Justice Roberts messed it up, Obama knew that. sm

• I see he couldn't even repeat the oath... - hmm
  • What in the world - cloverport
  • It was Roberts' mistake...here are the facts. - sm
    • Absolutely right, it was Roberts' error, not Obama's - Mrs. M
  • actually the justice screwed up - ExMQMT
    • Oh sure, blame it on the justice. - Obama did not wait for the justice
    • You are absolutely right... - Go President Obama
      • Right On! - O in Obama
      • Thanks - ExMQMT
    • Oh, right. If that is the case, he should have been - able to state it properly. He stood there ..."u
      • Yes, he might have known the words, but - ExMQMT
        • Okay... So why did............ sm - m
      • Obama will get every excuse in the world. "He is - young, nervous, inexperienced". Great, our Prez
  • You get up there! - shout out to miss perfect
    • If that were Bush, you would be ripping him a new - Tell the truth.-leaders need to hold up!.nm
      • So right!..nm - Amen!
      • Yeah, He ASKED to be "up there". - Speech is over...now where is my check? gimme.nm
        • Thanks for reminding me! ..nm - forgot about the check
  • Maybe we should just... - mamaathome
    • please....nm - excuses already
    • mamaathome - Fiona
  • come on give him a break... - Emily Ayn
    • Oath - Fiona
      • Nervous now? Needs more experience. - Oh Lord, what will it be like
      • All talk shows gripe about everybody, not just him - Backwards typist
  • Wait until he gets under some REAL pressure! nm - wow
    • Real pressure? (sm) - Just the big bad
  • give the posts a rest and go do a kind deed. - nm
    • What, like maybe send you our tax money? - Is that the good deed for the day?nm
  • I dont want to make fun of him, but gosh, he did - that because he's nervous? He aint seen nothin
    • Justice Roberts messed it up, Obama knew that. sm - Confetti
      • No. He looked very insecure. He is the leader of the - free world(for now). Should have acted it.nm
        • You're really grasping at straws here. nm - Confetti
    • We should not have to hold him up. He should hold - up to pressure if he wants to LEAD us.nm

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Wednesday 18 February 2009

President Barack Obama. (Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP)

Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel issued the following statement following the U.S. Department of Justice’s denial of preclearance of Georgia’s voter verification process

Atlanta - “The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to deny preclearance of Georgia’s already implemented citizenship verification process shows a shocking disregard for the integrity of our elections. With this decision, DOJ has now barred Georgia from continuing the citizenship verification program that DOJ lawyers helped to craft. DOJ’s decision also nullifies the orders of two federal courts directing Georgia to implement the procedure for the 2008 general election. The decision comes seven months after Georgia requested an expedited review of the preclearance submission.

“DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists. DOJ completely disregarded Georgia’s obvious and direct interest in preventing non-citizens from voting, instead siding with the ACLU and MALDEF. Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy.
 
“This process is critical to protecting the integrity of our elections. We have evidence that non-citizens have voted in past Georgia elections and that more than 2,100 individuals have attempted to register, yet still have questions regarding their citizenship. Further, the Inspector General’s office is investigating more than 30 cases of non-citizens casting ballots in Georgia elections, including the case of a Henry County non-citizen who registered to vote and cast ballots in 2004 and 2006.

“It is important to underscore that not a single person has come forward to say he or she could not vote because of the verification process. Further, while DOJ argues that the process is somehow discriminatory, the historic voter turnout among Hispanic and African-American voters in the 2008 general elections clearly says otherwise.

“This decision provides a specific example of the inherently illogical and unfair nature of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. It is a sad day for the rights of our state and for the integrity of our elections. I remain committed to continuing the fight for citizenship verification. In the coming days, I will consider every option available to the state, including the possibility of legal action.”

Background:

As required by law and ordered by federal courts in October 2008, the eligibility of new applicants to register and vote is checked against the Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) and Social Security Administration databases to ensure that individuals registering to vote report similar information. If information in these databases does not match information reported on the voter registration form, the applicant is asked to clarify the information. Additionally, if the applicant previously reported to DDS that he or she is not a U.S. citizen, that person is asked by a registrar to provide proof of citizenship.

