Feinstein Hits Roberts Hard

Unlike most of the boors that inhabit the Judiciary Committee, Senator Feinstein bore down and asked direct questions right away. Fair, direct, hard hitting questions on some of the language that jumps right out of his memos as an assistant White House counsel.

Supreme Court nominee John Roberts consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress. He concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable." And he said that a controversial legal theory in vogue at the time -- of directing employers to pay women equally to men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."

How do you defend that kind of language? Not very well, I'd say. I don't know what he is like now but the show-off butt kisser that he used to be is too clever by half. Scary stuff that language, and a fair area of inquiry.