What's good for the Ginsberg is good for the gander

The Democrats' historically-unprecedented use of ideology as a reason to oppose judicial nominees has led the Bush Administration, Robert Novak observes, to adopt a strategy of holding them to the standard of questioning which obtained when Bill Clinton nominated a Supreme Court justice much further from the American mainstream than John Roberts, and at least as far as the most wild-eyed conservative he might likely appoint in the future.

Novak calls it the Ginsberg standard.

It works like this: you can't ask a nominee's views on matters upon which he or she may be called upon to rule. Ginsberg refused to answer such questions, and got away with it, arguing correctly that it would actually violate judicial ethics for her to do so.

It's going to be very, very hard for the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee not to give Roberts the benefit of "the Ginsberg rule" this time out- and undoubtedly very, very frustrating for them to have to do so. Just watch their upper lips quiver as they demand to know what he would do about Roe v. Wade, the death penalty, and a host of other ideologically-loaded issues likely to come before the court- and get nowhere.

Poor babies!

Comments