Did Judge Roberts and the White House Exchange Favors?
Below is a letter I just sent to the Editors of the Washington Post. I thought I would share it with you:
Dear Washington Post Editor,
I am disturbed to find little or no coverage in the pages of the Washington Post regarding the apparent quid pro quo arrangement between Judge Roberts, while he was sitting on the Federal Appeals panel deciding whether to apply the Geneva Convention to military tribunals in Guantanamo, and the White House, who nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court one week after he ruled in favor of the Administration.
According to Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor for The Nation magazine and a national correspondent for Salon.com, “…one day after (Roberts) being interviewed by President Bush, a Federal Appeals panel, three judges of which Judge Roberts was a member, handed down a 2-1 decision — all three judges, by the way, Reagan-Bush appointees — permitting the tribunals to go forward, reinstating them, and in particular, invalidating those Geneva Convention protections, and saying, in fact, that the courts had no business reviewing this question of Geneva Convention status, that it was purely a matter for the Executive Branch.”
In fact, Roberts had apparently interviewed with Atty. General Gonzales regarding his possible nomination one week prior to the ruling. So he was already deep into a conflict of interest between his prospective nomination and his role in ruling on this case.
Rather than recuse himself from the decision, Judge Roberts voted in the 2-1 majority to support the Bush Administration in this case. Shortly after ruling in the President’s favor, the President nominated him to the Supreme Court.
More amazing than Roberts’ not recusing himself is the fact that the mainstream media, including the Washington Post, have downplayed this story. There was limited coverage of the story in the Blogosphere (It’s In There; Quiet Flows the Don; Think Progress; Thus Blogged Anderson) as well as on some news media sites (Slate).
Do you think Roberts would have got the nomination if he ruled the other way? It would not have been unreasonable for him to rule against the Administration, as half of his colleagues on the panel had done so.
Given the fact that Roberts was actively discussing his nomination with the President and the Atty. General PRIOR to his ruling on this case, it seems incredibly scandalous that he should rule in the case and even more scandalous that, instead of reporting on this ethical violation, the Washington Post is still publishing comments like, “But there was no indication that his nomination faces any significant threat,” which appeared in this morning’s edition (September 6, 2005).
Perhaps the reason he faces no significant threat to approval is because major news outlets like the Post have given him a free pass. If the Post is the newspaper of the left, then I fear the left has no access to the news media at all.
Your Truly,
DrDigiPol
Will this become the controversey that eventually snares Roberts’ nomination? As Kos reports, it took four months for Clarence Thomas’s nomination to become controversial.