Can We Get Some New Senators?

I'm actually truly enjoying the Roberts confirmation hearings. Late at night, when I get home, I get to watch this stuff while working or working out, and it's great stuff. Okay, I'm a geek, but for legal and political geeks, this stuff is great.

On one side, you have a damn smart lawyer, answering questions (purportedly) about the law. It's pretty clear that Roberts is brilliant (which is what I'd expect from a fellow HLS alum), but his ability to discourse intelligently about Constitutional law makes me think he'd have been a great Con Law professor as well. Of course, the questions he would have received in his class might have been more intelligent than the bloviating and posturing we've seen from Senators thus far...

Democratic senators angrily accused John G. Roberts Jr. yesterday of hiding his views on end-of-life questions, privacy and other contentious issues, but the nominee to be the nation's 17th chief justice refused to be drawn out, and his Republican supporters said his confirmation is virtually assured.

Democrats' frustration boiled over several times during the eight hours of questioning, as Roberts repeatedly declined to discuss his personal or judicial views on matters that he said could come before the court someday. Senators implored him to speak from the heart, but Roberts told them time and again that he would be guided by "the rule of law."

"We are rolling the dice with you, Judge," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said. "It's kind of interesting, this Kabuki dance we have in these hearings here, as if the public doesn't have a right to know what you think about fundamental issues facing them."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused Roberts of treating the hearing room as a "cone of silence." "It seems strange, I think, to the American people that you can't talk about decided cases -- past cases, not future cases -- when you've been nominated to the most important job in the federal judiciary," the senator said.

Roberts asked for extra time to defend himself. "I think I have been more forthcoming than any of the other nominees," said Roberts, who had reviewed the confirmation hearing testimony of all the sitting Supreme Court justices in preparation for his hearing. "It is not a process under which senators get to say: 'I want you to rule this way, this way and this way. And if you tell me you'll rule this way, this way and this way, I'll vote for you.' Judges are not politicians. They cannot promise to do certain things in exchange for votes."

To be fair, this was better than Biden's idiotic posturing on day one. As Ed Morrissey noted at Captain's Quarters....

At least Leahy allowed Roberts to answer and appeared to listen to the responses. Ted Kennedy had his head buried in his notes while sonorously reading aloud, and simply moved on awkwardly to his next prepared question regardless of whatever Roberts answered. He seemed to understand that Roberts was getting the best of him by pointing out Kennedy's mischaracterizations of his positions, because he stopped pausing between the questions at about the midpoint of his scheduled time. Specter had to rebuke him several times to allow Roberts to answer, which seemed to surprise Kennedy, who at times looked rather confused. (At a break with reporters shortly afterwards, he looked very ill, flushed and panting as though he could not catch his breath.)

But Joe Biden, as usual, provided the nadir of the opposition. A legend in his own mind, Biden laid what he must have thought was a brilliant rhetorical trap for Roberts by pouncing on Ruth Ginsburg's answers on a specific case to argue that Roberts' refusal to comment on specific cases did not meet the so-called "Ginsburg rule". However, he rather stupidly glossed over the fact that Ginsburg had written extensively about that case and her personal opinion of it, and therefore had already blown her judicial distance on the issue. Roberts pointed out the difference and implied that her testimony didn't violate the Ginsburg test as a result, whereupon Biden started waving around papers and said he could come up with a half-hour of other examples, but chose to cite ... none.

It got worse after that.

Biden then asked a series of questions based on old staff memos, each time getting more and more animated and each time cutting off the answers. Specter not only repeatedly reminded Biden to allow Roberts to answer, but finally had to remind Biden that the entire purpose of the committee hearing was to get Roberts' answers, not Joe Biden's filibustering. Biden, unbelievably, then complained not once but several times that Roberts' answers ate up too much of Biden's time. When rebuked, Biden made childish asides that he confused with wit, such as "But his answers are misleading," when Biden could hardly have heard anything Roberts had tried to say.

I'm reminded of why John Kerry was such an awful Presidential candidate, and why Senators so often fail when they run for President. Maybe it's the air in the upper chamber or something, but the more time these guys spend on TV, the less I like them.