The musings of one Andrew Langer - defender of liberty, passionate protector of individual rights, foodie. (Note: Said Musings of Andrew Langer are his own, and the views represented herein are likewise his views, and not the views of any other people, entities, foodstuffs, etc [unless otherwise specifically and explicitly noted].)

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

The Envelope Please....

It's going to be John Roberts, currently serving on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

More in a few moments...

11 Comments:

Blogger Ilena Rose said...

May God protect women's rights ... very, very, very frightening.




President Bush has chosen federal appeals court judge John Roberts, 50, as his nominee to the Supreme Court...

'We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled'...

July 19, 2005 9:19 PM

 
Blogger Andrew Langer said...

Well, it looks like Ilena Rosenthal, Director of the now-suspended Humantics Foundation for Women (or would that be the former Director of the now-suspended Humantics Foundation for Women? - can you be the Director of something that legally has had its charter suspended?) has found this blog.

Ms. Rosenthal, underscoring that she has little understanding of the legal process beyond that which she parrots of others, quotes from a brief that represented the position of the first Bush administration.

Judge Roberts, in his capacity representing the first Bush administration, was required (as the responsibilities of his job would indicate) to represent the position of that administration and not, necessarily, his own. Such was the opinions expressed in this brief.

Judge Roberts’ critics cannot have it both ways. They cannot, with one hand, gripe about a lack of judicial experience and thus independent writing, and then, with the other, criticize him when he writes briefs on behalf of his current employers.

July 19, 2005 10:28 PM

 
Blogger Ilena Rose said...

LOL Silly Boy ... you posted one of your one-sided inaccurate diatribes that you are famous for ... all about me and The Humantics Foundation and had your "publicists" advertise it for you ...

Can you really be so ignorant to believe I would not defend myself?

LOL ... and you are the one always claiming to 'know' how I feel, or believe or think. Yet you think I'd not defend myself?

I'm speaking for myself ... and getting to realize that there may well be more benefits to not having a corporate status than having one ... it's all new to me ... my way in life is to find the blessing in all situations ...

There are even blessings to having one of the most aggressive and deceitful corporate shills attempting to destroy me Andy ... and that's to shine the light back on you.

You see, I KNOW you're a corporate lobbyist (registered, good boy)... and I KNOW that corporate lobbyists are lobbyists 24/7 ... it doesn't go away when they touch their little 'mouses' like you pretend.

Usenet and Blogs are just another media ... in fact THE up and coming media for corporate propagandists / lobbyists ... the millions paid them are staggering.

Back to my blessings ...

After you and Coleah and Team badgered the FDA until they removed the Humantics Foundation from the resource book ... I realized it was a great relief.

Regardless of the Smear Campaign you've waged against me, Andy, in tandem with "Dr Sue" Barrett & "Vera Teasdale" Polevoy ... we've provided free support and information to thousands ... including untold hundreds that came from the FDA books we were in for years.

Telephone calls, lots of sending free information to sick women worldwide is not a profitable endeavor ... nor is going without a salary for years and years.

I'm not alone though ... I know personally the "legitimate" support leaders in this cause ... and there is not one of them who, {unless they took money filtered down from industry through front groups etc.} has ever made a penny raising awareness to the dangers of breast implants.

To the contrary ... it has cost us all ... and far more have left the cause than are still speaking out. Far, far, more ... sadly.

Far too few have revealing websites .. your Myrl and Coleah nuked their support sites as soon as they allied with you! Schaezler never had one.

It's a work of love ... it certainly is for me and I know it is for many 'legitimate' support leaders.

So you and your Smear Campaign to the FDA saved the Humantics Foundation probably thousands of dollars and hundreds and hundreds of donated hours ... and blessedly, there are a few excellent resources ... before industry-backed Y-ME pops up in the Resource Book.

I had 9 years of providing free information to counter what I consider was the FDA WRONG information about many things ... so I'll thank you now for the savings.

Interestingly, my support group continues to grow ... and my travels around the US, So. America and Central America have been fruitful in raising more awareness ...

It's very strange ... you calls me an 'ignoramus' and insults my intelligence and what you fantasize are my beliefs ... yet you spend enormous amounts of time defaming me ...

If I were so unimportant ... you'd ignore me ...

Not write government agencies and staging fake "ignore Ilena" days!

I know you're a smart, educated boy ... with the backing of the entire Quack/Junk Science Team (Milloy, Barrett, Fumento, Dow, Monsanto, Exxon, etc. etc. etc.) ... and if anyone reads:

www.BreastImplantAwareness.org/LangerVsIlena.htm


you will find links to him peddling his "sound science" propaganda ...

www.BreastImplantAwareness.org/AEI-PNAC.htm

I'll discuss this Supreme Court appointee later on ... but I see the your audacity to already tell Robert's 'critics' how they can "have it" ... hilarious.

