Juridics: USA - President's Men: Roberts under 10,000 lenses trying to start a fire, but the fire's in his belly already

The Left is cuckoo over John Roberts, by Don Feder, August 1, 2005. An amazingly insiteful, witty, cutting trashing of the vendetta operatives of the Left, from an analyst who would have chosen someone else than Roberts, but understands all too well the game played by the petulant partisons of obstruction. Click on the blog entry headline above.

The misrules of judicial confirmations, by Nat Hentoff, Jewish World Review, August 1, 2005 / 25 Tammuz, 5765.



Hentoff that old veteran of a civil-libertarian watchdog who never soldout to the ideologues who have taken over the ACLU once and for all, here takes on the idea of "the philosophy of the mainstream" as a criterion for judging a judge, for the US Senate's confirmation of nominees to become Justices of the US Supreme Court - namely, in the immediate case, Judge John Roberts Jr.

Hentoff doesn't say it but the non-Constitutional requirement of a "philosophy" of this sort, when parsed by a historian of philosophy would take us back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the notion of a "general will" that doesn't so much come out in democratic elections, but has a more ghostlty existence that can be discerned only by such adepts as New Yorks' Sen. Charles Schumer and some squirrels nesting in the recesses of The New York Times - both taken on and knocked out by Hentoff rather tidily. In the course of which, he raises some important questions of his own in regard to judicial confirmations of candidates for the offices of judge and Supreme Court Justice. I recommend this article strongly. - Anaximaximum