The Sound and the Fury
How John Roberts drove the Senate Democrats nuts.
by Edward Morrissey
09/21/2005 12:00:00 AM

SHAKESPEARE HAD IT RIGHT. Thanks to C-SPAN and the passions stoked from the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, the American voters had a chance to see a range of idiocy from the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, all of it coming from the sound and fury of Democrats trying desperately to stay relevant. One by one, they strutted and fretted their hour upon the stage--how we wish it had only been an hour--and wound up signifying less than nothing.

The minority party came into the hearing with a host of problems: President Bush had nominated a legal genius whose scholarship and skill would be obvious in any public hearing. Because of his short tenure on the appellate bench--the result of a Democratic filibuster--his track record left his judicial philosophy unclear, even to the president's supporters. The two months it took to start the hearings had produced wild and reckless charges from liberal interest groups and media outlets that backfired, note, for example, the smear campaign from NARAL which falsely claimed that Roberts supported abortion-clinic violence. That ad generated such disgust and easy rebuttal that even Democrats called for a retraction.

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