AddieStan

In the Los Angeles Times , Margaret Carlson offers up a clear-eyed assessment of the current brouhaha over the religious background of Judge John Roberts, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court. She rightly deduces the distilled argument to be over who is and is not a good Catholic: So who are the bad Catholics? The easiest way to describe them is that they are … well, liberal Democrats. Remember when Wolf Blitzer introduced conservative Robert Novak and liberal Paul Begala on CNN for a segment on the new pope? "I am sure Bob is a good Catholic," Blitzer said. "I am not so sure about Paul Begala." Begala shot back, "That annoys me," and mentioned that his oldest son was named after Pope John Paul II. "I don't think anybody should presume that a liberal is not a good Catholic." But they do, even though frequently the Vatican agrees with liberals. It's just that in politics, the Vatican's agreement with conservative Catholic...

Your blogstress finds herself dismayed this morning to find that the usually enlightened folks at Beliefnet.com have permitted the use of their fascinating site to promote scurrilous charges against your écrivane by William Donohue of the Catholic League. While accusing Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) of speaking in anti-Catholic code for noting, in William Pryor's confirmation hearing for a seat on the federal bench, the "fervent personal beliefs" of the Roman Catholic nominee on the subject of abortion, Donohue refers to your cyberscribe as "a leftist writer." Now, who's using code? It sure would be news to the folks she worked with at the World Bank that your blogstress is a "leftist". (Your writer did the editorial work on a report that was used as the Bank's presentation to the U.N. conference on sustainable development that took place in Johannesburg, South Africa.) Donohue also draws a disingenuous parallel between the use of the term...

Recusal revisited It's been such a busy week for your blogstress that she's barely had time to blog. (Being an apparently self-loathing Catholic takes much more energy than one would imagine.) In the meantime, all manner of fascinating pieces about Judge John Roberts, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, have emerged. In the interest of fairness, you cybertrix begins with yesterday's New York Times article by David D. Kirkpatrick on the flap over Jonathan Turley's Los Angeles Times commentary about Roberts' reported response to a question from a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the nominee's religious conscience vis-a-vis the high court. You'll recall Turley reported that, as noted in an earlier AddieStan post , the nominee told Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) that he would recuse himself from rendering decisions in cases in which correct intrepretation of the law contradicted the law of the Roman Catholic Church. Parties ...

Your blogstress notes with gratitude the support of Washington Monthly editor Amy Sullivan at TPM Cafe on the matter of her alleged Catholic-bashing. Sullivan gives readers the backstory, noting the role of GOP Supreme Court nominee salesman C. Boyden Gray in the Catholic-card P.R. campaign for the confirmation of Judge William Pryor. Merci, ma soeur! Click here for Sullivan's TPM Cafe piece

While the Catholic right continues its attack on every mention of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' religion as an example of "Catholic baiting," along comes the very sober Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School, recounting, in today's Los Angeles Times , a troubling exchange between the nominee and Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), one of the four Roman Catholic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to Turley, Durbin asked Roberts what he would do "if the law required a ruling that [the Catholic Church] considers immoral." Renowned for his unflappable style in oral argument, Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself. Sounds reasonable? Think again. He's saying he's unwilling to uphold the Constitution if the Church says he shouldn't. Turley also notes the possibility of a Supreme Court deadlocked over key ...

Listen to your blogstress join Eliot Mincberg of People for the American Way in chatting with hosts Janine Jackson and Steve Rendall on the subject of the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John Roberts on: CounterSpin (the radio program produced by FAIR)

Today Operation Rescue (OR), the militant anti-choice group, issued a press release endorsing the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. And well they should. In 1992, when the case of OR activist Jayne Bray came before the Supreme Court, Deputy Solicitor General John Roberts filed, on behalf of the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, an amicus brief supporting Bray's position that the Alexandria Women's Health Clinic could not restrict his activities around the clinic on the basis of a civil rights statute. It was quite the bold move, since Operation Rescue was known for harassing pregnant women and blocking their access to health facilities where abortions are performed. In fact, OR founder Randall Terry deemed one doctor who performed abortions a perpetrator of "crimes against humanity" and said he hoped the doctor would be executed. Furthermore, the government was not involved in the case, and had no compelling interest in it. As noted in the ...

