge Roberts, ladies and gentlemen. It's as if Bill Rehnquist just got another few decades of life expectancy...