With half his brain tied behind his back: Great observation from Dahlia on the Roberts hearings: Roberts is toying with the Senators -- as he should be. While these pompous windbags go on and on about everything but what is germane to the confirmation process, Roberts pretends to listen and then gives them answers that only go to show the great, great disparity between the power of his mind and the collective power of the Mind of the Senate.

I'm of the opinion, and I'm obviously in the minority, that a judge gets to sit on the bench if she's smart, not a criminal, and has a body of work to show a depth and breadth of ability. That's it. The President gets to pick who he wants. If you don't like it, try to win the next election.

You can't pigeon-hole a judge on how he would rule on X, Y or Roe. A judge cannot make calls in a vaccum. Each set of facts is impacted by the law differently, and to simply ask whether Roberts would overturn Roe is meaningless. There could conceivably be a very compelling reason why the precedent should be ignored or reversed, wholly apart from "mere" personal preference.

When Roberts wrote, long, long ago, of the "so called right to privacy" in the Constitution, that's because the right to privacy is just that: implied. It took many years and a whole bunch of words for the constitutional "right" of privacy to be put into the Constitution, and then even more years and words for it to be stretched around as many issues as it has been. Hey, I'm in favor of a loose interpretation of the Document, but unless it's explicit, it's implied, and in that case, it's fair game to say something is "so called."

To the Senators: give up, to the extent you already haven't, and move on to trying to restrain yourself from making complete asses of your names in dealing with Katrina.