Comments on: The trouble with Roberts

By: Rick DeMent

Rick DeMent — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 20:46:17 +0000

Well mainstream conservatism is pretty much as “statest” as mainstream liberalism after everything is said and done. They just want to use police power for different things.

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:28:01 +0000

Even the WaPo’s own examples don’t bear out the statist overtones of that sentence in a vacuum. One of the cases they cite has him finding Congressional overreach in the Endangered Species Act. I suspect that in this case he may have “voted with the government” because a private liberal activist group sued the government for not being nearly statist enough.

By: SayUncle

SayUncle — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:23:50 +0000

I was troubled at the blanket statement which was its own paragraph and, left alone, denotes statism. However, I’m inclined to agree with your comments since they’re placed in a context.

By: countertop

countertop — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:19:22 +0000

Thats because the War on Some Drugs has caused 90% of the cases before him (or any other judge) to be simple appeals of drug trafficing convictions. Most are open and shut types.

I actually did a Lexis search for Robert’s opinions with the word “gun” 16 cases showed up, all were appeals of convictions with various drug dealers arguing some theme of “the drugs weren’t mine,” “the bitch set me up,” “I don’t know where the gun or drugs in may pants came from, but its not mine” and the best – “even though you saw a taxi cab in a deserted part of town known to be a place where cabbies are taken by armed robbers swerving down the street, the police had no probable cause to stop the cab, question if a robbery was occuring and search the passenger, and as a result the gun you found on the passenger that the cabbie claims is the gun he was being robbed with is the fruit of an illegal search.”

To the contrary Uncle, I would say I am thankful that Judge Roberts sided with the government in most of the cases he handled.