August 26, 2005

Civil War Smear

It's still August, a slow news time. Thus we get a ridiculous story about John Roberts' choice of words to refer to the Civil War.

When John G. Roberts Jr. prepared to ghostwrite an article for President Ronald Reagan a little over two decades ago, his pen took a Civil War reenactment detour.

The article, which was to appear in the scholarly National Forum journal, was called "The Presidency: Roles and Responsibilities." Roberts was writing by hand a section on how the congressional appropriations process had evolved.

A fastidious editor of other people's copy as well as his own, Roberts began with the words "Until about the time of the Civil War." Then, the Indiana native scratched out the words "Civil War" and replaced them with "War Between the States."

With this start Washington Post writer Jo Becker finds a way to pump out a few hundred words to try to connect Roberts with wacked-out Confederate sympathizers. The implication is Roberts is a secret admirer of the Confederacy and wants to the return of times when blacks are owned by whites. In the end "Civil War" was put into the article. Becker doesn't know who, she just writes, "someone." From the documents at hand she doesn't know. Maybe it was Roberts who those extra words disturbed the piece's eloquence.

This is a non-story that will only give Lefty race-baiters a tiny bit of ammunition to use against Roberts. Thankfully, he didn't use the even more loaded phrase "War of Northern Aggression."

"In Article, Roberts's Pen Appeared to Dip South" [via Ann Althouse]