Stuart Buck responds to my previous post on Estrada, arguing that there are no non-pretextual reasons for the Democrats to have filibustered Estrada but not John Roberts. Stuart definitely gets some good shots in.

We could argue these questions back and forth - Roberts’ questioning, which some of Stuart’s links imply was easy, was in fact a fairly blistering three-hour session, and furthermore it was the second time Roberts had been questioned - but lacking full transcripts, I don’t think there’s anywhere for the argument to go, on either side. Certainly, Stuart has completely failed to provide any convincing evidence that Roberts was overall as evasive as Estrada. (There seems to be no doubt that both of them were evasive, but that doesn’t establish that Estrada was not even worse than Roberts).

However, one of Stuart’s links brings up a new issue - one that I hadn’t been aware of in my previous post. From the Feminist Majority Foundation website (emphasis added by me):

Orrin Hatch confirms the existence of this “no filibuster” deal:

In other words, the Republicans only allowed Roberts to be questioned in exchange for a promise that he not be filibustered. No such deal could have been made for Estrada, because the Republicans were not threatening to refuse to have Estrada appear for a hearing.

(Why didn’t the Republicans make an identical effort to help Estrada - for instance, by having him initially appear in an obstructionist question-many-judges-at-once format, as they did with Roberts? That’s beyond the scope of this post to answer - but it’s important to note that this was a choice made by Republican leadership. It would be unreasonable to accuse Democrats of discriminating against Estrada because Republicans freely chose to make different efforts on Estrada’s behalf than they did on Roberts’ behalf.)

To make his case, Stuart has to show that Estrada and Roberts were in comparable circumstances; the fact that the two sides struck a “no filibuster or no questioning” deal before Roberts was questioned, however, makes Estrada’s and Roberts’ circumstances completely incomparable. The existence of a pre-existing “no filibuster” deal is a very strong, non-pretextual reason for Roberts to escape the filibuster, while Estrada did not.

| This entry was posted by Ampersand and is filed under Site and Admin Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.