Prior to the November 2008 General Election, Secretary Handel sent letters to 4,771 voter registration applicants whose records at DDS indicated they were not U.S. citizens, asking them to provide documentation of their citizenship. As of March 2009, 2,148 of these applicants still have chosen not to resolve the question about their U.S. citizenship.

In the November 2008 General Election, county election officials reported that 599 individuals cast a challenged ballot because the voter had previously indicated to DDS that he or she was not a United States citizen and had not resolved their status with county officials at the time of the election. Of those, 369 ballots were accepted because the voter provided documentation of their citizenship after the election; and 230 were rejected because the individual chose not to confirm his or her citizenship status.

On October 10, 2008, activist organizations including the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to attempt to prevent Georgia from verifying the eligibility of applicants to register and vote in the November General Election, including whether those individuals were citizens of the United States.

On October 16, 2008, U.S. District Court Judge Jack Camp denied the motion by MALDEF and ACLU; directed the State to continue the verification process; and acknowledged the State’s requirements to verify information under the Help America Vote Act. In his order, Judge Camp stated:

HAVA requires that Defendant Handel match information in the statewide voter registration database with information from the Georgia DDS and the SSA databases “to the extent necessary to enable each such official to verify the accuracy of the information provided on the applications for voter registration.”

Judge Camp also stated: ...

Look what I found in a book about the Democratic party:

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, championed by the party despite opposition at the time from its Southern wing, has continued to inspire the party's liberal principles.

_________

There are also multiple chapters as well as multiple books written about the metamorphosis of BOTH parties since their inception.  See, sometimes books really can be a good thing!!!  By the way, do you get your historical information from the chronic-liars-library or something?  Cuz it surely seems like it. 

You say we take care of our own poor?  I can find NO statistics to agree with your statements below. 

Lack of care of our country's poor?  We have more social programs for the poor than any other nation on earth.  Not only do we take care of our own poor, we try to take care of the poor in all over the world as well.  I hardly call that immoral.  If you think more needs to be done, take some homeless into your house.  Open a soup kitchen.  Hand out birth control to the third generation welfare families.  Give a job, not just a check.  Lobby for THAT in Washington.  Carry signs for THAT. 

 In 2001 the poverty rate for minors in the United States was the highest in the industrialized world with 14.8% of minors, 30% of African American minors, living below the poverty treshold. Additionally the standard of living for those in bottom 10% was lower in the US than in any other developed nation, except the United Kingdom which had the lowest standard of living for impoverished children.^[6]

One of the most disturbing and extraordinary aspects of life in this very wealthy country is the persistence of hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that in 2005:

• 35.1 million people lived in households considered to be food insecure.

• Of those 35.1 million, 22.7 million are adults (10.4 percent of all adults) and 12.4 million are children (16.9 percent of all children).

• The number of people in the worst-off households (previously called “food insecure with hunger” and now called “very low food security” households) rose in 2005, from 10.7 to 10.8 million.

I wrote:  I said, "Well, let's see:  "Algia" means pain.  "Ceph" means pain, so pain in the head -- HEADACHE!"

Obviously, "ceph" means HEAD!

I just got out of the hospital (again for pancreatitis), and I believe MY "ceph" was left behind when I was typing my post.

Good thing I don't own a gun or I'd probably shoot myself in the foot.  LOL.

her religious views from legal views?  Apparently NOT, if, during this secret conference call, a very select few Americans were privy to the information that, in fact, she WOULD overturn Roe v. Wade because of her religious beliefs.

If religion can't be a reason to exclude someone from the bench, it likewise can't be used as a reason to INCLUDE someone on the bench, as Bush attempted to do as a way to reassure his base *wink, wink, nod, nod* that they shouldn't worry, *She's one of US.*

That's only one troubling aspect of her nomination, though.  Even Robert Bork *borked* her, saying she is a *disaster* and that she was a terrible writer.

The fact that she's judged Bush to be the most *brilliant* man she's ever met casts even further doubt about her ability to *judge* (but I admit that's an extension of my personal opinion and doesn't really count).

John Roberts is reported to be a very devout Catholic, yet nobody raised an eyebrow about that because his religion was never an issue.  Bush himself MADE it an issue.

Can you name me even ONE evangelical who would NOT vote to overturn Roe? 

