Blowing up Roberts

Earlier this week I suggested there would be little to stand in the way of John Roberts being approved to the Supreme Court. I figured unless he gave some horribly insensitive speech somewhere, he was going to be pretty close to a lock. And while I still think he will be confirmed, Democrats now have a good reason to block the process however they can:

Citing privacy and precedent, the Bush administration indicated Sunday it does not intend to release all memos and other documents written by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts when he worked for two Republican presidents.

The leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct hearings on Roberts' nomination, disputed the assertion that privacy was at stake and called such a position a "red herring."

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Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said other nominees, including Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, have provided material they wrote in confidence while working in the Justice Department.

"It's a total red herring to say, 'Oh, we can't show this,'" Leahy told ABC's "This Week." "

"And of course there is no lawyer-client privilege," he said. "Those working in the solicitor general's office are not working for the president. They're working for you and me and all the American people."

Leahy and the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Roberts' elevation to the Supreme Court called for a high standard of evaluation — higher than that when the Senate agreed to out Roberts on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in May 2003.