I echo your thoughts completely. Too “right” on any issue however true is undesirable.

i’m not a resident of the us, but I came across this from Brad deLong’s blog:

http://tinyurl.com/82tnk

there is a case for the other side — whether justified or not, is not for me to say because i don’t have any stakes in this particular battle.

Thanks, @mit!

Suresh, Mark Kleiman is being as disingenuous as NARAL in my opinion. The article in Factcheck.org clearly states that Roberts was completely opposed to the Operation Rescue people trespassing on the abortion clinic grounds and called for their blockade - he argued strongly against their violence. Also, as a person working for the administration, it was his duty to argue the administration’s position to the best of his abilities whether he agreed with it or not. Ultimately, it seems like NARAL and Mark are hanging on to strawmen in the argument. Thanks for pointing me to the link.

i will make two quick points and stop because i really got into this by accident while browsing. happens quite a lot:-) anyway, (i) it is disingenous to argue that “it was his duty to argue the administration’s position to the best of his abilities whether he agreed with it or not.” I disagree — if Roberts felt strongly, he could have resigned. Or, as Upamanyu Chatterjee pointed out in the Indian context, there is flexibility in the government to disassociate onself from duties that one doesn’t agree with. I don’t know how the US govt works but I am inclined to think that Roberts could have disassociated himself, if he felt strongly enough. I would therefore take Roberts association in the case at face value. (ii) From my reading of Kleiman, he did not suggest that Roberts supported the violence of Operation Rescue. This is a gray area, though. Clearly, Roberts sympathised and agreed with Operation Rescue’s position on abortion. He probably wanted to help them. But did Roberts — as Kleiman implies — go to unwarranted lengths to support them? I don’t have enough information to make such a judgement, but I would be inclined to give Roberts the benefit of the doubt.

Apologies for the length of the post.

From the Factcheck.org’s version of events - “But what Roberts was supporting wasn’t violence or bombing or even the behavior that was the subject of the lawsuit - blockades of clinics. In fact, Roberts went out of his way to say that the blockaders were trespassing, which is a violation of state law. What Roberts argued was that a federal anti-discrimination law couldn’t be used against abortion blockaders because they weren’t discriminating against women – they were blockading men, too.”

That clearly shows Roberts was not sympathizing with the people he is “defending” - as I see it, the case is not if there was a crime committed - the case was if the crime was a state-level crime or a federal one. I think there is a big difference between saying someone is innocent or excusable and splitting hairs between the levels of the crime they committed. I don’t think Roberts was sympathizing with the group at all.

He might not have felt strongly enough about the case to resign from the administration - he might have simply felt as long as he made it clear the blockaders were wrong, the degrees of wrongness don’t matter. Atleast that is my read on the situation considering he had done pro-bono work on gay rights and other progressive cases.

Don’t worry about the length of the post - write as much as you need to make your point :)

Pl. read the book by Christina Hoff Sommers about the hypocrisy of Radical Feminists which harming the real women issues.

Teh book is: “Who Stole Feminism ?” by Christina Sommers