It's becoming clearer and clearer every day that this woman was nominated (1) because she's a Bush crony and (2) because she will guarantee that Roe will be overturned based on her own personal beliefs, not based on established legal precedent.

You know, the laws this country was founded on.  Tell me where it's written that our troops fight overseas and are killed for a corrupt president who LIES?????  They are fighting for oil and power, not our safety.  And we're supposed to just pretend it isn't so?  Even Colin Powell can't remain silent about Bush's treachery. 

Ruth Bader Ginsberg is a card carrying member of the ACLU with all it's wackiness.

It's only when a conservative is nominated that they better not have affiliations with anything *gasp* religious or conservative leaning.

Not buying that double standard.  Nice try though...

my initial uninformed "gut" reaction was that he was a "good guy."  In fact, I had to check my pulse to make sure I still had one because I found myself approving of something Bush did.

The fact that he would take on this kind of case pro bono just confirms that my "gut" reaction was right (hopefully).

Sometimes karma has a way of kicking someone right smack in the butt when they come from a place of hatred, inequality and superiority.  I truly hope this is the case here and that Bush, even if inadvertently, happened to finally make a good decision.

This is getting ridiculous.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iVg2jiaBA1jwVfCdsisXI0FbZD0AD965BKCG0

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29030191/

I believe his role was a bit larger than you suggested.  "Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. provided significant help to gay activists in a 1996 landmark Supreme Court case protecting gays from discrimination based upon their sexual orientation, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

At the time, Roberts was a lawyer specializing in appellate work for Hogan & Hartson, a large D.C.-based law firm. Walter A. Smith, Jr., then head of the pro bono department of the firm, told the paper that Roberts didn't hesitate. "He said, 'Let's do it.' And it's illustrative of his open-mindedness, his fair-mindedness. He did a brilliant job."

At any rate, he's been portrayed him as a fair-minded, tolerant, fair person, and I'm glad President Bush nominated him because I believe we need a person like that in the Supreme Court.  I also hope if the president has another appointment to make that he chooses Alberto Gonzalez, who I also think has those qualities.

Have you even bothered to take the time to notice that EVERY SINGLE POST ON THIS BOARD about Judge Roberts is a POSITIVE POST???

What planet are you from, anyway?  Is your life so pathetic that the only pleasure you get is from stalking people on this board in the bizarre way you do and constantly put them down personally?  Dang.  You need a Happy Meal, dude. 

Secondly, to my democratic friends, have any of you watched the John Roberts' confirmation hearings?  I have been watching for two days now..In fact, right now they are in recess, so I thought..let me check out the MTStars political board..MSN news video site on the computer has live hearings and they are fascinating..I have to tell you, so far I kind of like Judge Roberts..My only hesitation is Bush recommended him..

       www.sfgate.com        Return to regular view

(08-05) 19:27 PDT DENVER (AP) --

A decade ago, John Roberts played a valuable role helping attorneys overturn a Colorado referendum that would have allowed discrimination against gays — free assistance the Supreme Court nominee didn't mention in a questionnaire he filled out for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The revelation didn't appear to dent his popularity among conservative groups nor quell some of the opposition of liberal groups fearful he could help overturn landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a right to an abortion.

An attorney who worked with Roberts cautioned against making guesses about his personal views based on his involvement in the Colorado case, which gay rights advocates consider one of their most important legal victories.

"It may be that John and others didn't see this case as a gay-rights case," said Walter Smith, who was in charge of pro bono work at Roberts' former Washington law firm, Hogan & Hartson.

Smith said Roberts may instead have viewed the case as a broader question of whether the constitutional guarantee of equal protection prohibited singling out a particular group of people that wouldn't be protected by an anti-discrimination law.

"I don't think this gives you any clear answers, but I think it's a factor people can and should look at to figure out what this guy is made of and what kind of Supreme Court justice he would make," Smith said.

On Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans released two memos by Roberts when he was as an assistant counsel in the Reagan White House. In one, Roberts argued that President Reagan should not interfere in a Kentucky case involving the display of tributes to God in schools.

In the other, Roberts writes that Reagan shouldn't grant presidential pardons to bombers of abortion clinics. "The president unequivocally condemns such acts of violence," he wrote in a draft reply to a lawmaker seeking Reagan's position. "No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department denied a request by Judiciary Committee Democrats for Roberts' writings on 16 cases he handled when he was principal deputy solicitor general during President George H.W. Bush's administration. The department also declined to provide the materials, other than those already publicly available, to The Associated Press and other organizations that sought them under the Freedom of Information Act.

