Pete Yost of the Associated Press begins an article titled “Roberts Has Backed Administration Policies” as follows:
John G. Roberts has demonstrated strong backing for Bush administration policies, ruling against Geneva Conventions protections for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in favor of keeping Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force records secret.
Roberts’ record as a federal appeals court judge is short but clear, and he has a trail of solid conservative credentials dating back to the administration of President Bush’s father.
Abortion rights groups say Roberts in a 1991 case tried to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, during his days as a lawyer in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. Roberts helped write a brief that stated, “We continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled.”
There you have it: Bush nominates administration stooge to Supreme Court. Of course, some observers would say that the AP’s headline could more accurately have read, “Administration’s Policies Generally Upheld In the Courts.” Roberts was part of a D.C. Circuit Court panel that unanimously (and correctly) reversed a rogue district court ruling on Guantanamo Bay and the Geneva Convention. As for the records of Vice-President Cheney’s energy task force, the Supreme Court agreed with Judge Roberts’ position by a 7-2 vote.
The fact is that liberals have brought many court challenges against the administration, few of which were meritorious, and few of which have succeeded. It is possible, I suppose, that President Bush could appoint to the Supreme Court a judge who consistently sided with the minority in opposition to his administration. But is that really what the Associated Press expected?
UPDATE: I just noticed another error in the article. It says: “Roberts is a member of the conservative Federalist Society, which has influenced Bush’s judicial picks.” This has been reported in dozens of mainstream outlets today, but it isn’t true. Roberts says that he has given a speech or two to Federalist meetings, but has never been a member of the organization. But that’s how the MSM operate: they read something and repeat it without doing any fact-checking.
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