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Rumors
are flying in Washington about a secret that Supreme Court nominee John
Roberts (above) shares with current and former Supreme Court Justices
like Clarence Thomas (below) and Roger Taney (even further below)
Inside
today's Spy: Personal Finance: How you can
cash in on the equity in your home. Our
own Maria Boroaroma shows how you can take out hundreds of thousands in
cash with today's powerful never paydown mortgage reset
options.
Politics: Social
Security reform – an idea whose time has come.
Ace Columnist Hacky Carp sez that whiny bleeding heart liberals won't
be able to sidetrack the President's unstoppable Social Security reform
express.
Automotive: We
test drive the new Hummer H2: four tons of 4WD driving excitement!
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news: A
2004 graduate of Old Sludgebury High School becomes the Sludge Valley's
34th Iraq war fatality. Page 94 (beneath photos of bodacious
bikini-clad teenage girls beating the heat at area beaches)
| By Scott V. Sandiford
Justice Editor
WASHINGTON,
D.C. – John Roberts's
fast track to confirmation as Chief Justice of the United
States may have hit a yellow signal, according to Washington
insiders. Roberts, a long-time
Republican lawyer and
two-year veteran of the Court of Appeals in Washington, has in recent
days been plagued by rumors about his personal life, which threaten to
become a major issue at his upcoming hearings before the Senate
Judiciary Committee. Although no
senior Democrat was willing to go on the record with accusations about
the well-groomed jurist, several have told the Spy that they have
reason to believe that Roberts is in fact a douchebag. They cite a number of items in his personal
history, each of them arguably innocent when taken in isolation but
together
painting a portrait of someone who may be well be a
practicing douchebag. For
example, they note that he attended both Harvard College and Harvard
Law School. "Multiple Harvard degrees are a danger sign of
douchebaggery. Even more problematic, he hasn't been able to
produce a single friend who can provide first-hand evidence that in
fact Roberts was not just another Harvard douchebag," our sources said. In
his defense, White House sources argue that his
educational background could have been worse,
pointing to the
absence of any matriculation at either Yale or Princeton. But
the rumormongers continue to rummage through Roberts's past, and claim
to have unearthed other damning evidence. For example, they
assert that even before attending Harvard, Roberts studied Latin for
four years at prep school. "Douchebag?" our source
said. "Res ipsa
loquitur." The
same source pointed us to a
report in The
New York Times alleging that Roberts punctuated
his prep school career by singing in drag in a student musical
production.
According
to the whisper campaign, the troubling indications of possible
douchebagosity continued during Roberts's professional career, most of
which was spent as a partner in a big Washington law firm. While
Roberts's defenders say he mingled with associates and other lackeys in
the firm cafeteria, our sources say that's just because he was too
cheap to go out to lunch. The
anonymous attackers
also question why any rich, successful, Ivy League educated lawyer
would not be able to find a suitable spouse until his forties.
"It'd be one thing if he was banging models on his sailboat
in
the Caribbean, but come on – he was just grinding
away at his desk on K Street," our source said. Although
the White House initially tried to laugh off rumors about Judge Roberts
by threatening to send inquiring journalists to Guantanamo Bay, in
recent days, the political maestros shepherding Roberts through the
confirmation process have begun to address the charges head on. "Whether
John Roberts now or sometime in past was a douchebag or engaged in
douchey practices isn't relevant to his fitness to serve on the Supreme
Court," argued White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. "Some
of our finest jurists have been accused of behaving like
douchebags," Bolten continued. He cited Clarence Thomas as an
example of a Supreme Court Justice who is both an excellent Justice
and a flaming douchebag. On
Capital Hill,
influential Senators don't expect the whisper campaign to have any
effect on Roberts's chances of being confirmed. "John
Roberts is no douchebag," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman
and proud Republican Arlen Specter. "If he's a closet douchebag, then
I'm a member
of
the Democratic Party." "And a
douchebag."
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