Your blogstress has discovered the origin of the "Catholic baiting" charge being lobbed at her by a group of very angry e-mailers. It comes, not surprisingly, from William Donohue of The Catholic League . It's pretty much his answer to any assertion that ruffles his feathers. Don't agree with Bill? Why then, surely, you're anti-Catholic! Consider it a preview of the right's response to any tough questioning endured by Roberts at the hands of Democrats.

Your blogstress apparently hit a raw nerve with certain righties when she revealed the strategic genius of the Bush administration in having nominated an anti-choice Roman Catholic for Supreme Court justice. You'll recall that your cybertrix noted the propensity of wing-nuts to accuse their critics of being hostile to religious folk and their faith traditions, and this is especially effective when the figure under scrutiny is a Roman Catholic; for not so long ago, anti-Catholic discrimination abounded in this great land of ours. This assessment by your Webwench resulted in a dozen hostile e-mails sent her way from individuals accusing your écrivaine of what? Of being anti-Catholic. (Note here that your net-tête is Catholic herself.) Most of the missive-writers appear to have gotten the same set of talking points, for they rail against your blogstress for accusing President Bush of "Catholic baiting," which most of them put in quotes, as shown. This is all very inst...

Fascinating piece today on the Roberts nomination at The New Republic Online by William J. Stuntz of Harvard Law. His concerns are about the nominee's apparent lack of interest in constitutional reasoning. Click here to read.

Before she gets out of the prognostication business for good, your blogstress would like to note that while she missed on naming the actual pick for the Supreme Court, her hunch that Bush would go for a Roman Catholic did indeed play out. And it's a brilliant move. When righties are challenged, they like to accuse the challenger of being hostile to "people of faith." This is less effective when the person being challenged is Protestant, the U.S. being a Protestant-majority nation. But when applied to a Catholic, a fairly fresh wound is opened, for most American Catholics still transmit in our DNA the cultural memory of religious discrimination. The nomination of the apparently fiercely anti-choice John Roberts to the Supreme Court will--and should--elicit fierce opposition from people who care about the lives of women. But senators who challenge Roberts on these views are likely to be tarred with the anti-Catholic smear. That's why it's imperative that Catho...

As some smart blogger suggested early this morning (if only your blogstress could recall which one), the Bush administration has cleverly decided now is the time to move the media off the topic of its disgraced boy wonder. How better to do so than with a Supreme Court nomination? The administration’s first, at that. Despite the buzz surrounding the Fifth Circuit’s Edith Clement, your cybertrix fears the nomination of a different brainy blonde. Her name is Mary Ann Glendon, the Vatican’s favorite exemplar of a woman’s special nature. Ms. Glendon today toils as a law professor at Harvard, but in the past she has served the Vatican in several capacities, most notably as the head of the Holy See’s delegation to the 1995 UN Conference on Women in Beijing. Stay tuned.

From the Wall Street Journal we learn today of a State Department memo , said to have traveled with President Bush on Air Force One during his 2003 African visit, that clearly indicated the status of Valerie Plame as a CIA employee and wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson as "sensitive" and not to be shared. The WSJ story, by Anne Marie Squeo and John D. McKinnon, also takes issue with Mr. Wilson's assertion that his investigative trip to Niger was made to satisfy a request from the vice president's office. Your blogstress is a bit chagrined at that, having accepted Mr. Wilson's provenance claim at face value in yesterday's post. Today she defers to Squeo and McKinnon. Whatever one thinks of the Wall Street Journal editorial and opinion page (and one should, indeed, think not well of it), the paper's news reporting is unsurpassed. On a lighter note, don't forget to read your Webwench's favorite satirist, Tom Burka, on the Rove affair: Rove Entirely D...

Despite her legendarily flexible musculature, your blogstress finds herself a bit knotted up over this whole Rove-Plame-Cooper-Miller affair. At first, your cybertrix just hated--HAY-TED--that mean Patrick Fitzgerald , the overzealous special prosecutor who, in his quest to determine just who in the Bush administration leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative to several reporters, ran all amok over the First Amendment and put the New York Times' Judith Miller in jail for failing to fold when the court demanded she name her source. (Most commentators have failed to note that it was the only woman among the three targeted reporters who stuck to her guns regarding her confidentiality agreement.) Truly, how could a guerrila journalist such as your Webwench--whose very existence rests on an enlightened reading of the U.S. Constitution --possibly like a prosecutor like that? How high does it go? Then we learned the rumors were true: that presidential advisor Karl Rove--that smu...

