The Senate confirmed John Glover Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States, replacing the late William H. Rehnquist, the mentor for whom he clerked, according to this Washington Post story.

Thousands and of citizens are speaking out to oppose the nomination of John Roberts as chief justice of the Supreme Court, according to this announcement and action alert.

They are telling our senators that they don’t want a justice who won’t let us see any of his memos for the last 20 years. They are telling them they don’t want a justice who tried to hide his leadership role in the extremely reactionary Federalist Society. They are telling them the most unpopular second term president in history does NOT have any mandate to appoint his own personal crony to such a position of absolute power. And they need to hear from you too.

The question we must ask ourselves is this: If YOU had the power to cast the deciding vote on John Roberts, would you vote your conscience on principle or not? That is how you need to tell your senator they must vote as well, because you DO have that power. We are the American people, and our representatives we elected are there to listen to us and want we really want

Especially if you are from Vermont or Wisconsin you must immediately contact Leahy, Feingold and Kohl and tell them they got it WRONG on Roberts in the judiciary committee and they need to correct their error. We already have a president who is incapable of ever admitting or correcting any mistake. We don’t need that from our senators too. But whatever state you are from it is important for you to use the action form below to send a personal message to both your senators at one time, plus you can send a letter to the editor of your nearest daily newspaper, all with one click.

Who were the self-appointed media pundits who dared to tell us Roberts was a done deal before the hearing even started? Who co-ordinated the corporate media campaign that poisoned our minds with the words of defeatism and submission? Indeed, who has unwittingly collaborated with the right wing talking points merchants by speaking those words of betrayal and resignation out of their own mouths?

Why NOT demand what we really want? We are the people of the United States. We don’t have to settle for less than we really deserve, a true mainstream justice who will rule fairly for all the people, not just on behalf of a minority of corporate crony friends. How dare anyone tell us Roberts is the best we can hope for. The best we can hope for is what we are BRAVE enough to demand as is our RIGHT by the mandate of our numbers speaking out.

Dear Glynn,

I’ve been watching Supreme Court nominee John Roberts artfully dodge question after question during his confirmation hearings. And I’ve read the limited documents the White House released about his work in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations – though we are still waiting for answers for the over 100,000 Americans who submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for key documents.

But we know enough to see a pattern – and I’ve made up my mind about John Roberts. He’s the wrong man at the wrong time for our country – a trait that he shares with much of the Republican leadership, including the president who nominated him.

I’ve written an op-ed that will appear in newspapers across the country tomorrow (you can get a preview at the bottom of this message). But I am just one voice – your community needs to hear from you. By filling local papers with letters to editors, Americans watching this process unfold will understand that we have a different vision for the court and a different vision for our country.

Join me on editorial pages across America by writing a letter to the editor – with our new online tool and talking points, you can write and submit your letter in minutes:

John Roberts may have a sharp legal mind, but his record shows that he lacks a sense of justice.

The skills John Roberts displays are like those of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or House Republican Leader Tom DeLay. Both of those men have sharp political minds – they are among the smartest in Washington. But they use those skills to push a narrow ideology and win at any cost. Roberts has spent a career using the law to protect corporate interests and roll back the rights that protect us all.

Roberts, Rove, DeLay and the rest of the extremist Republican leadership all have the same problem. They abuse their power by pursuing ideological crusades – and they ignore the real problems we face as a country and as a community.

Thousands of letters appearing in papers across the country will reach every American with our message – that the time for narrow ideology and protecting the rights of only a few is over.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the disastrous response, we have seen the consequences of government by ideologues and political cronies. We have also seen the stark reality of American life that people like Roberts, Rove and DeLay either don’t understand or choose to ignore – that inequalities still persist to this day.

Our rights – and the rights of the most vulnerable in our society – are in danger. They are in danger from those who actively seek to roll them back, and they are in danger from those in positions of leadership who don’t understand how important it is to protect the rights of every American.

The ultimate battleground for justice, fairness and opportunity in America has always been the Supreme Court. Justices have the power to use the law to hold America back, and they have the power to use the law to hold America to the high moral standards we set for ourselves.

Let’s make sure that Americans open their newspapers and understand the stakes.

Thank you.

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

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, according to this op/ed piece in the LA Times.

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.”

It is not too late to correct this error, and with Roberts slated to become the next chief justice, it is especially important that he do so.

In Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, a three-judge panel upheld the use of military tribunals to try detainees held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But the decision didn’t stop there. Roberts and a second judge also ruled that the Geneva Convention – which guarantees basic human rights – does not protect alleged Al Qaeda members.

The third judge disagreed on the question of the Geneva Convention. Thus, Roberts cast a deciding vote on an issue of central importance to the president, just as administration aides were holding out the possibility that the president might choose him for a place on the highest court in the American legal system.