You peddled the illegal and immoral Iraqui invasion ... using exact "talking points" of Bush's on Usenet and alt.support.breast-implant ... regurgitating the lies and waving the flag ...

Now you're going to blog to sell Bush's nominee ...

At least you're not filling up alt.support.breast-implant with his corporate propaganda today ...

As far as your insults yet again ... I fear if Roberts is appointed ... women's rights will retreat ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/politics/politicsspecial1/20judge.html?

... he signed a legal brief to the Supreme Court arguing on behalf of the first President George Bush: "We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled," a reference to the 1973 opinion that first found a Constitutional right to abortion.

God help us.

www.BreastImplantAwareness.org

July 20, 2005 3:28 AM

 
Blogger Andrew Langer said...

Wow - what a long, rambling, uninteresting, and almost entirely unresponsive comment from Ilena Rosenthal.

A) It's my blog. My blog, my field, my opinion. And unlike the website of the now-suspended-by-the-state-of-California Humantics Foundation for Women, I'm not using some organization's resources to offer my opinion (why _DID_ California suspend Humantics, by the way?)

B) If I said something "inaccurate", Ms. Rosenthal, then you probably should have pointed out the specifics of those innacuracies in your comments. But, as has always been the case, you did not do so. We know that it's because you are unable to do so, because I didn't say anything that was innacurate.

C) You scribbled quite a bit, Ms. Rosenthal, but you didn't respond to the substance of my comment to you. Thank you, though - by writing such bafflegarb, you really demonstrate that my characterizations of you and your now-defunct organization are entirely accurate.

Why did the state suspend Humantics, again?

July 20, 2005 6:25 AM

 
Blogger Ilena Rose said...

Here is some revealing information on Bush's nominee who Langer is trying to sell here ...

Dear MoveOn member,
In the past weeks, Republicans and Democrats have called on President Bush to nominate a moderate for the Supreme Court—someone who would honor the legacy of independent Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But last night, President Bush nominated Judge John Roberts, a far-right lawyer and corporate lobbyist, to fill her post on the Supreme Court.

We've got to stop Roberts. He opposed clean air rules and worked to help coal companies strip-mine mountaintops. He worked with Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr), and tried to keep Congress from defending the Voting Rights Act. He wrote that Roe v. Wade should be "overruled," and as a lawyer argued (and won) the case that stopped some doctors from even discussing abortion.

Join our urgent petition to let our senators know we expect them to oppose John Roberts right now at:

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/?id=5817-5874220-2aZxvFNc.tc.sQ.lyrK3Ow&t=3

This is one of the most important domestic fights of President Bush's career. We can win—Americans overwhelmingly want a moderate judge. But to win, we need to get the word out early that Roberts is out of the mainstream.

After you've signed, please send this message on to your friends and colleagues. We need to fight back against the misinformation that the Bush administration is putting out.

John Roberts has little experience as a judge—he was only appointed in 2003. But he's got a lot of experience as a corporate lobbyist and lawyer, consistently favoring wealthy corporations over regular Americans.

Here's a list of some of the things that make Roberts the wrong pick for the Supreme Court:

Wrong on environmental protection: Roberts appears to want to limit the scope of the Endangered Species Act, and in papers he wrote while in law school he supported far-right legal theories about "takings" which would make it almost impossible for the government to enforce most environmental legislation.

Wrong on civil rights: Roberts worked to keep Congress from defending parts of the Voting Rights Act.

Wrong on human rights: As a appeals court judge, Roberts ruled that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to some prisoners of war.

Wrong on our right to religious freedom: Roberts argued that schools should be able to impose religious speech on attendees.

Wrong on women's rights: Roberts wrote that "Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled." He also weighed in on behalf of Operation Rescue, a violent anti-abortion group, in a federal case.

President Bush could have chosen many fair-minded and independent jurists to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. Instead, he chose a corporate partisan loved by Bush's right-wing base but out of step with the rest of the country.

Tell your senators they need to stop John Roberts now, at:

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/?id=5817-5874220-2aZxvFNc.tc.sQ.lyrK3Ow&t=4

We'll be in touch soon about next steps. For now, please help us gather as many voices as possible to keep the Supreme Court fair. And thanks for everything you're doing.

Sincerely,

–Ben, Tanya, Justin, Jennifer and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005

July 20, 2005 9:35 AM

 
Blogger Andrew Langer said...

Hmmm - MoveOn.org. As any regular LibertyBlog reader knows, when you want accurate and balanced information, you go to MoveOn.org.

The fact that Ilena Rosenthal is proffering the spin of MoveOn.org is also _very_ telling.

July 20, 2005 9:52 AM

 
Blogger Ilena Rose said...

