July 19, 2005

Supreme Court Announcement in Prime Time

[To all Instapundit readers I have plenty of more links on Roberts in the post above.]

President Bush will announce his first Supreme Court nominee during prime time tonight. That's the first time I've ever heard a President do that. This from a guy who rarely does prime time press conferences. It sounds like it will be a woman. An Edith somebody, but no one really knows. Drudge reports it will be John C. Roberts, Jr. We'll soon find out. Bryon York has been doing his geeky best and found out what domain names some anti-Bush groups have bought in preparation for the judicial battle.

Let's assume it's Roberts. Who is this man? He's spent about two years on the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, he's argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court, and he has good conservative credentials:

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

Conservative legal eagle Mark Levin thinks Roberts is "excellent."

The problem is Roberts has only two years of legal opinions from which to gleen his judicial philosophy. That's Souter-like in that the Democrats will have little to attack him with on that front. There is one case that will probably be used to tar Roberts as "extreme."

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.

The conservative Rutherford Institute was working on that case. And the Heritage Foundation used the "french fry case" as an example of overzealous police zero-tolerance policies. Not since "freedom fries" were served in the House cafeteria will the fried food play such a large role on Capitol Hill.

"Bush Goes Prime Time to Announce Nominee"

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