Rat-A-Tat-Tat

The Left's anti-Roberts pea-shooters are already starting to overheat, at the American Spectator's George Neumayr chronicles today.

For just one example, what on Earth can possibly be wrong with a legal organization as constitutionalist and traditionalist as the Federalist Society? Or did I just answer my own question?

Those sniffing around for evidence of conservatism in the record of John Roberts only reveal themselves as contemptuous of the Constitution. That the Washington Post, for example, treats Roberts' possible membership in the Federalist Society as though it had caught him out in a crime - it gave front-page coverage Monday to a story titled "Roberts Listed in Federalist Society '97-98" - just exposes its bias against constitutionally-minded judges.

So what if Roberts helped a group that is dedicated to promoting judicial respect for the Constitution? That's about as alarming as learning that a nominee once took a college course on the Federalist Papers. The Post's parsing of Roberts' connection to the Federalist Society - "Meaning of Word 'Membership' May Become Issue for High Court Nominee," it declared hopefully - would be called McCarthyite farce by liberals in almost any other context. But they can't stop themselves here, huffing that even if Roberts wasn't officially a member of the Federalist Society what "matters is whether he hung out with them," as David Garrow, a law professor at Emory University, put it to the Post.

They can't help themselves because as with each previous societal institution that they've lost, reactionary liberals believe themselves entitled to dominate the Judiciary in perpetuity. If they believed in God you could say it was by "divine right." Conservatives are, to them, not legitimate competitors in the free political arena, but wicked counterrevolutionary interlopers who have forgotten their dhimmi-like place in the secularist order. And since those on the right are inherently illegitimate, no rules and standards need be respected in combatting them.

And the bigger disadvantage libs are at, the more the rules go out the window:

As the Post was rifling through an old Federalist Society directory supplied to it by radicals at the Institute for Democracy Studies, the Los Angeles Times, also concerned that a judge who actually understands the Constitution might get a chance to apply it, indulged itself in another round of Catholic baiting. In an op-ed titled "The faith of John Roberts," law professor Jonathan Turley questioned Roberts's "fitness" for the Supreme Court because he told Illinois Senator Dick Durbin last week, in reply to a baiting and tendentious question, that he would "recuse" himself should he face a case in which the law requires ruling against a teaching of the Catholic Church.

"It was the first unscripted answer in the most carefully scripted nomination in history," writes Turley. "It was also the wrong answer. In taking office, a justice takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States."

There's just one slight, teensy-tiny problem with Professor Turley's account - it's complete BS:

A spokesman for Mr. Durbin and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who spoke to Judge Roberts on Monday about the meeting, said Professor Turley's account of a recusal statement was inaccurate.

But in an interview last night, Professor Turley said Mr. Durbin himself had described the conversation to him on Sunday morning, including the statement about recusal. [emphasis added]

Added Hugh Hewitt:

I don't think Professor Turley would make up such a potentially important [and patently absurd] statement. I think Dick "you'd think I was describing Nazis" Durbin is a double-talking hack who wanted to plant a story but didn't think Turley would quote him. It is pretty clear that Durbin lied to Turley, and that is a warning to the nominee to always have a witness with him when he talks to Democrats.

Indeed. In this day and age, and especially after the past four and a half years, I would think any non-liberal, much less a Bush appointee to any government job, would be aware of the need for such precautions. Perhaps this is fresh, if unfortunate, proof of Judge Roberts' fair-mindedness and reasonableness - traits that will serve him well on the bench, but will repeatedly bite him in the ass until he gets there unless he smartens up in a big, big hurry.

UPDATE: Here are a set of answers to Chucky Schumer's avalanche of "stupid, dumb-assed questions" that it would be a joy to watch Judge Roberts utter. [via Double-H]

UPDATE II: NRO Bench Memos' Wendy Long elaborates on the Dems' Roberts-focused Christophobia:

President Bush and Judge Roberts understand that judges cannot make policy — pro-Catholic, anti-Catholic, or otherwise. Everything in Judge Roberts’ record tells us that he is committed to the same judicial philosophy as that of President Bush: to apply the Constitution and laws as written, and not to make laws up or rewrite the Constitution in judicial decisions. Judges [aren't supposed to] make the laws governing abortion, marriage, or anything else. All they['re supposed to] do is apply them. Accordingly, in the view of President Bush and Judge Roberts, a Supreme Court justice’s personal, political, or religious views cannot be used as the basis to decide a case.

If it turns out that Turley is reporting accurately, it will not be the first-time offense for Senator Durbin. He did the same thing to U.S. Court of Appeals judge William Pryor, a devout Catholic whom Durbin and others tried to block from the federal bench. The religious inquisition of Judge Roberts, then, is really a smokescreen for the liberal litmus test about issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Along with Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Schumer, and others, Senator Durbin treats judges like policymakers who wear black robes and are appointed for life. Like all liberals, they fundamentally misapprehend the role of the judge under our Constitution: to be a neutral umpire, applying the laws as written by the elected representatives of the people.

Because liberals can’t win popular support for their policy agenda — things like mandating abortion on demand for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy, forcing states to redefine marriage, and erasing God permanently and completely from the public square — they force it on people through the courts. And they are afraid that Justices who are people of religious faith can’t be pressured into ruling from the bench in favor of their liberal policies.

So when Senator Durbin tries to corner Judge Roberts about some hypothetical “conflict” between Catholicism and the U.S. Constitution, the senator from Illinois is engaging in exactly the kind of religious witch hunt that the Framers of the Constitution sought to prevent in Article VI of the Constitution, which reads: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Ms. Long observes that Judge Roberts is "too much of a gentleman" to tell Senator al-Durbini to, in so many words, go to hell. One would like to think, though, that after he's confirmed and on the Court, and has a chance to hang around Justice Scalia for a while, that taciturness will be relaxed a bit; and that Republican members of the Judiciary Committee will not feel themselves simiarly restrained when the Roberts hearings begin.