The shit on this administration just gets deeper, and deeper…

Supreme Court nominee John Roberts jousted with Democratic senators Tuesday at his confirmation hearing to be chief justice, dodging their attempts to pin down his opinions on abortion, voting rights and other legal issues, according to this midday AP report.

Democrats Prod Roberts on Abortion Stance

Joe Biden, D-Del., who has indicated he may run for president in 2008, gave Roberts the most grief so far, at one point accused Roberts of “filibustering” in his answers. It has not exactly been a love fest, but nothing has surfaced yet that would derail Roberts from being confirmed by the Republican controlled Senate.

Democrats.com is now claiming they have “found the smoking gun” on John Roberts, President George W. Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court. They say he “lawyered” the Iran-Contra scandal for the Reagan administration.

According to the Washington Post, a.k.a. the Pentagon Post, one file withheld regarding the Iran-contra affair was a draft memo from Roberts to his bosses with the heading “re: establishment of NHAO” – referring to the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office.

The office was one of the ways the Reagan administration got around what were known as the Boland Amendments, which prohibited U.S. intelligence agencies from spending money to overthrow the Sandinistas. The office was a way the administration could get funds to the contras for nonmilitary purposes, but once there the money was used for all sorts of things, according to Democrats.com.

“In other words, John Roberts ‘lawyered’ the Iran-Contra Scandal – one of the worst scandals in American history,” according to Bob Fertik. “Now we know why Karl Rove is scrubbing Roberts’ files.”

In the 1990′s, Senate Democrats let the architects of the Iran-Contra scandal escape without punishment. Oliver North became a media celebrity (and nearly a U.S. Senator), John Poindexter got hired by George Bush to create the Big Brother (“Total Information Awareness”) office at the Pentagon. And Elliot Abrams took over Middle East policy at the National Security Council, where he played (and continues to play) a secret but crucial role in the Iraq War disaster.

Have Senate Democrats learned their lesson? Or will they let a key Iran-Contra lawyer become a Supreme Court Justice?

What to do? “Tell your Senators to oppose John Roberts if he had anything to do with the Iran-Contra Scandal,” Fertik says in this release.

Civil rights and women’s groups are beginning to mount an attempt to defeat the nomination of John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court after Reagan-era documents released by the White House today reveal that he disparaged state efforts to combat discrimination against women and wondered whether “encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.”

Emily’s List, which works to elect female candidates, drew attention recently to a speech by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., in which she raised the possibility of a filibuster if Roberts doesn’t elaborate on his views on abortion and privacy rights at his hearings.

“I have the ultimate step,” Boxer said. “I can use all the parliamentary rules I have as a senator to stand up and fight for you.”

Go to the full Associate Press story here: Roberts Disparaged States’ Sex-Bias Fight

Many Democrats in Congress have approached the Roberts’ nomination with trepidation, indicating a willingness to allow an up or down vote at the behest of the president, perhaps fearing an even more radical-right nominees in the event of a filibuster and on Bush’s replacement of Chief Justice Rehnquist, which seems inevitable considering his ill-health.

But many Democratic activists around the country are pressuring their representatives to fight Bush on Roberts. Fight on.

How men reacted to the movement for women’s rights in the 1970s and 1980s was a test of character, whether they supported changes in the work place that addressed historical injustices. When U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts had a chance to shape policy on equal pay for women from inside Ronald Reagan’s White House, he likened an equal-pay strategy to communism, with the quip: “to each according to her gender.”

To read the whole piece, go to today’s story in the Consortium News .

In late night from Bob Fertik at Democrats.com:

Red Alert! The Busheviks are scrubbing John Roberts’ files.

Just read between the lines in this Pentagon Post article:

Thrown on the defensive by recent revelations about Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.’s legal work, White House aides are delaying the release of tens of thousands of documents from the Reagan administration to give themselves time to find any new surprises before they are turned into political ammunition by Democrats…

White House aides are exerting full control over the documents still under their authority. Under an executive order signed by Bush in 2001, the White House has the right to review, and in some cases block, the release of presidential papers from previous administrations. White House lawyers have been dispatched to the Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif., where they are combing through documents that have not been released.

This is not a stonewall, as Armando claims on Kos. When will Democrats – and progressive bloggers like – wake up to the fact that the Busheviks always scrub incriminating documents from the files?

Didn’t anyone learn this crucial lesson from the AWOL story – that Karen Hughes in 1997 removed all of the Texas Air National Guard documents that proved Bush was AWOL? Bill Burkett watched TANG officials throw the documents in the trash – and he was telling the truth.

They did the same thing in Plamegate, when Alberto Gonzales gave White House officials 67 days to scrub incriminating documents.

Now they are scrubbing Roberts’ file to make sure Democrats don’t get their hands on any documents that expose Roberts’ real thoughts.

Democrats and journalists should immediately file FOIA requests for all of Roberts’ files. They should also send letters to the National Archives with detailed questions about how they will protect all of Roberts’ files from unauthorized scrubbing.