Much has happened since your blogstress last checked in. The London bombings rendered her speechless but, sadly, not surprised. Is there a person left on earth who actually believes that the war in Iraq is going to save us from terrorists? On that point, a bit of old news bears repeating. According to a recent Zogby poll , 4 in 10 Americans believe that President Bush should be impeached if it is proven that he was lying about Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Even more instructive is the breakdown by party of pro-impeachment respondents. While Democrats comprised the majority (59%), one quarter of the Republicans questioned came down on the same side. So much for the rabid loyalty to Bush that marked the early months of the war. These results would suggest a Bush impeachment to be a real possibility. Might we see the investigation of Karl Rove as a first step toward that end? (One can always hope, n'est-ce pas ?)

La mère de la blogstress always contended that momentous things happen in threes. Accepting this axiom, your cybertrix deduces that, over the course of the last 24 hours, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is having a very big day. Let's begin with the jailing of Judith Miller , the New York Times reporter who has refused to give up the anonymous source who told her that a certain ambassador's wife was a CIA agent. Note that Miller never wrote about it, and that although at least one of her colleagues, Matt Cooper of Time , already gave up his source. Miller is clearly being made an example of. Anybody sense a chill in the air? Today also brought the news that L. Patrick Gray, otherwise known as Deep Throat's boss at the FBI, died yesterday at the age of 88. It's as if the good Lord kept him around just long enough to express (to ABC News) his shock that his trusted deputy had betrayed him to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post . And speaking of Mr. Woo...

Your blogstress begs the forgiveness of her readers. Yes, your cybertrix is aware of all manner of Very Important Matters on which she should be writing (for instance, the prosecutor in the Plame leak case making Time reporter Matt Cooper testify before a grand jury even though his feckless boss, Norman Pearlstine, forked Cooper's notes over to the court. Presumed to be in those notes is the name of the administration official who leaked to Cooper the information that Valerie Plame, wife of diplomat and Bush critic Joseph Wilson, was employed by the CIA.) But what is there really to say? That the republic has broken down? We knew that already. So, instead your Webwench delights in the weirdness of a story in today's New York Times about a scientific study that set out to discover whether or not male bisexuals actually exist. The scientists made their determination (essentially, that there does not, so far, appear to be any such creature as a male bisexual), by conducti...

With so much Constitution-threatening action going on all around us, your blogstress finds herself a bit breathless as she tries to earn her keep as a prima pontificata . With bosom heaving, your cybertrix here notes her earlier failure to comment on the shameful actions of Time magazine in turning over documents that identify an heretofore confidential source to reporter Matt Cooper in the matter of Valerie Plame's "outing". You'll recall that Ms. Plame's status as a CIA operative was revealed to reporters, apparently by someone in the White House, as an apparent payback to Ms. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who questioned the veracity of the Administration's claims regarding Sadam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Got that? Anyway, Norman Pearlstine, Time Inc.'s top honcho, forked over Cooper's notes to the judge who demanded them, despite the fact that Cooper said he was willing to risk jail in order to pr...

Your blogstress, in her distress over the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, has penned a piece for The American Prospect Online on just what women stand to lose with O'Connor's farewell. O'Connor has rendered her share of troubling decisions pertaining to women's rights--most notably, her opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the case that greatly broadened states' rights to restrict abortion rights. But, ironically, she may be largely responsible for the fact that Roe v. Wade , however weakened, remains in effect. And she has certainly proven herself to be a tigress when it comes to protecting women from sexual harassment in the workplace. But her most significant achievement of all may be that, in her sometimes counterintuitive opinions, she became the very embodiment of the living Constitution--an entity that at least two of the currently seated justices would like to kill.

With all of the speculation concerning an anticipated resignation on the Supreme Court, today's announcement by Sandra Day O'Connor came as something as a surprise. The focus had been on the frail-looking Chief Justice William Rehnnquist, who is suffering from thyroid cancer. Given the fact that O'Connor, the high court's "swing" voter, will doubtless be replaced by a hard-rightie, today signals a dark day for women. By feminist standards, O'Connor's voting record was far from perfect, but she has helped to keep Roe v. Wade from being overturned in its entirety, and joined the decision that made sexual harassment an illegal form of discrimination. Soon, we may find ourselves saying good-bye to all that.