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From the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Aug. 12, 2005
Whether U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. is a good man, as President Bush and others say, is beside the point. The relevant question is whether Roberts is a superior lawyer and judge.
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But it is not irrelevant - in fact, it is essential - to point out that the debate over Roberts' qualifications should be conducted with the decency and fair play that good men and women exhibit and deserve. This doesn't mean Roberts' critics should pull their punches, but it does mean they shouldn't hit below the belt. And that is pretty much where Roberts was hit - and hit hard - in a vicious TV attack ad sponsored by NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion-rights organization.
The ad said Roberts had an ideology that "leads him to excuse violence against other Americans." This is an extremely serious charge, particularly when directed against someone who aspires to membership on the U.S. Supreme Court. But this charge was based on invention, not fact.
In the early 1990s, when he was the government's principal deputy solicitor general, Roberts argued before the Supreme Court that a Reconstruction-era civil rights law intended to protect freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan cannot provide the basis for federal court injunctions against violent protests at abortion clinics.
Roberts never said he endorsed violent demonstrators at abortion clinics. In fact, he made it clear he was not trying to defend their conduct. He was merely interested, he said, in defending what he thought was "the proper interpretation" of the old statute. As it turned out, the Supreme Court agreed with him, 6-3.
So defamatory was the TV spot that some abortion-rights groups joined conservatives in rejecting it. As a result of these protests, NARAL pulled the ad Thursday night. That was a necessary but insufficient response. The ad was not merely the mother of all extravagant conclusions, not merely an outrageous insult with virtually no basis in fact; it was a smear undertaken by people who, at least in this instance, lost their moral compass. NARAL owes Roberts a fervent apology.
