Roberts Not Looking Good

Well, after deciding to take a wait-and-see attitude on Roberts, I’m not liking what I’m seeing.

USA Today: Roberts scoffed at equal-pay theory

As an assistant White House counsel in 1984, John Roberts scoffed at the notion that men and women should earn equal pay in jobs of comparable importance, and he belittled three female Republican members of Congress who promoted that idea to the Reagan administration.

AP: Roberts once wrote of 'abortion tragedy'

As a young lawyer in the Reagan White House, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts concluded that a group's memorial service for aborted fetuses was "an entirely appropriate means of calling attention to the abortion tragedy."

Roberts' wrote the advice in an October, 1985 memo after he was asked to review a proposed telegram from President Reagan to the memorial service promoted by the California Pro Life Medical Association.

"The president's position is that the fetuses were human beings, or at least cannot be proven not to have been, and accordingly a memorial service would seem an entirely appropriate means of calling attention to the abortion tragedy," wrote Roberts.

From the same AP report:

As a young Reagan administration lawyer, he wrote he would have no objection if the Justice Department wanted to express support for a constitutional amendment permitting prayer.

Referring to a Supreme Court ruling issued earlier that year that struck down an Alabama school prayer law, he said, "The conclusion ... that the Constitution prohibits such a moment of silent reflection -- or even silent `prayer' -- seems indefensible."

Yeesh. I really didn’t want to have to go to town on this guy, but it looks like I’m going to have to. Apparently it’s not going to be a slow news month around here.

[UPDATE: Maurinsky's got a great post on Roberts. My favorite bit: "Now, women who give birth usually do leave the workplace for a time, although I know a lot of women who went back to work as soon as their six weeks of maternity leave was over. (Six weeks, that's only one week longer than just one of George Bush's annual vacations.)" Damn! Good call, M. Read the whole thing; it's good.]