You bet ... to counter the millions of corporate lobbyist dollars of PR you are pushing here ...



You want to debate this part Andy?

Wrong on women's rights: Roberts wrote that "Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled." He also weighed in on behalf of Operation Rescue, a violent anti-abortion group, in a federal case.

July 20, 2005 10:23 AM

 
Blogger Ilena Rose said...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072005I.shtml


The John Roberts Dossier
By Katharine Mieszkowski
Salon.com


Wednesday 20 July 2005


Everything you need to know about Bush's nominee, before the battle
begins.

July 20, 2005 1:10 PM

 
Blogger Andrew Langer said...

Ilena Rose said...

"Roberts wrote that "Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled." "

As _I've_ already said, Roberts didn't write this on behalf of Roberts, but on behalf of the George H.W. Bush Administration, the organization he was Deputy Solicitor for.

So, now we're back to repeating ourselves, Ms. Rosenthal.

Ilena Rose also said,

"He also weighed in on behalf of Operation Rescue, a violent anti-abortion group, in a federal case."

And that's _UNTRUE_. He didn't "weigh in _ON BEHALF OF_ Operation Rescue." Operation Rescue wasn't his client. We're talking about the same case (try lifting your quotes, Ms. Rosenthal, in some sort of coherent sense, please).

He wrote a "friend of the _COURT_" brief (amicus curiae) on behalf of the George H.W. Bush administration, which employed him as Deputy Solicitor General. His employer, the aforementioned George H.W. Bush administration, wanted to weigh in with this position.

July 20, 2005 1:45 PM

 
Blogger Ilena Rose said...

Exactly as we feared:

The New York Times - July 23, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/23/politics/politicsspecial1/23jane.html


Anti-Abortion Advocacy of Wife of Court Nominee Draws Interest


By LYNETTE CLEMETSON and ROBIN TONER


WASHINGTON, July 22 - Judge John G. Roberts has left little hard evidence of
his views on abortion in recent years and is widely expected to try to avoid
the issue in his coming confirmation hearings.


But there is little mystery about the views of his wife, Jane Sullivan
Roberts, a Roman Catholic lawyer from the Bronx whose pro bono work for
Feminists for Life is drawing intense interest in the ideologically charged
environment of a Supreme Court confirmation debate.


Some abortion opponents view her activities as a clear signal that the
Robertses are committed to their cause; supporters of abortion rights fear
the same thing. Others say that drawing a direct line from her activities to
how her husband might rule on the Supreme Court - assuming that he not only
shares her views, but would also act on them to overturn 32 years of legal
precedents - is both politically risky and in bad form.


No less a Democratic stalwart than Senator Edward M. Kennedy said, at a
breakfast meeting with reporters on Friday, that Mrs. Roberts's work "ought
to be out of bounds."


Advocates on both sides have long acknowledged that with this issue, the
personal is often political. But Mrs. Roberts has led an independent and
unapologetic life that defies any attempt at pigeonholing.


Mrs. Roberts, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was not
recruited by Feminists for Life, but sought the group out about a decade ago
and offered her services as a lawyer, said its president, Serrin Foster. The
group was reorganizing at the time and beginning to focus its work on
college campuses. Its mission statement, driven home in advertising in
recent years, says: "Abortion is a reflection that our society has failed to
meet the needs of women. Women deserve better than abortion."


Mrs. Roberts served on the board of the organization for four years, and
later provided legal services. Ms. Foster said that as an adoptive parent,
Mrs. Roberts made contributions that included urging the group to focus more
on the needs of biological mothers, and adding a biological mother to the
board of directors.


Ms. Foster said Feminists for Life was committed not only to ending
abortion, but also to making it "unthinkable" by providing every woman with
the assistance she needs. Reversing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that
recognized a constitutional right to abortion, is a goal, she said, "but not
enough."


In recent years, the group has supported efforts to ban the procedure that
critics call partial-birth abortion, which is usually performed in the
second and third trimesters, as well as legislation that prohibits
transporting a minor across state lines to evade parental notification laws.
In previous years, the group weighed in on litigation seeking further
restrictions on abortion, but Ms. Foster said that was before Mrs. Roberts
joined the board.


"We're not a litigious institution now," Ms. Foster said. "We decided we
were not a legal group; we were going to go after parenting resources and
pregnancy resources, and Jane was part of that redefinition. She came on at
that time."


Sensing the highly charged atmosphere around the issue, longtime friends and
colleagues of Mrs. Roberts declined to speak this week about her views on
abortion. But they characterized her political and social views much as her
husband's friends have portrayed his in recent days: expressly conservative,
but not dogmatic.


"Jane has very strong personal convictions, politically and with regard to
her faith," said Christine Kearns, a friend and colleague who has worked
with Mrs. Roberts for 18 years at a law firm now called Pillsbury Winthrop
Shaw Pittman. "But as long as I've known her, I've never known her to impose
them on others or to be unwilling to listen to other people's points of
view."


