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Roberts Rebuffs Democrats' Questions

THe Chief heard some of the hearings with Judge Roberts - one thing that was readily evident was that one good, sound judge was able to run circles around a whole klatsch of LibDonk senators out to try to Bork him. How sweet it is!

Chief Justice-nominee John Roberts repeatedly refused to answer questions about abortion and other contentious issues at his confirmation hearing Tuesday, telling frustrated Democrats he would not discuss matters that could come before the Supreme Court.

This has become known as the Ginsburg Standard, after the absolute refusal of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to answer ANYTHING specific about any case that might POSSIBLY come before the court.

Roberts struck sparks when he indicated his refusal to answer certain questions was based in part on a precedent of "no hints, no forecasts, no previews" that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg set at her hearings a dozen years ago.

What drives the Donks crazy, is that the sauce for the goose has turned out to be sauce for the gander - plus the fact that it is apparent that Judge Roberts is far and away the intellectual master of the law, and that senators like Kennedy, Biden, and Leahy don't have enough background to do more than run through obviously canned questions prepped by their staff flunkies.

The Cheif remains cautiously optimistic on Roberts' overall legal orientation, but in spite of the Donks' fulminations in the hearings, it looks more and more like there will be a decisive and positive vote on the confirmation.

Chad Schult, the Clear Cut Kidder, is having trouble defining incompetence in regard to Katrina. So this photo should be worth a thousand words: This is what happened to the people of New Orleans who elected an incompetent Democrat as...

Yesterday, Tim Russert took it to Democrat New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin:New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is defending his actions in connection with Hurricane Katrina, as he was grilled yesterday about why hundreds of public buses were not used to...

Oh, that liberal media. You'd think that the oh-so-earnest Reuters could do a bit better than this: At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency...

This is from The Hill: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove is planning to travel to North Dakota later this month to rally GOP activists and, Republicans hope, persuade Gov. John Hoeven (R) to challenge Sen. Kent Conrad...

Today's FARK headline: Today's "I'll never drink again" story brought to you by Denver, where man on painkillers, who hadn't slept for two days because of tooth abscess, decides to have a few beers and go four-wheeling at night in...

A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

H/T to a former Navy shipmate for this article e-mailed to me. He offered it without comment, and if you check it out, you'll see that it speaks for itself. (by the way, he's in the Houston area, a lot closer to the action than the Chief is up in South Dakota.)

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists?myself included?did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

I have had only slight opportunity to watch these hearings. While the statements and questions of the Judiciary Committee members are largely predictable, and in that sense less than interesting, there are some nuggets that reveal certain mindsets. Certainly the...

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