Truespeak

(Note - If you're jonesing for your daily Rove-gate fix, be sure to read this from the Washington Post and this from the New York Times.)

Whoops! John Roberts, Bush's poster boy for virtue, may have screwed up.

Judge John G. Roberts Jr. has been called the stealth nominee for the Supreme Court — a nominee specifically selected because he has few public positions on controversial issues such as abortion. However, in a meeting last week, Roberts briefly lifted the carefully maintained curtain over his personal views. In so doing, he raised a question that could not only undermine the White House strategy for confirmation but could raise a question of his fitness to serve as the 109th Supreme Court justice.

The exchange occurred during one of Roberts' informal discussions with senators last week. According to two people who attended the meeting, Roberts was asked by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral. Roberts is a devout Catholic and is married to an ardent pro-life activist. The Catholic Church considers abortion to be a sin, and various church leaders have stated that government officials supporting abortion should be denied religious rites such as communion. (Pope Benedict XVI is often cited as holding this strict view of the merging of a person's faith and public duties).

Renowned for his unflappable style in oral argument, Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself.

Recuse himself? Are you serious? This man has been a lawyer and a judge and he claims that he is unable to separate his rulings from his religious beliefs. That kind of an attitude would get him dismissed from jury duty and we're supposed to believe that he could be a fair Supreme Court Justice. As pointed out over at TAPPED:

He'd only have to recuse himself from abortion and gay-rights cases ... and maybe the death penalty ... and perhaps pornography cases ... and possibly questions of church-state separation ... and, I suppose, poverty and social justice issues ... and then there's the moral acceptability of war ...

To think that Roberts could be a fair and balanced justice yet not be able to rule on cases that conflicted with his religious beliefs is a joke. If he's unable to look beyond his faith, he's unable to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. It's as simple as that.

For years the debate over religion in politics has raged on. As early as 1778, the Continental Congress proposed banning clergymen from roles in government. While the congress failed to even vote on the proposal, many states did adopt it over the years. In fact Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas may have said it best when in 1954 he wrote:

"This early ban on clergymen reflected largely, I think, the fear of a religious group dominating politics.

"English history had shown the evils of the merger of religious and secular power."

I would hope that we as a nation would not be so careless as to forget one of the driving forces behind the founding of the United States of America. Many came here in an attempt to escape religious persecution from their government.

We need a Supreme Court that can separate itself from religion. We need a Supreme Court that will not allow their religious beliefs to influence their decisions. We need a Supreme Court that does not include someone that is unable to look beyond his ideologies and rule in a way that is fair to all. We need a Supreme Court without John Roberts.