"We cannot provide to the committee documents disclosing the confidential legal advice and internal deliberations of the attorneys advising the solicitor general," assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella wrote Friday to the eight committee Democrats.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel's senior Democrat, said Roberts made decisions whether to pursue legal appeals in more than 700 cases. "The decision to keep these documents under cover is disappointing," Leahy said.

The gay rights case involved Amendment 2, a constitutional amendment approved by Colorado voters in 1992 that would have barred laws, ordinances or regulations protecting gays from discrimination by landlords, employers or public agencies such as school districts.

Gay rights groups sued, and the measure was declared unconstitutional in a 6-3 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.

Roberts' role in the case, disclosed this week by the Los Angeles Times, included helping develop a strategy and firing tough questions during a mock court session at Jean Dubofsky, a former Colorado Supreme Court justice who argued the case on behalf of the gay rights plaintiffs.

Dubofsky, who did not return calls Friday, said Roberts helped develop the strategy that the law violated the equal protection clause in the Constitution — and prepared her for tough questions from conservative members of the court. She recalled how Justice Antonin Scalia asked for specific legal citations.

"I had it right there at my fingertips," she told the Times. "Roberts was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me and spending some time on the issue. He seemed to be very fair-minded and very astute."

Dubofsky had never argued before the Supreme Court. Smith said she called his firm and asked specifically for help from Roberts, who argued 39 cases before the court before he was confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

Smith said any lawyer at Hogan & Hartson would have had the right to decline to work on any case for moral, religious or other reasons.

"If John had felt that way about this case, given that he is a brilliant lawyer, he would have just said, `This isn't my cup of tea' and I would have said, `Fine, we'll look for something else that would suit you,'" Smith said.

The Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which helped move the case through the state and federal courts, said Roberts' involvement raised more questions about him than it answered because of his "much more extensive advocacy of positions that we oppose," executive director Kevin Cathcart said.

"This is one more piece that will be added to the puzzle in the vetting of John Roberts' nomination," Cathcart said.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, said his support for Roberts' nomination has not diminished. "He wasn't the lead lawyer. They only asked him to play a part where he would be Scalia in a mock trial," Sheldon said.

Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, said Roberts' involvement was "certainly not welcome news to those of us who advocate for traditional values," but did not prompt new concerns about his nomination, which the group supports.

"That's what lawyers do — represent their firm's clients, whether they agree with what those clients stand for or not," the group said in a statement.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/08/05/national/w135401D98.DTL

Roberts resisted women’s rights

1982-86 memos detail court nominee’s skepticism

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By Amy Goldstein, R. Jeffrey Smith and Jo Becker

Updated: 11:48 p.m. ET Aug. 18, 2005

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing employers to pay women equally to men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."

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Roberts's thoughts on what he called "perceived problems" of gender bias are contained in a vast batch of documents, released yesterday, that provide the clearest, most detailed mosaic so far of his political views on dozens of social and legal issues. Senators have said they plan to mine his past views on such topics, which could come before the high court, when his confirmation hearings begin the day after Labor Day.

---

---

Covering a period from 1982 to 1986 -- during his tenure as associate counsel to President Reagan -- the memos, letters and other writings show that Roberts endorsed a speech attacking "four decades of misguided" Supreme Court decisions on the role of religion in public life, urged the president to hold off saying AIDS could not be transmitted through casual contact until more research was done, and argued that promotions and firings in the workplace should be based entirely on merit, not affirmative action programs.

In October 1983, Roberts said that he favored creation of a national identity card to prove American citizenship, even though the White House counsel's office was officially opposed to the idea. He wrote that such measures were needed in response to the "real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration."

He also, the documents illustrate, played a bit role in the Reagan administration's efforts in Nicaragua to funnel assistance to CIA-supported "contras" who were trying overthrow the Marxist Sandinista government.

In one instance, Roberts had a direct disagreement with the senator who now wields great influence over his confirmation prospects, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). In a 1983 memo, Roberts was dismissive of a "white paper" on violent crime that had been drafted by one of Specter's aides. Noting that the paper proposed new expenditures of $8 billion to $10 billion a year, Roberts wrote: "The proposals are the epitome of the 'throw the money at the problem' approach repeatedly rejected by Administration spokesmen."

