The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged John Roberts

Most of the Supreme Court’s conservative wing to skip State of the Union

By | 01.25.11 | 12:57 pm

Tonight’s State of the Union address will likely be full of many showy “bipartisan” moments. President Obama will likely make a number of statements about reaching across the aisle, and many Republicans and Democrats in Congress will sit with a member of the other party to break up the traditional More…

Justice Department Smacks Cheneyites Over al-Qaeda Smear Campaign

By | 03.03.10 | 4:38 pm

From Jake Tapper at ABC:

Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said today that Justice Department officials “will not participate in an attempt to drag people’s names through the mud for political purposes.”

Miller said that one of the hallmarks of “our nation’s legal system is that attorneys provide faithful

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Some Justices Seem Wary of New Member

By | 09.04.09 | 10:44 am

Excerpts released by C-SPAN in advance of its upcoming series on the Supreme Court, scheduled to begin airing October 4, suggest that some of the more conservative justices on the court are more wary of the impact their new colleague, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, may have on the court’s dynamic.

“To More…

Eighty Votes or Nothing

By | 08.20.09 | 11:58 am

Good catch by Matthew Yglesias: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the key Republican players in the Senate’s health care tussle, are telling reporters that a health care bill that fails to get 75 to 80 votes will, in Enzi’s words, “fail because the American people More…

Senate Expected to Confirm Sotomayor Today

By | 08.06.09 | 8:48 am

After a 12-hour “debate” yesterday during which senators largely repeated the same arguments for and against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that we heard during her confirmation hearing, the Senate is set to vote on the nominee today.

Although there’s no question that Sotomayor will be confirmed, she’s expected to More…

Senate Judiciary Committee to Vote on Sotomayor Nomination Today

By | 07.28.09 | 9:05 am

After a week’s delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote this morning on the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. Although Sotomayor is expected to win the support of a majority of the committee’s members, the vote is almost certain to be sharply divided along party lines.

Except More…

African-American Preachers Against Obama

By | 07.21.09 | 4:02 pm

It would seem to be a community of one. Rev. James David Manning, a New York preacher who gained fleeting Web meme status for a 2008 video (now at 2.5 million views) in which he called Barack Obama a “long-legged mack daddy,” is now hawking signs that ask the More…

Sen. Whitehouse Denounces Roberts’ Umpire Theory of Judging

By | 07.13.09 | 12:22 pm

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) just denounced Supreme Court Justice John Roberts’ disingenuous umpire theory of judging — his oft-quoted statement that the role of a judge is just to call “balls and strikes” as he sees them — with a harsh critique of what’s turned out to be remarkable “judicial More…

John Roberts vs. Michael Jackson

By | 06.26.09 | 3:09 pm

Charlie Savage digs into the history of a well-remembered visit that Michael Jackson paid to the White House in 1984, and how a 29-year-old associate White House counsel named John Roberts — yes, that John Roberts — tried to stop the president from signing a letter congratulating the pop More…

A Third GOP Senator Comes Out Against Sotomayor

By | 06.25.09 | 10:31 am

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) has announced that he will vote against Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, making him the third senator to come out against Sotomayor, reports Congressional Quarterly.

Brownback joins Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) in an anti-Sotomayor Dust Bowl trio.

“Judge Sotomayor More…