Spun Silly

"Confronted with a Supreme Court nominee they believe to be deeply conservative -- but with little evidence to prove it -- Senate Democrats have begun laying the groundwork for a battle with the Bush administration over access to documents and memos that John Roberts Jr. wrote while working in two Republican administrations."

The Boston Globe has one of those "troubling record" stories that no one had time to research on Tuesday:

"The federalist legal philosophy embraced by Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. could pose an obstacle to enforcement of environmental laws, limiting the federal government's power to protect endangered species and fragile ecosystems.

"Environmental groups yesterday expressed concern about Roberts's dissent in the 2003 case of a rare toad whose habitat in California was threatened by development. As a federal appeals court judge, Roberts contended that the toad was not protected by federal law because it lives only in California, and the federal government can only regulate matters involving more than one state."

Fred Barnes likes the Roberts pick -- but not that much:

"In choosing among judicial conservatives, there are safe picks and risky picks. With Roberts, Bush took the safe route. Related to this, there are cautious judicial conservatives and bold judicial conservatives. The president tilted to the cautious side in naming Roberts.

"How safe was the pick? The answer is very. This is partly because of his impressive credentials as a brilliant legal scholar and man of solid temperament and character. More important, he's already been tested in the Senate and passed muster. In 2003, his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 16-3 vote. He cleared the full Senate on a voice vote. If you are committed to choosing a genuine judicial conservative, it doesn't get much safer than Roberts. . . .

"More than any decision in Bush's second term, conservatives around the country have been focused on what he'd do when faced with a Supreme Court vacancy. Their hope was for a demonstrably conservative nominee with a streak of daring. In Roberts, they didn't get one, at least from all appearances. He's an establishment conservative, respected as a private attorney and admired as a judge. Audacious he is not. On the other hand, there's little concern that he might drift sharply to the left as Justice David Souter, nominated by the elder President Bush, has."

New Republic man Ryan Lizza also approves, sort of -- and wonders how the president got there:

"Why did George W. Bush make such a seemingly responsible choice? There is little in the history of Bush's decision-making that would have predicted the president would settle on someone like John Roberts for the Supreme Court.

"Most of Bush's normal instincts were somehow kept in check. He did not, as had been predicted for years, resort to cronyism and appoint his old friend, the mediocre Texas attorney Alberto Gonzales, whose chief qualification was supposedly the one Bush prizes above all, loyalty. Bush did not even give in to his much cultivated anti-elitist and anti-Washington impulses. He is clearly no Nixon, who labored obsessively to find a nominee from the south or west and someone who would 'stick it' to the Ivy League. Roberts was born in Indiana but is a creature of Cambridge (Harvard College, Harvard Law) and Washington (Hogan & Hartson, the Justice Department).

"Bush did not even pick someone with a particularly compelling life story. . . .

"The Democrats' strategy of unified opposition and obstruction may finally have chastened the White House. Democrats have recently made life miserable for Bush. They have killed Social Security and ground the rest of Bush's domestic agenda to a halt. They have eaten up weeks of valuable time in the Senate with their opposition to lower court nominees. They killed John Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations. Democrats have been warned by Republicans that their obstructionism will cost them at the polls, but it may have forced Bush into choosing a more conciliatory nominee. If O'Connor had resigned immediately after Bush's reelection one has to imagine that Bush would have picked a more mischievous jurist. So while conservatives are hailing the Roberts pick, it may actually be a sign of Bush's current weakness."

The Note adds this insider detail:

"The factor we think most likely to ensure Judge Roberts' confirmation: that the Washington establishment, and the media establishment, know him and like him. Do not underestimate how hard it will be for Democrats to tar a potential nominee who has given working Washington journalists his cell phone number and who is generally seen as a mensch."

Jeff Jarvis has an ordinary-guy reaction:

"The most striking thing about John Roberts -- so far -- is how damned young he looks. To make their legal legacies last longer, presidents will be drafting justices the way they draft basketball players, out of high school. Better yet: Junior high, when they're still virgins and haven't inhaled and haven't written anything embarrassing except for that poetry they had to do in English class."

Finally, the Los Angeles Times has become the biggest American newspaper to be led by a black editor. Here's my dispatch, free of charge.