John Roberts's Judicial Temperament
When John Roberts worked for the Justice Department:
Roberts on Woman Lawyers: ...in reply to a suggestion from Linda Chavez, then the White House's director of public liaison. Chavez had proposed entering her deputy, Linda Arey, in a contest sponsored by the Clairol shampoo company to honor women who had changed their lives after age 30.... Roberts noted that... Arey had "encouraged many former homemakers to enter law school and become lawyers." Roberts said in his memo that he saw no legal objection to her taking part in the Clairol contest. Then he added a personal aside: "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide"...
Roberts on the Kickapoo Indians: In a January 1982 memo he wrote about legislation that he said would "heap benefits" on the Texas Band of Kickapoo Indians. Explaining their history, Roberts wrote, "The Kickapoos, originally from the Great Lakes area, did not stop running from their encounter with Europeans until they reached Mexico, where they now hold 17,000 acres of land" and "provide migrant labor in the U.S." Roberts said he had no legal objections to the bill, which he said was consistent with administration policy, but added that its "provisions seem overly generous -- particularly in light of the fact that these are, generally speaking, Mexican Indians and not American Indians"...
Roberts on the Religious Right: John Lofton... editor of the Conservative Digest... "I was to meet with the Attorney General William French Smith," Lofton notes, but before that happened, he says John Roberts wrote Smith a memo, instructing him "as to how to obfuscate the issue, basically -- how to answer the questions that I would raise." In the memo, Roberts advised the administration to distance itself from the Religious Right, and he went on to say that Christian leader Paul Weyrich was "no friend of ours," Lofton adds. However, he protests, "All Weyrich was trying to do, and myself and many other conservatives, was to make Reagan and his administration keep the promises they made when they were elected. That's all"...
Roberts on National ID Cards: As a legal aide in the Reagan administration in 1983, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. declared that he would support creating a national identification card in order to combat "the real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration"...
Roberts on Girl Scouts: May 7, 1985, Roberts addressed the ethics of allowing a Falls Church Girl Scout to meet the president in the midst of the annual cookie drive. "Elizabeth . . . has sold some 10,000 boxes and would like to sell one to the President. The little huckster thinks the President would like the Samoas," he wrote...
Roberts on Temperature Measurement: In reviewing a proposed economic message in 1986 in which Mr. Reagan was to say, "I just turned 75 today, but remember that's only 30 Celsius," Mr. Roberts noted that 75 Fahrenheit is actually 23.9 Celsius...
Just who in the Reagan White House thought that 75F was 30C? C = (5/9)(F-32): there's no plausible arithmetic mistake you can make to get from 75 to 30.
And we have ultra-conservative Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly saying that in 1985 Roberts was "a young bachelor" who "hadn't seen a whole lot of life at that point." Schlafly goes on to say, "I knew Lyn Arey. She is a fine woman." But on Roberts's contempt for Arey: "I don't think that disqualifies [Roberts]. I think he got married to a feminist; he's learned a lot."
He was then 32.
When do right-wing Republican women think men grow up (if they ever do grow up)?
It appears that Phyllis Schlafly doesn't endorse Roberts any more (but doesn't think him "disqualified"). Linda Chavez and Linda Arey appear to be slent.
