The Massachusetts Spy Volume CCXXXV, Number 94   September 17, 2005 

Editors' Note: News continues to pour in from Zontar, a small planet orbiting the triple sun of Remulac in a galaxy far, far away. It's a bizarre alien civilization totally unlike our own, but nonetheless – [We still get the setup – Ed.]

ROBERTS TOLD
TO ANSWER
ALL QUESTIONS

By Tom Cruise
Zontar Bureau

the charming and affable John Roberts

The affable John Roberts was not making any friends on Capitol Hill last week

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After three days of hearing nothing but obfuscation and evasion from the man nominated to be the next Chief Justice of the United States, the patience of the Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee finally snapped late Friday.

As the afternoon wore on, an obviously exasperated Joe Biden (D - MBNA) exploded, saying: "I've been sitting here for three days and I still haven't heard anything that suggests that you're going to respect a woman's right to control her own body or the Congress's right to legislate in matters that may have an impact on interstate commerce."

"If you think that we're going to move this nomination forward without straight answers from you, then you took one too many bong hits from Doug Ginsburg at Harvard," Sen. Biden told Judge Roberts.

Biden, whose shaved head glistened under the bright TV lights, had tried to get Judge Roberts to answer whether he would vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, the seminal [So to speak – Ed.] Supreme Court decision that safeguarded a woman's right to an abortion in the first two trimesters of pregnancy.

Biden told the nominee: "I levelled with the American people when I got rid of my hideous hair plugs. Now it's time for you to do the same."

To the guffaws of the crowd, Roberts replied: "But I'm still able to get away with my combover, Senator."

But the laughter was short lived, as Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D – Chivas Regal) echoed Sen. Biden's concerns: "Judge Roberts, you can sit here and try to avoid answering our questions, but you'll never get any closer to the Supreme Court building than you are today."

Kennedy announced that the 45-member Democratic Senate caucus, during their midday Scotch [Surely, lunch? – Ed.] break, had decided unanimously to filibuster the nomination until they had been explicitly assured by Judge Roberts that he would not join extremist justices Clarence "Yassuh" Thomas and Antonin "I am the law" Scalia in attempting to overturn Roe, the Commerce Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment.

Kennedy's announcement immediately provoked cries of outrage from the Republican majority. Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R – Arlen Specter) fulminated that he had never heard anything so improper in his entire Senate career.

Sen. Pat Leahy (D – Granite) replied: "Then perhaps you forgot your miserable effort to smear Anita Hill during the Thomas confirmation hearings, Senator. As a result, you saddled this country with the most ideologically extreme and incompetent justice in American history. That won't happen again on my watch."

the roberts nomination provoked an earnest exchange of views in the Senate
Senators vigorously debated the Roberts nomination last week without reaching a conclusion

As a topper, Sen. Leahy told the Committee that there of course could be no consideration of Judge Roberts until the White House released Roberts' memos during his service as Deputy Solicitor General. "These memos are political documents of great relevance to our work," Sen. Leahy explained. "Their release has nothing to do with attorney-client privilege, which is intended to give clients the ability to confide facts to their counsel and which in any case a Republican-dominated Supreme Court has said does not apply to government lawyers, at least in Democratic administrations."

The angry Republicans could do nothing in the face of unified Democratic opposition. "I've never seen the minority so united and determined in my six months in the Senate," commented Sen. Tom "the Fixer" Coburn (R – Lunatic Fringe). "Too bad I can't sterilize any of them like my Medicaid patients back in Oklahoma."

The impressive showing of Democratic solidarity presented yet another challenge to the already-weakened Bush Administration, whose popularity has declined to record lows as a result of its inept response to Hurricane Katrina, the endless and pointless war in Iraq, high gas prices and cruel cuts in Social Security.

And the Democrats know it, too. "Now is the time to pile on George Bush," commented Sen. Mary Landrieu (D – Devastation). "We've got Bush by the balls and we're going to squeeze 'em 'till he yowls," she said with a grin.

OR FIRST

The famously pro-war [Christopher] Hitchens was just coming off of a summer fellowship with the right-wing Hoover Institution, and his sentiments about "pseudo-intellectuals" and highbrow reporters speaks volumes about the current uneasy state of mind of those who get paid to share their opinions for a living.

Mr. Hitchens, who writes for Slate and The Atlantic Monthly [or anyone else who'll pay – Ed.], clarified what world he's currently drinking [Surely, living? – Ed.] in. "It's a matter of solidarity with the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, and trying to turn American policy in their favor," said Mr. Hitchens. "I'm on their side, win or lose . . . . I could never publish an article saying, 'Come to think of it, we never should have done this,' because I could never look them in the face . . . . So, no. I don't have any second thoughts."

–  The New York Observer, August 29, 2005 at 7.