The Black Republican

Charles E. Schumer, the senior (but least important) Senator from the state of New York, has compiled a series of questions that he feels should be asked of - and presumably answered by - Judge John Roberts, the President's nominee to the Supreme Court. I perused the list of questions and found most of them to be very fine questions indeed - if proposed to legal scholars, law schools or political science students, or public policy wonks. But the fact that they are being proposed for and will be asked of a prospective Supreme Court jurist makes them completely inappropriate, primarily because answering nearly any of them would require Judge Roberts to prejudge facts that may come before him in the future.

Asking questions which you know full well before you ask them cannot be answered makes a much sense as asking a question for which there is no known answer (ie. [a typical Schumer-like question] "How many people would have been killed by now had we not enacted the Assault Gun ban?") or a question that has no correct answer (ie. "Do you still beat your wife?"). Such questions are not asked to gain insight by way of their answers, but to manipulate the situation via the refusal or inability of the subject to provide an answer. I think we all know what Chuckles is trying to do with these "questions" of his - he looking for someone to burn! The only good thing about these "questions" is that Judge Roberts is far too smart to answer other than the way a future Supreme Court Justice should and would (The Ginsburg Standard).

But since Schumer and his fellow sandbaggers are going to ask their silly little questions anyway, I have a few suggestions as to some additional questions that should be asked, and by whom:

Patrick Leahy:

Judge Roberts, since leaks of information are so commonplace here in Washington, you wouldn't find any fault with a person who leaked classified information so long as that leak was done for the public (democratic) good, would you?

Richard Durbin:

Judge Roberts, do you know what a gulag is? How about a nazi, what's a nazi? Do you know? And can you tell us why the administration is allowing this kind of unconstitutional behavior to go on at Guantanamo Bay? Can you, huh? Oh, by the way I'd like to state, for the record, that I support our troops.

Edward Kennedy:

Mr. Roberts, lets just say, as a hypothetical situation, that you were representing a client - a married man - who was involved in a tragic car accident in which he was not... well, he may not have been driving... well, yes, he was driving but didn't want to be, and where someone else was... um... injured... and your client...um... may have had a drink or two or... um... you know. Well anyway, your client, after the accident, swims across a channel to another island and instead of reporting the accident to the authorities, sneaks up to his hotel room, gets a good six or seven hours sleep - not because he was drunk, mind you, but because he didn't want to remember - I mean he wanted to forget - I mean he didn't realize that he was even in an accident, that had he reported it at the time, the single young woman might not have drow... I mean, may not have been as injured as much as she ended up being. Injured, I mean. Well, my question is, would you or would you not advise your client to wear a neck brace at the young woman's funeral?

Now those are questions I would love to hear answered!