Kennedy Requests Twenty Roberts, Bush I Files

Kennedy Requests Twenty Roberts, Bush I Files

The NY Times reports that Senator Kennedy has requested “files covering about 20 matters Mr. Roberts handled in the first Bush administration.”

The request escalates the conflict over the documents from hypothetical to concrete. In response to preliminary inquiries from Democrats, White House officials earlier this week released many thousands of pages from Mr. Roberts’s work as a lawyer in the Reagan administration. But the White House said it would not provide access to his work as deputy solicitor general under the first President Bush, describing the content of the papers as confidential legal advice.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and a veteran of judicial confirmation battles, told reporters about the request on Thursday as Senate Democrats responded to the first set of disclosures with diverging strategies about where and how hard to push back against the president’s Supreme Court pick. Mr. Kennedy said the request covered files on fewer than 20 matters out of more than 300.

MORE - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=96

Go!

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Ted Kennedy is the go-to point-man in this Senate judicial nominee process . . . He's the fall guy.

By that I mean, it was Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D., Massachusetts) who was first on his toes in the Senate denouncing Judge Bork back in the Reagan Administration. Within an hour of Reagan naming Judge Bork, Ted appeared on the Senate floor to rail against the nominee. We give Ted credit for creating the word "bork'd" as a derogatory term for rejected federal judicial nominees. However, I believe it was created by a newspaper reporter along the way because it is not like Kennedy to use personalties such as that. Ted typically doesn't hit someone, personally.

So this time around, the Senate Judiciary Cmte and the full Senate minority members are leaning toward Ted to do it again. Ted is assured of re-election in Massachusetts. No problem there. We here in Massachusetts believe that Ted can do no wrong in his liberal politics. We love him.

So they're letting loose Ted on Roberts. One lawyer on another. So be it. Sic 'im Ted.

Kennedy will do well. However, unless Ted can pull a rabbit out of a hat, then Roberts will probably be sitting on the SCOTUS bench for the next SCOTUS term.

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He's plucking out the relevant rulings revealing Roberts' grossly inappropriate "judicial activism" and the like. Brilliant.