It sounds as if an abortion rights group is doing all it can to create a backlash and elect him by putting out inaccurate info, according to Fact Check.org:
An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers “supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber� and of having an ideology that “leads him to excuse violence against other Americans� It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham , Alabama .
The ad is false.
And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn’t deal with bombing at all. Roberts argued that abortion clinics who brought the suit had no right use an 1871 federal anti-discrimination statute against anti-abortion protesters who tried to blockade clinics. Eventually a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed, too. Roberts argued that blockades were already illegal under state law.
The images used in the ad are especially misleading. The pictures are of a clinic bombing that happened nearly seven years after Roberts signed the legal brief in question.
And they give you the details.
Now we KNOW we’re going to be bombarded with people emailing us and leaving comments calling us members of the “right wing cheerleading squad” (TMV can’t even fit into that skirt) for daring to run this — but, sorry.
This is the kind of politics you often see on both sides. But there really needs to be a higher value practiced in American politics which is taking people on honorably on the issues. If you view politics as an end-sum, winner-take-all game where winning is the only goal and value this may be OK. But there are those of us who are turned totally off — by those on the left AND on the right (such as in the Terri Shiavo case, in light of the autopsy results) — who you…to be blunt…cannot trust the second they start moving their lips because they will say or do anything to advance their views.
There are some of us who enjoy reading and might even prefer discussions that are a bit duller, that focus on nuts-and-bolts issues. To some of us, we look at reports about this ad and it shuts down us taking seriously anything from this group in the future.
Yes, we KNOW a major battle is going on for the political soul of the Supreme Court. But it’s no secret that George Bush was going to appoint conservative judges. That’s a separate issue — unless you are of the school of thought that you do anything, say anything, twist anything to prevent that from happening.
This case is like this story last week about the bipartisan voting group that turned out to be a GOP front. If you read our posts, we haven’t been in Robert’s cheerleading section — or in the crew trying to whack him. He seems to be respected by many Democrats.
We’d say the crew trying to whack him lost a lot of points on credibility on this one.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.