Roberts: "Dangerous," "radical" (Oh, my!)

From an op-ed published in the StarTribune under the partial title "Roberts' radicalism."

Last week, press aides at the White House made a furious round of phone calls: A number of major newspapers had printed that John Roberts was a member of the secretive far-right Federalist Society.

Yikes! Does this "secretive" group have anything to do with Skull and Bones? Anyway, there is more.

[H]e advocated for right-wing ideology over free speech, religious liberty and voting rights for minorities.

Sounds like a pretty evil SOB. The op-ed goes on to describe Roberts as a "danger," not once, but twice.

But wait, now I read this from a StarTribune "news" story today.

Marie Failinger understood right away that she was the designated liberal foil when the Federalist Society invited her to speak at a conference on bias in the courts. Even so, the professor at Hamline University School of Law, the only one of the four metro-area law schools not to harbor an active Federalist chapter, emerged impressed. The group didn't strike her as the kind of secret society that some of the coverage of its ties to U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts might suggest. . .

Roberts' vagueness over the exact nature of his ties to the group is typical of all of them, members say. It's not a membership group in the way that a labor union has members; it's more like "being on the mailing list." Nor is it an advocacy group like the American Civil Liberties Union, members say. It's a debating society, with a website that lists events and speakers.

Any ties at all to the Federalist Society indicate that Roberts is conservative, they agree, but they wouldn't expect President Bush to appoint anyone who wasn't. . .

Emphasizing that he was speaking not as state DFL Party chairman but as a lawyer, [Brian] Melendez agreed with the group's contention that one can be a Federalist without being an extremist.

"A number of good friends of mine are members. I disagree with them on many things, but they are well within the realm of mainstream politics," he said.

I am not a conservative and I am not a big fan of the Federalist Society, although I certainly know a lot of reasonable people who are. However, as the "news" story demonstrates, the silly op-ed is nothing more than a temper tantrum because Roberts is almost certainly not a liberal. Well, I hate to break the news, but if you win the election you get to nominate judges and "he thinks like a Republican" is not a serious objection to or argument against confirmation.