JOHN ROBERTS / ADVOCATE FOR THE RIGHT
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity: George Bernard Shaw
Now we know why George Bush picked John Roberts for the Supreme Court ~ they are joined at the hip in their indifference toward racial and sexual discrimination as well as civil and voting rights legislation. Far from being a moderate ~ Roberts is a documented strong advocate for the conservative right wing of the Republican party.
The Progressive summarizes the Washington Post's recent report of how Roberts worked to restrict voting and civil rights.
Allen L Roland
ROBERTS WORKED TO RESTRICT CIVIL RIGHTS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073100696.html
WASHINGTON POST - In the early 1980s, a young intellectual lawyer named John G. Roberts Jr. was part of the vanguard of a conservative political revolution in civil rights, advocating new legal theories and helping enforce the Reagan administration's effort to curtail the use of courts to remedy racial and sexual discrimination.
In prolific missives of a few pages and densely written 30-page legal memos, Roberts -- who co-workers recall had primary responsibility for civil rights matters in his office -- consistently sought to bolster the legal reasoning for the administration's new stances and to burnish its presentation of the policies to Congress and the public.
A review of Roberts's papers from his time at the Justice Department and interviews with his contemporaries show he was deeply involved with the Reagan administration's efforts to recast the way government and the courts approached civil rights. He wrote vigorous defenses, for example, of the administration's version of a voting rights bill, opposed by Congress, that would have narrowed the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
He challenged arguments by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in favor of busing and affirmative action. He described a Supreme Court decision broadening the rights of individuals to sue states for civil rights violations as causing "damage" to administration policies, and he urged that legislation be drafted to reverse it.
And he wrote a memo arguing that it was constitutionally acceptable for Congress to strip the Supreme Court of its ability to hear broad classes of civil rights cases.
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