Political Affairs Magazine: Roberts a "smart rich country club Repub...

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

...chosen by some of his by some of his cruder, less intelligent brethren, Bush and his advisors, to run interference for them in the Supreme Court."

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/1589/1/32/



John Roberts: A Republican Great Gatsby?

By Norman Markowitz

Roberts worked in the Justice Department in the Reagan administration as a rightwing young attorney whose memos, those so far released, show him prodding senior rightwing Republican Justice Department officials like William French Smith and Theodore Olson to be more militantly rightwing in their actions. Roberts for example favored administration support for a bill outlawing school busing to facilitate integration even though the Supreme Court had previously declared busing for those purposes to be legal for those purposes. His cover story was that busing produced "white flight." Roberts stated his opposition to affirmative action because it meant the recruitment of "unqualified candidates"

At the same time, Roberts clearly stated his opposition to court decisions to restrict sectarian prayers in public schools and court opposition to the use of public funds for parochial schools. His MO was to express sympathy for grievants, that is, minorities and women who were struggling for equal rights, but to contend that the policies they advocated would make matters worse for them one way or another. To me this sounds suspiciously like the old refrain of keeping you place, waiting fifty-years, one hundred years, to get to the front of the bus, to get the job others get because they don’t have your color or gender, and realize that it is for your own good.

Out of government, Roberts served as a high corporate lawyer, earning in recent years a seven figure annual income. In that role, he represented companies in conflict with each other and in conflict with their workers. This can and should be highlighted in the campaign against him. Roberts is a throwback to the powerful corporate lawyers who from the 1870s to the 1930s, dominated the Supreme Court. They first invented and defended the "freedom of contract" and legal due process for the Trusts, then they built a wall of protection in federal law for those corporations against both state and federal legislation regulations that benefited workers and the whole people. Roberts, in the mold of the contemporary ultra right goes beyond those corporate lawyers in his opposition to reproductive rights (which did not exist in their time in law) and the separation of church and state (which did).

John Roberts is a smart rich country club Republican chosen by some of his by some of his cruder, less intelligent brethren, Bush and his advisors, to run interference for them in the Supreme Court. They can be sure that he will do his job because he always has. A successful and broad fight against Roberts’ confirmation would connect the class question with Roberts’ right-wing stands on civil rights and reproductive rights. Further, progressives should begin to actively advocate the future appointment of progressive judges, in the tradition of Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall, to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. My first choice would be Lani Guinier.

--Norman Markowitz may be reached at [e-mail].

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1. '...To me this sounds suspiciously

like the old refrain of keeping you place, waiting fifty-years, one hundred years, to get to the front of the bus, to get the job others get because they don’t have your color or gender, and realize that it is for your own good....'

Classic rong wing 'strict father'.