President Bush nominated Roberts, now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, four weeks ago.

Yesterday's deluge of more than 38,000 pages of documents has particular political significance -- because of their content and their timing. The papers, held in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, are likely to be the last major set of written material from Roberts's past to become public before his confirmation hearings.

Extensive insight
Senate Democrats have been pressing the Bush administration to release Roberts's files from the highest-ranking position he has held in the executive branch, as the Justice Department's deputy solicitor general from 1989 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush. But administration officials have asserted that those records should remain private on the grounds of attorney-client privilege.

Previously released documents, from slightly earlier in the Reagan era, when Roberts was a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, have established that the young attorney was immersed in civil rights issues of the time, including school desegregation, voting rights and bias in hiring and housing. The new batch provides the most extensive insight into Roberts's views of efforts to expand opportunity for women in the workplace and higher education.

Fool me once, shame on you....etc.

I feel better knowing Congress is smart enough to not believe BU_ _ SH _ _ twice from this farce of a president.

Roberts: Iraq Will Affect Future War Votes
Experience With Faulty Data Has Made Senators More Wary, Panel Chairman Says

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 14, 2005; A04

The Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said yesterday that one lesson of the faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq is that senators would take a hard look at intelligence before voting to go to war.

I think a lot of us would really stop and think a moment before we would ever vote for war or to go and take military action, Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.) said on Fox News Sunday.

We don't accept this intelligence at face value anymore, he added. We get into preemptive oversight and do digging in regards to our hard targets.

He said that agreement has been reached on the Phase 2 review that the intelligence panel is doing to look into whether the Bush administration exaggerated or misused prewar intelligence. The review may not be finished this year, he said.

The intelligence panel vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), also appearing on Fox, called the review absolutely useful because if it is the fact that they [the Bush administration] created intelligence or shaped intelligence in order to bring American opinion along to support them in going to war, that's a really bad thing -- it should not ever be repeated.

Appearing on CNN's Late Edition, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said the White House is supporting the study, adding: I think that what you're going to find is that the statements by the administration had backing at the time from accepted intelligence sources.

He said that when administration statements turned out to be wrong, that was because the underlying intelligence was not true, but that's not the same as manipulating intelligence, and that is not misleading the American people.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), appearing with Roberts on Late Edition, said that Iraq became the center of terrorism after the March 2003 invasion.

I'm afraid we're going to see Iraq is not only the center of the war on terror, which it was not before we attacked Iraq, but now it is going to, I'm afraid, export it.

He added that Iraq has become the heartland of terrorism. It was not before we attacked.

Levin, a member of both the Senate intelligence committee and Armed Services Committee, has been a leading critic of the Bush administration's handling of the war.

Levin also said that the United States must get allies, as many as we can, including in the Muslim world because this is a form of fanatic Islam which has to be defeated by the moderate Islamic people.

In a column in yesterday's Washington Post, former senator John Edwards (N.C.), the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2004, said the failures of the Bush administration turned Iraq into a far greater threat than it ever was. It is now a haven for terrorists [and] has made fighting the global war on terrorist organizations more difficult rather than less.

The president and his senior aides have said since before the invasion that Washington went to war primarily because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to the United States and its neighbors because of his connection to terrorists. Once fighting began, they argued that Iraq was the central front in the battle against terrorism.

In his Veterans Day speech on Friday, the president turned his original argument around, saying, The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity, and therefore, We must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war against the terrorists.

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/090111_shame.htm

I think its the one glimmer of hope the fact that he at least had the decency to stand up for gays rights to lease an apartment and other civil liberties. 

What I continue to find ironic is how the conservatives could see this as a possible negative "ideology" for their party. 

vote for Obama.  Now that Palin is McCain's running mate.....I feel more confident than ever that I made the right decision when I chose to vote for McCain......even if McCain is really really really old.  ; - )

McCain and Palin ང 

They won't let her off the leash to speak without a written statement in front of her.  Hope people take notice and realize what this means.  Pat Buchanan yesterday said she was under no obligation to ever give an interview.  Isn't that unbelievable??