AddieStan

NASHVILLE, TENN.—-The discipline was dazzling--everybody on the same page. The usual rhetoric was deployed--the railing against "activist judges," waxings on the "originial intent" of the Constitution’s framers; abortion defined as baby-killing; the horror of "homosexual sodomy." It was a typical assemblage of speakers for a right-wing confab: 10 men, 2 women, all but one of them white. As usual, a couple of right-wing Catholics made common cause with right-wing Protestant evangelicals. Yet, for all that, this second incarnation of the Family Research Council’s second "Justice Sunday" simulcast fell a bit flat. Perhaps it was the lack of zealous enthusiasm for the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, most probably due to the revelation that, while in private practice, Judge Roberts did pro bono work on behalf of gay rights activists who ultimately prevailed in overturning an anti-gay Colorado statute passed through referendum, a...

On Beliefnet today, you will find your blogstress's rejoinder to the nasty bit of business published on that otherwise laudable site by William Donohue, president of the Catholic League.

If the Roberts nomination finds itself in the teeniest bit of trouble, it's the righties and not the Democrats who pose the threat. The news earlier this week, as reported by Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times , that Judge Roberts, then a private attorney, performed pro bono work for gay rights activists who challenged--and won before the Supreme Court--the statute championed by James Dobson that would have sanctioned all manner of discrimination against non-heterosexuals, has caused a bit of discomfort on the right. At the Web site of the Agape Press, Bill Fancher interviews Paul Weyrich , who expresses his dismay: The revelation that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was instrumental in a homosexual rights ruling has stunned his supporters. The Romer v. Evans decision, which overturned a Colorado initiative that denied special rights to homosexuals, is considered among the most egregious examples of judicial activism ever. Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, who...

Having cast her customary spell of glamour over all her endeavors, your blogstress now finds herself in much excellent company--including that of writers much better-paid than she--in the conduct of alleged anti-Catholic bigotry. Christopher Hitchens has kicked up quite a bit of dust on Slate with a harangue about the John Roberts nomination and the Church of Rome, a piece that encompasses an amusing aside about the Vatican's rescue of Cardinal Bernard Law, the discraced former archbishop of Boston. (A similar rescue was made for Father Paul Marcinkus of Chicago, who was wanted for financial shenanigans in that toddlin' town, so, at the pope's invitation, he secreted himself away in some catacomb off St. Peter's Square.) A very sane young man, James Joyner of Outside the Beltway , has taken up Hitchens' larger argument, engaging in a go-round with Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review. Click here to read Joyner

Oh, how it pains your blogstress to contemplate the Specter of traffic being driven from her erudite site to something called RedState , however, she finds herself driven to taking the high road on a bit of low culture executed rather brilliantly by State author Mark Kilmer, in his review of the Sunday talk shows: Arlen Specter might have violated his leash law, made when the Senate GOP agreed to let him be Judiciary chairman in January despite strong objections, that he would support the President's nominees. With Judge John Roberts, Specter says that he will make up his mind when the process is complete. Those of you who remember Specter taking a licking from the values crowd back in January will know what Kilmer is talking about. Specter committed the infamous crime of predicting that an anti-abortion Supreme Court nominee would be unlikely to make it out of committee. We'll see about that, hmm? To read more about Specter's lonely choice in the GOP, click here.

Used to toiling in obscurity, your blogstress is amazed at the continued attention her July 20th piece for The American Prospect Online has continued to attract. Who knew that pointing out the shrewdness of the president's men in their choice of a Supreme Court nominee could be so controversial? Yesterday's Boston Herald carries this piece , blessedly judgment-neutral. The Sunday Boston Globe offered this op-ed column from Cathy Young of Reason magazine.

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...