Hurricane Roberts
By Lisa Fabrizio
Published 9/15/2005 12:05:21 AM

Now that the victims of Hurricane Katrina have served their purpose for those on the left, Senate Democrats happily turned their attention to their favorite weapon of mass destruction: judicial assassination.

With the scalp of FEMA Director Michael Brown dangling from its belt, the Democratic Party brought out the long knives for Supreme Court Chief Justice Nominee John Roberts. After failing to bring down Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and President Bush himself, Brown is small potatoes in the vast, right-wing food-chain.

Still, there was plenty of lip-smacking across liberal land. Even Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu had the gall to go back on the attack after Brown's resignation:

"The people of our nation, and in particular, the Gulf Coast, deserve and demand full accountability for this administration's missteps in protecting and helping Americans in need. Though the President has now addressed the leadership issues with FEMA, he must still address the resource and organizational issues which hindered our national response to this tragedy."

Landrieu, who was exposed for the partisan hack she is on Fox News Sunday by Chris Wallace, apparently doesn't think that her home state politicos have a few "resource and organizational issues" to answer for that resulted in certain slight "missteps" of their own. But now that the rhetoric is dying down and some local folks are being charged for negligence and worse, the cries for further investigation are fading.

So it's bye-bye Big Easy, hello out-of-the-mainstream activist judge who is radically unwilling to compromise. There will be mentions of Katrina during the Roberts hearings but only to demonstrate that he will be the tool of a party that hates blacks, the elderly, the poor, and inept municipal employees.

And Ted Kennedy did not disappoint when, in the opening hour of the hearings he said, "The stark and tragic images of human suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have reminded us yet again that civil rights and equal rights are still the great unfinished business of America."

Actually, the great unfinished business of America concerns ending the decades of liberal rule in cities like New Orleans where the effects of its inadequacies were on display for all to see. And the best way to finish that business is to disarm liberals by returning our justice system to those who believe that our Constitution is not a "living, breathing" entity but a framework intended to limit the intrusion of the federal government in our lives.

But the Democratic Party has been overrun by those who feel that the federal government exists to control our lives and will fight tooth-and-nail against men like John Roberts who believe otherwise. And so we are treated to a week-long demonstration of the differences between the nation's two political philosophies.

Mostly what you get when watching these hearings is a belly-full of politically correct banalities that flow from the mouths of liberal senators like Dianne Feinstein. Her dreary accounts of how banning abortion would lead to the loss of a woman's "personhood" and "autonomy" only make the case for oratorical abstinence. Her rantings serve to demonstrate how terrified liberals are of having their Roe boat overturned.

Women's reproductive rights, end-of-life rights; it's enough to inspire the belief that the Founding Fathers risked their lives to build a nation dedicated to the proposition that the government should guarantee the right to exterminate its oldest and youngest citizens in order to fulfill the personhood of others.

But John Roberts knows how and why this country was founded. He understands the document meant to govern it and is presently schooling those who swore an oath to protect it. Most senators have law degrees but haven't seen the inside of a courtroom in years, and it shows. John Roberts -- with his photographic memory and incredible command of the facts -- is running rings around the older but unwiser senators on the Committee.

And he will be confirmed easily because the Democrats have no choice; he is that good. And they have cover now since he is "replacing" William Rehnquist instead of Saint Sandra. Though they will continue their desultory attacks to placate their base, they will save the dirty bombs for the next nominee, because Roberts has simply blown them away.

Lisa Fabrizio is a columnist who hails from Connecticut. You may write her at mailbox@lisafab.com.

Ellie