What is Roberts' America like?

[struggle4progress]

<snip> Concepts that used to engender consensus -- equality, for instance, or liberty -- these days spur acidic debates about the courts' proper role in dictating what government, and citizens, may and may not do. The upshot has been fresh dispute over long-settled questions -- and a shift from the popular assumption that the Constitution was written largely to fulfill, not restrict, the American promise of freedom. <snip>

Years later, a young lawyer for the Reagan administration wrote of "the so-called right to privacy." His name was John Roberts, and a single dismissive remark may be no cause for alarm. Lawyers often craft arguments that run at right angles to their personal sentiments, and it would be heartening indeed to learn that Judge Roberts views the Constitution more generously than did the young White House lawyer. It's up to the Judiciary Committee to discern whether an evolution has occurred, or whether Roberts believes -- as do Supreme Court "originalists" Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- that the Constitution can only be legitimately viewed through the prism of its writers' chosen words.

American justice has flourished because the Constitution guarantees far more than its words convey. No leaps are necessary to embrace this notion, for it's made explicit in the document's Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

But for the Ninth Amendment, America would not be the nation it is. Without it, citizens would labor still under Jim Crow laws. Governments would still dictate what people may read, what political views they may hold, whether people in love may marry and whether couples may take charge of their reproductive lives. Freedom as Americans understand it would not exist; privacy, so fundamental to liberty, would be no more than a yearning. Certainly this isn't the legacy the nation's founders meant to leave us, nor is it a life Americans would likely tolerate.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5610899.html

[Demeter]

1. Roberts" America Looks Like Ireland Under Catholic Fascism

where tolerance is a mortal sin, and conformity is the law.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

2. Add in Ceaucescu's Romania

And we're almost there.

[tom_paine]

4. Don't forget Orwell's "1984"

The instruction manual for ALL Bushevik Leadership.

[pushycat]

3. A Roberts ethics question

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lubet13sep13,0,1515736.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

<snip>In the Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, a three-judge panel upheld the use of military tribunals to try detainees held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But the decision didn't stop there. Roberts and a second judge also ruled that the Geneva Convention — which guarantees basic human rights — does not protect alleged Al Qaeda members. The third judge disagreed on the question of the Geneva Convention. Thus, Roberts cast a deciding vote on an issue of central importance to the president, just as administration aides were holding out the possibility that the president might choose him for a place on the highest court in the American legal system.

He's clearly compromised but MSM says he'll be confirmed. WHY

[Demeter]

5. Considering How Many Constitutional Issues Will Come Up

while prosecuting the BushCo Crime family, Roberts will be recused all the time.