Stalling, Lies, Probes, and Tiny Dancers

The John Roberts nomination journey has been fairly quiet, but has seen a few interesting developments so far.

Today's Washington Post reports that the White House is planning to release Roberts' records from his time as counsel to the Reagan and Bush I administrations, but is currently stalling while aides furiously review the 50,000+ pages of documents before Democrats get a crack at them.

They seriously didn't already have someone do this? Everyone's known for years Bush would appoint a Supreme Court Justice and no one in the administration had the frontrunners full records investigated for politically hurtful material? Amazing.

While the Right stonewalls, some on the Left are getting a bit nasty. In the first downright ugly chapter of the con-firmation battle, NARAL has released a grossly manipulative ad suggesting that Roberts wrote a brief defending abortion clinic bombings. The ad, which UPenn's Annenberg FactCheck.org has already called downright false, juxtaposes pic-tures of Roberts and his brief with foot-age from a 1998 abortion clinic bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. A victim tells viewers she was almost killed that day and so "must speak out:" a narrator urges viewers to oppose Roberts because "America can't afford a Justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans." A few problems:

**The Roberts' brief was filed in 1991, 7 years before the 1998 Birmingham bombing the footage and victim testimonial strongly suggest he defended.
**Roberts' brief did not concern bombings at abortion clinics, but rather the practice of forming human blockades to prevent women from entering.
**Finally, while the brief argued that the law in question did not prohibit clinic-blockings, it stated that other pre-existing state laws did.

In sum, not only did Roberts not condone bombings at clinics, he didn't even condone aggressive civil disobedience. More should be expected from NARAL, who is either guilty of cheap politics or horrendous fact-checking.

The other issue drawing anger from the right is the charge that the NY Times has been pursuing the adoption records of Roberts two children, contacting numerous adoption lawyers to seek ways they might get their hands on the papers. The Times recently denied it was still pursuing the records after being blasted by the National Council for Adoption and Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who called their actions "reprehensible."

The confirmation process is starting to grow testy, but the highlight so far has been its opening dance, sadly missed by a national TV audience.

While Roberts was unveiled to America in a formal and contrived prime-time press conference, his adopted son John got a serious case of Saturday Night Fever and unleashed a series of dance moves the likes of which the White House has never seen. Though little John's moves were off-camera they delighted the in-house crowd (though not his mother and sister, apparently) and photos of junior's move busting have met rave reviews in the blogosphere. I'm late, but how can I not join in the adoration.
John starts out with a solid, enthusiastic lawnmower... ...then steps toward the Commander-in-Chief to slow it down with the robot...
Then jumps out in his saddle shoes for an all-out throwdown. Dance, Johnnie, DANCE!!

I hope we can all agree on little John, if not his non-dancing Dad.