MoveOn in the house: Was downtown for most of the day today, a couple of meetings dragging me out of the air conditioned goodness, and representatives from MoveOn.org were canvassing the city trying to get people to sign their petition to oppose the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Here's their beef:

In nominating John Roberts, the president has chosen a right wing corporate lawyer and ideologue for the nation's highest court instead of a judge who would protect the rights of the American people. Working for mining companies, Roberts opposed clean air rules and worked to help coal companies strip-mine mountaintops. He worked with Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr), and tried to keep Congress from defending the Voting Rights Act. He wrote that Roe v. Wade should be "overruled," and as a lawyer argued (and won) the case that stopped some doctors from even discussing abortion.

The elderly lady that cornered me was going on about Roberts' allowing the federal government to meet secretly with corporations. I'm not sure if this was a case he ruled on as a judge or a brief he wrote, but she assured me that he was defending an illegal practice. I'm not sure what the law is on this, but I guess her problem was with Cheney meeting with energy companies (the horror!) when formulating energy policy reccomendations. 'Cause energy companies wouldn't have anything useful to contribute to that discussion.

I asked her if it was okay that Hillary and company had met secretly with healthcare companies when formulating her HillaryCare plan in Bill's first term. To the best of my knowledge, the situations were similar, at least legally.

I'll have to dig a little to refresh my memory on the details, but she seemed to buy my argument and looked rather crestfallen about the whole thing. Like whe'd been given a new toy and it broke an hour out of the box.

First time I've seen MoveOn in Charlotte, but it's no surprise. They're trying to turn it into New York south.