Just when I think I couldn’t possibly get any more cynical, I realize I’m just not cynical enough. Turns out John “Balls and Strikes” Roberts got onto the Supreme Court after hiding a conflict of interest so he could rule in a 9/11 case in favor of the Bush administration. Via Rolling Stone:
When he was pitching himself to George W. Bush for a seat on the highest court in the land, John Roberts famously declared that judges should be like “umpires,” making calls but never stepping up to the plate for either team. Bush liked the line so much he didn’t just give Roberts a seat on the Supreme Court, he installed him as chief justice — the youngest person to hold that job in almost 200 years.
A new book, “Without Precedent” — an excerpt of which has been shared exclusively with Rolling Stone — suggests another powerful reason why Bush may have felt such extraordinary confidence appointing Roberts to the most powerful position in the U.S. judiciary.
At the time that Roberts was auditioning for the job, he was also presiding over a critical case to which the Bush administration was a party — and rather than acting as an ump in that case, author Lisa Graves suggests, Roberts was practically pinch-hitting for Bush and his cronies.