One thing is certain; Mrs. Roberts's Catholic faith has long played a
central role in her life. The daughter of a Postal Service technician and a
medical secretary, Jane Sullivan grew up the oldest of four children in what
was an Italian and Irish neighborhood in the Morris Park section of the
Bronx, where she played dodgeball in the streets and took Irish step dancing
lessons. With the family's parish church, Our Lady of Solace, down the block
and her paternal grandparents living next door, it was a safe, close-knit
existence.


The family held onto its ties to Ireland, keeping a family home in the small
town of Knocklong in the County of Limerick, where they still gather at
least every two years.


After graduating from St. Catherine's Academy, an all-girls' high school in
the Bronx, Mrs. Roberts joined the first class of women to enter the College
of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Mass., where she attended Mass several
times a week, tutored football players in mathematics, her major, and carved
a path as a student leader. A budding feminist even with her traditionalist
streak, she was one of four students who represented the student body in a
heated dispute when the feminist scholar Marilyn French, who taught at the
college from 1972 to 1976, was denied tenure.


"We were the pioneers," said Connie McCaffrey, a clinical social worker at
Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire who has been a close friend of Mrs.
Roberts since they met on the first day of freshman year. "There was a very
strong sense of camaraderie among the women who came in that year. And Janey
took her responsibilities as one among that group very seriously."


Determined to explore the world, she graduated from Holy Cross in 1976,
traveled to Australia on a Rotary scholarship, trekked through Nepal and
backpacked around Europe before earning a master's degree in applied
mathematics from Brown in 1981 and a law degree from Georgetown in 1984.


She has maintained close ties with Holy Cross, serving on its board. The
Rev. Charles Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and
Universities, is also a member of the Holy Cross board and regularly travels
to its meetings with Mrs. Roberts.


"It's unfortunate in this whole discussion," Father Currie said, "they're
already putting it somewhat in terms of conservative/liberal. It's always a
shame when issues are reduced to that simplicity. She may be conservative in
some things, but not in others. She's much more complex."


In her professional life, Mrs. Roberts continued to look for the road less
traveled, establishing a specialty in the male-dominated field of technology
and communications law and earning a partnership in her firm's global
technology practice. Still, friends and family members said, she asserted a
quietly defiant individuality, negotiating multimillion-dollar satellite
deals while still driving a bright orange Volkswagen Beetle long after she
could have afforded a more expensive car.


Friends say she met John G. Roberts in Dewey Beach, Del. "I think she kind
of just knew he was the one," said her sister Mary Torre. "He had a great
sense of humor, which in an Irish family is very important."


The couple married in July 1996, when they were both 41, and friends say
they immediately began discussing their desire to start a family, even
talking about children at their wedding reception.


"Most of us had gotten married in the mid-80's," said Richard Lazarus, a
friend and law school roommate of Mr. Roberts, "and I can't say that during
those weddings we talked about children. We were more focused on ourselves."


"These were two, very accomplished, very successful lawyers," Mr. Lazarus
said. "It wasn't an incidental statement. It was a shared, very important
next step, and it was a very pronounced theme."


In 2000 the couple adopted a daughter, Josephine, and a son, John, through
what Ms. Torre said was a private adoption.


"It is a testament to the power of prayer," said Ms. Kearns, Mrs. Roberts's
friend. "Who knew whether they would get any children. They qualified to
adopt. She waited, but she never, ever, was discouraged."


After years as a hard-charging lawyer, Mrs. Roberts went part-time in 2003,
designing and running an in-house professional development center for her
firm (though colleagues say her part-time hours would be considered
full-time to most people).


The Robertses' relationship, some say, has deepened their faith. "As it
often happens, when two people get together and share a faith, it can be
magnified by their joining," Mr. Lazarus said. "I think that has been the
case for them, even more so once they had the kids. But it is a very
personal faith. It does not serve, for them, as a way of judging others."


With the Supreme Court confirmation battle under way, when everything from
her views on abortion to her children's clothes will be under scrutiny, Mrs.
Roberts is showing her customary aplomb, friends say. Among her only
complaints is that the air-conditioning in her PT Cruiser, which she is
driving to strategy sessions at the White House, stopped working during
this, the hottest week so far in a very hot summer. So far, she has said,
she has managed to weather the heat.

July 23, 2005 10:33 AM

 
Blogger Cajun Tiger said...

So now not only is the nominee fair game...but so is his wife!!! I'm sorry but that is just absolutely ridiculous and completely sad. If the looney left has to stoop that low to try to find "dirt" on a nominee then we are in good shape and they are once again showing their true pitiful colors!!!

July 26, 2005 11:18 PM

 

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