Roberts Protected Reagan from His "Most Zealous Instincts"
Roberts Protected Reagan from His "Most Zealous Instincts"
Todd Purdum and John Broder report out the latest release of files from the work product of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, "Nominee's Early Files Show Many Cautions for Top Officials, Including Reagan."
The Times portrays Reagan's "most zealous instincts": "As a young lawyer in the Reagan White House, it was John G. Roberts Jr. who often found himself urging caution on his elders - including the president himself - in an effort to shield them from not only legal errors but also political blunders and public relations missteps, great and small. Newly released documents from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library reflect Mr. Roberts's repeated efforts to protect Mr. Reagan and his aides and supporters from some of their own most zealous instincts. He warned against excessive public presidential support for the Nicaraguan contra rebels."
The Times also describes Roberts in starkly ideological terms: "Like the thousands of pages of documents already released, the new files opened by the National Archives on Thursday show Mr. Roberts to be a faithful foot soldier in the conservative revolution that Ronald Reagan brought to Washington, embracing and echoing the administration's opposition to liberal programs like affirmative action and a controversial remedy for employment discrimination against women known as 'comparable worth.'"
To its half-credit, the Times' story is actually far milder than the Washington Post's analysis of the latest document dump, which carries the straight-from-the-left headline "Roberts Resisted Women's Rights," a story
Brent Baker takes apart on the MRC's Newsbusters blog.
To read Purdum and Broder on Roberts, click here.
"Open Minds" in a Conservative State? Shocking
New movie critic Jeannette Catsoulis reviews "This Divided State," a documentary on left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore's controversial visit to Utah Valley State College, a conservative college bastion. Her review concludes with liberal patronization: "'This Divided State' may ring with death threats and heave with animosity, but its final message is a hopeful one: in one of the most conservative states in the country, there are at least as many open minds as closed ones."
From her previous critical perch at the Las Vegas Mercury, the open-minded Catsoulis calledBill O'Reilly "despicable."
For the rest of the review, click here.
Bush's Stance on ICC "Roils" Times
A Friday Page One story from Juan Forero, "Bush's Aid Cuts On Court Issue Roil Neighbors," provides a slanted take on Bush's battle over the jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court.
"Three years ago the Bush administration began prodding countries to shield Americans from the fledgling International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was intended to be the first permanent tribunal for prosecuting crimes like genocide. The United States has since cut aid to some two dozen nations that refused to sign immunity agreements that American officials say are intended to protect American soldiers and policy makers from politically motivated prosecutions. To the Bush administration, the aid cuts are the price paid for refusing to offer support in an area where it views the United States, with its military might stretched across the globe, as being uniquely vulnerable."
Of course, that's not the paper's final word: "But particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, home to 12 nations that have been penalized, the cuts are generating strong resentment at what many see as heavy-handed diplomacy, officials and diplomats in seven countries said. More than that, some Americans are also beginning to question the policy, as political and military leaders in the region complain that the aid cuts are squandering good will and hurting their ability to cooperate in other important areas, like the campaigns against drugs and terrorism."
Later Forero laments: "Though the amounts are a pittance for Washington, their loss is being sorely felt in small countries."
Nowhere is the argument made that the ICC seems to fly in the face of the U.S. constitution, a point one assumes the liberal Times would respect. As of the libertarian Cato Institute noted: It appears that many of the legal safeguards American citizens enjoy under the U.S. Constitution would be suspended if they were brought before the court. Endangered constitutional protections include the prohibition against double jeopardy, the right to trial by an impartial jury, and the right of the accused to confront the witnesses against him.
For more on the ICC, click here.
