Juridics: Supreme Court : Judge Roberts questioned about his religion; Canadian SC nomination process angers Canadian Bar group

The obstacles being amassed to block Judge Roberts' confirmation by the US Senate turn now on the campaign of the Delaycrats to conduct a major fishing expedition into every iota, jot and tittle of decades-old documentation amassed on a daily basis when the candidate served as Solicitor General. The goal is to fish up anything that could possibly be construed in a way that opponents of confirmation in this case deem unacceptable by their own arcane standards. They demand the widest scope in access to all materials for their anti-confirmation scrutiny, but they give no list of criteria in advance of what they mite find to be in violation of a standard they have in only the vaguest of terms in their own minds. The Bush administration has insisted No, initiating a "Sensitive Docments" doctrine of privilege that the Senate cannot violate. So much for the presumption of the Delaycrats, since the US Constitution gives them no such power as they would arrogate to themselves.

FLASH UPDATE: Bush releases large load of Roberts materials, but stickes to policy of not all

Before the above development matured, refWrite provided an orientation and several links still important as a background (including links to the Canadian process for comparison).

With the above development coming to the fore and with the background of our earlier Blog Entry, of course, readers will easiliy discern the chief real criterion for the present atmosphere of inquest: any comment Roberts may ever have made not simply applausive of the idea of abortion on demand, should damn him. London UK's The Independent was on to this already on July 21, when its headline for a story read flatly, "Abortion dominates fight to put Roberts into Supreme Court." No one questions that the root of this unlimited-abortion criterion lays for the Delaycrats in the economics of a huge capitalist abortion-industry thru which people hold jobs and earn their livings and medical-facility owners make a profit in the US - all this has burgeoned into massive proportions in the years since Roe v. Wade was decided by the US Supreme Court, when the science of embryo and fetal development was backward compared to today, and the question of the personhood of the unborn was in a much more primitive stage of ethical reflection.

It is this obstacle that fires the drive behind the fishing expedition into any remark Roberts made have made in writing to anyone, less than in full agreement and approval of the SC decision. So it seems inevitable that now naysayers to Roberts are questioning his religion. Not his faith, as the New York Times suggests, but the measure of integration he attempts between his faith and his practice as a Judge. It's the particulars of that integration between one's faith (whatever it be) and one's practice in one's daily calling (whatever it be) that constitutes the better part of one's religion. We don't all have the same "measure of faith" (whatever it be); and we don't all have the same degree of integration. Everyone is different in these regards. The Delaycrats want to wiggle their way deep inside Roberts's soul perhaps to dissect it, or surgically remove it and place it under some microscope to which apparently they alone have access What the questioners don't want is a Supreme Court Justice who agrees with the Magisterium (Teaching Authority of the Catholic Church), its doctrine regarding the onset of life and personhood in the embryo and fetus, and the authority of the Pope, now His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. For myself, a Protestant Christian, I don't agree with Magisterium on many matters, including both the consistent ethic of life, which to me is remarkably unnuances, and the Just War Doctrine which no longer can do the job required for ethical guildelines against the present terrorist take-over of our lives. But why should Judge Roberts have to subject himself to these Inquisitors of the Delaycrats in order to become a Justice of the US Supreme Court?

How far these Senate fishermen will get, fishing for a different catch than that sawt by the Fisher of Souls, in their new gambit, all this remains to be seen before the confirmation vote expected in September. - Politicarp

UPDATE: Canada's Supreme Court nomination process

In an earlier Blog Entry, linked to key sources for understanding the Canada's own SC nomination process. Today, a new development requires we update and correct in part(just scroll down the page past the American stuff) with this new information from CanWest via Norman Spector. In future, when there's a new appointment to make to the Court the nominees will be scrutinized by a committee specially struck for that purpose. "When Alberta's Justice Jack Major retires next fall, the vetting committee will enjoy unprecedented clout in choosing his successor, for the first time constraining the absolute discretion to appoint Supreme Court judges that Canadian prime ministers have enjoyed for the past 130 years." However, as Spector reports, Susan McGrath president of the Canadian Bar Association is complaining strenuously that, whereas previously her nationwide organization had behind-the-scenes participation in the processess, now the lawyers have been written out entirely. - Owlb