Next, Mile High friend weighed in on Roberts' failure to recuse himself from a recent case involving the US government:
While I agree with your points in principle, I honestly can't trust any appointee from this administration. I don't know what their intentions truly are, but I feel that it may be some backhanded attempt to remove another check from our gov't. The fact that the administration won't even release some of his writings from his work with Reagan (that's troubling enough for me) says to me that he's a Bush insider. Overall, he has a very thin record on the bench. Therefore, his writings and statements, when he worked for the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration, become very important.
From the LA Times: JUST FOUR DAYS before the Bush administration named John G. Roberts Jr. to fill retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court, the District of Columbia federal appeals court decided a case called Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld. In a crucial victory for the administration, the court upheld President Bush's creation of special military tribunals for trials of alleged terrorists and denied them the protection of the Geneva Convention. Roberts was one of the judges who decided that case, but he should have recused himself.
While the case was pending in his court, Roberts was interviewing with high White House officials - including Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove - for a seat on the Supreme Court. In the words of the federal law on judicial disqualification, this placed the judge in a situation where "his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."
If he didn't recuse himself in a case where he is in meetings with the defendant concurrently, he can't be trusted. I don't dispute the fact that he has a great legal mind since I saw his carefully worded and legalese responses to the questioning, but I think he's worth opposing, if only to send a message that we want openness and truth throughout the gov't.
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