{"id":4937,"date":"2005-08-10T11:27:57","date_gmt":"2005-08-10T15:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4937.html"},"modified":"2005-08-10T11:27:57","modified_gmt":"2005-08-10T15:27:57","slug":"first-romer-now-schiavo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/first-romer-now-schiavo\/","title":{"rendered":"First Romer, now Schiavo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the most part, conservatives have given John Roberts a pass over his role<\/a> in helping gay activists shape their legal arguments in the Romer case. One pretty obscure group will announce today it is withdrawing its support<\/a> for Roberts’ nomination because of his work in the case, but at least for the time being, the rest of the reaction has been surprisingly muted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wonder, though, what the reaction will be to Roberts’ apparent beliefs<\/a> about Republican intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.<\/p>\n

Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose case provoked Congressional action and a national debate over end-of-life care, became an issue on Tuesday in the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. when a Democratic senator pressed him about whether lawmakers should have intervened.<\/p>\n

The senator, Ron Wyden of Oregon, said that Judge Roberts, while not addressing the Schiavo case specifically, made clear he was displeased with Congress’s effort to force the federal judiciary to overturn a court order withdrawing her feeding tube.<\/p>\n

“I asked whether it was constitutional for Congress to intervene in an end-of-life case with a specific remedy,” Mr. Wyden said in a telephone interview after the hourlong meeting. “His answer was, ‘I am concerned with judicial independence. Congress can prescribe standards, but when Congress starts to act like a court and prescribe particular remedies in particular cases, Congress has overstepped its bounds.’ ”<\/p>\n

The answer, which Mr. Wyden said his aides wrote down word-for-word, would seem to put Judge Roberts at odds with leading Republicans in Congress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, it would. Republicans don’t talk much about the Schiavo debacle anymore, in large part because the public overwhelmingly disagreed with lawmakers’ intervention, but the fact is the right still believes congressional efforts in the case were justified, even necessary.<\/p>\n

When federal judges took the same line Roberts did yesterday, Tom DeLay said the judiciary had “run amok” and started speculating about impeachment proceedings. And yet, here’s Roberts, Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court, indicating that DeLay, Frist, and the rest of the conservative movement were wrong.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Romer case, the right can’t just dismiss this as work he was doing for a client. Here, we’re talking about Roberts’ actual stated beliefs.
\n
\nFor that matter, Wyden’s questions about end-of-life issues also prompted Roberts to offer an interesting observation.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wyden said that he asked Judge Roberts whether he believed states should take the lead in regulating medical practice, and that the nominee replied that “uniformity across the country would stifle the genius of the founding fathers.” <\/p>\n

Mr. Wyden said, “I came away with the sense that he was somewhat sympathetic to my notion that there should be a wide berth for states to take the lead.” <\/p>\n

In discussing how the law was evolving on end-of-life care, Mr. Wyden said Judge Roberts cited a dissent by Justice Louis D. Brandeis in a 1928 Supreme Court case, in which he famously spoke of “the right to be left alone.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, but the far right won’t much care for the context. Conservative activists only believe in the “right to be left alone’ when talking about gun owners and toxic polluters. Once we start applying those words to personal decisions — abortion, sex, right to die, etc. — they see the end of civilization. For that matter, the Republican line isn’t respect for states’ rights on these issues, it’s the complete opposite.<\/p>\n

The fact that Roberts cited Brandeis in this end-of-life context, should cause the right all manner of consternation.<\/p>\n

Is it possible that conservative discomfort over Roberts might become a legitimate problem for the White House? Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the most part, conservatives have given John Roberts a pass over his role in helping gay activists shape their legal arguments in the Romer case. One pretty obscure group will announce today it is withdrawing its support for Roberts’ nomination because of his work in the case, but at least for the time being, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}