In retrospect, I deeply apologize for all the nasty things I’ve said about the people responsible for putting David Souter on the Supreme Court. Compared to what we know about John Roberts, Souter was a dream nominee.

As New Hampshire attorney general in 1977, Souter opposed the repeal of an 1848 state law that made abortion a crime even though Roe v. Wade had made it irrelevant, predicting that if the law were repealed, New Hampshire “would become the abortion mill of the United States.”

At this point the only people more opposed to abortion than Souter were still in vitro.

He filed a brief arguing that the state should not have to pay for poor women to have abortions – or, as the brief called it, “the killing of unborn children” and the “destruction of fetuses.”

Also as state attorney general, Souter defended the governor’s practice of lowering the flag to half-staff on Good Friday, arguing that “lowering of the flag to commemorate the death of Christ no more establishes a religious position on the part of the state or promotes a religion than the lowering of the flag for the death of Hubert Humphrey promotes the cause of the Democratic Party in New Hampshire.”

Wait, seriously – who is that guy on the Supreme Court and what has he done with the real David Souter?

We had a pretty good idea what kind of justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were going to be. Scalia had spoken at the very first symposium of the Federalist Society as a young law professor – before it became a felony to do so – and served as faculty adviser to the group. (By contrast, Roberts is running from the Federalist Society like a 9-year-old boy running from Neverland Ranch.)

Before becoming a judge, Thomas had spent 10 years on the editorial advisery board of the Lincoln Review, a black conservative publication that ran articles comparing abortion to murder. He had given a speech praising an article by Lewis Lehrman calling abortion a “holocaust” that should be outlawed without exception. (There were even rumors, never proven, that during his law studies Thomas had actually read the Constitution.)

That’s the sort of nominee we were hoping for! This wasn’t a paper trail; it was more like a paper superhighway.

…

It doesn’t help to have someone who thinks that, as an original matter, the Constitution says nothing about state abortion laws if he is then going to “balance” the law against “the integrity of the institution,” “public confidence in our system of justice,” “the need for stability and predictability,” “the sweet mystery of life,” blah blah blah. The problem with establishment types is precisely that they worry about everything except the law. Just get the law right and shut up.

WASHINGTON — Supporters and opponents of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. were caught off guard Thursday by news that he once had worked behind the scenes to help gay rights activists win a key case before the nation’s highest court.

Debate erupted on conservative and liberal websites, with partisans on both sides asking whether Roberts’ assistance was an aberration from his conservative record or a sign that his views might be less ideological than commonly thought.

The White House sought to play down Roberts’ participation in the case, Romer vs. Evans. The Supreme Court in 1996 voted, 6 to 3, to strike down a voter-approved Colorado initiative that would have allowed employers and landlords to exclude gays from jobs and housing.

Roberts, then a lawyer at the Washington firm of Hogan & Hartson, helped gay rights activists prepare arguments against the initiative as part of his firm’s pro bono work.

Former President Bill Clinton praised Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts as “highly intelligent,” while voicing reservations about a memo Roberts wrote in 1984 that called for stripping the high court of some of its power.

“I don’t think we should in any way prejudge Judge Roberts,” Clinton said in a Bloomberg Television interview at his office in Harlem that was to be aired later yesterday. “He is a very impressive man.”

The overall tenor of Clinton’s comments about Roberts was favorable.

“He seems to be a really good human being, a person who’s got a good family,” Clinton said. “He’s just as entitled to his politics as I am to mine.”