Careful & Cautious

As this piece indicates, John Roberts knows how to craft answers to questions in a way that gives something to both sides. It should make for entertaining television in September, when he begins a battle of wits with unarmed adversaries like Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Durbin and Biden.

In any case, the whole "respecting precedent" debate referenced in the piece is a red herring -- because the real question is which precedents a nominee will deem worthy of respect. One would certainly surmise that however much he respects precedent, John Roberts would have had a problem, for example, with Plessy v. Ferguson (enshrining the "separate but equal" doctrine).

We can only hope that the Democrats (cued by the press) will try to make a big issue out of what John Roberts wrote back when he was in the Reagan Justice Department. For starters, there's nothing wrong with the substance of the memoes at issue (they express mainstream conservative opinon at the time). And that was a long, long time ago -- back in the days when Senator Dick Durbin was still pro-life, long before Biden (hopefully) learned that it's just plain wrong to plagiarize.

Here's hoping that Judge Roberts hasn't changed the vast majority of his views since his days in the Reagan Justice Department. But given their own shifts over the same duration, won't it seem a little silly for the Democrats to react like they've just discovered hidden writings of the antichrist?