Privacy for John Roberts but not for us

It’s getting to be kind of fun to watch the Bush Administration try to prevent the American people from learning any information that is actually relevant about John Roberts. They’re coming up with all kinds of excuses for withholding information from the Senate about John Roberts – excuses that show how empty the Republican ideology has become.

President Bush selected John Roberts for his nominee to the Supreme Court because Roberts has almost no judicial experience – having only been a judge for 2 years. Bush and his far right allies figure that the United States Senate won’t have much material to question Roberts on.

This strategy depends upon the Bush Administration being able to withhold all information about John Roberts’s professional record other than what occurred during his two years as a judge. That’s tricky for the Bush Administration, because John Roberts actually has quite a long record working for Republicans in government to help promote an extremist right wing agenda attacking birth control, civil rights, the separation of church and state, and even the basic right to breathe clean air.

So, when Senator John Kerry asked the Bush Administration to release all government records related to the legal career of John Roberts, Presdient Bush ordered his aides to keep the information secret from the American people – suggesting that the Bush Administration knows of some very damaging information about what John Roberts has actually been up to over the last 20 years. Republican former senator Fred Thompson, who is coordinating the push to get John Roberts confirmed to the Supreme Court, responded to John Kerry’s request by saying that there is some information about John Roberts that it intends to keep secret from the American public.

Scott McClellan, who has recently become infamous for lying to reporters about Karl Rove’s involvement in a plot to endanger an undercover CIA agent, offered a more nuanced, yet more revealing, response to John Kerry’s request for information about John Roberts. McClellan said, “We hope people wouldn’t make such requests that they know are considered out of bounds and that can’t be fulfilled because of those privacy issues.”

Privacy issues? Now where else have I heard the Republicans talking about privacy issues?

Oh, yes, now I remember! The Republicans, including the extremist Federalist Society to which John Rogers belongs, say that abortion should be outlawed because Americans have no right to privacy.

So, let me recap then. There are two Republican standards that you need to keep in mind when considering the John Roberts confirmation hearings:

1. When it comes to giving United States Senators relevant information about the professional record of John Rogers, the Republicans say that they’re going to keep it all secret, because John Rogers has a right to privacy.
2. The Republicans say that ordinary American citizens have no right to make choices about their families, their sex lives, and their medical information, because the Republicans say that ordinary Americans have no right to privacy.

This is the kind of America that Republicans are seeking to perpetuate with the confirmation of John Roberts to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court: Privacy for powerful Washington Republican insiders, but no privacy for ordinary Americans. If you don’t want to live in that America, then you need to ask your senators to oppose the confirmation of John Roberts.