The John Roberts hearings will go until 8:30 tonight. When you embed John Roberts in a link, use the same link I did above.

You can follow the hearings at Pacifica or at C-SPAN. The New York Times has a transcript of the morning and afteroon hearings.

• The hearings have adjurned until 9am tomorrow morning. Man, there must be fifty ways to leave a Senator hanging during a confirmation hearing, and Roberts knows them all. Here is the beginning of a draft of a press release to come from People for the American Way later one tonight:
  On the first day in which he fielded questions from the Senate, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts sounded more like a dodgeball player than the umpire he told senators they could expect.

  Roberts’ answers were evasive, selective, and, at times, misleading. He claimed that opinions he’d proffered in the past were not his own—and then contradicted himself. He tried to say that past nominees hadn’t answered questions—but they had. And when it came to some of the most important issues a Supreme Court justice could address, including Roe v. Wade, executive power, civil rights, and gender equity, Roberts was far from forthcoming. Indeed, he had already dodged more than 25 different questions when hours remained in today’s session.

  The bottom line? Roberts’ views on many important issues remain murky at best.

  I agree completely. As things are developing, the biggest issue with Roberts is that we just don't know much anything about his views on important judicial issues. Both Roberts and Republicans are working together seemingly to make certain that we know as little about him as possible, even though they want to have him head the American judicial system for decades to come. This is unacceptable. More tomorrow.

• "John Roberts" has reached #5 on Technorati, it's highest position since the start of the hearings. The blogopshere is getting better, but still not good enough. Tomorrow, we need him to be #1. Please, if you have a blog or a diary, start writing about Roberts.

• Here's a transcript of Durbin asking Roberts about Bob Jone University.

• Armando has a new great post up about Roberts and privacy.

• While answering a question from Durbin, Roberts started to say something like "the framer's intended to portect privacy--" but then he corrected himself and said "--conscience from government intrusion." I'll need to wait for the transcript on that one, but I think it might have been an important slip-up.

• Here is a link to a page that contains all of the press releases sent out by the Democrats on the Judiciary committee during the hearings. Lots of good stuff.

• Schumer smacked Robets around for what he feels is an inconsistent use of the "Ginsberg Rule." Pointed out that Roberts once used the term "illegal amigos" in a memo.

• Roberts refuses to uphold the interpretation of the Commerce Clause in Wickard vs. Filburn in the same way he would uphold Brown, Gridwold or Marbury. This is starting to smack of the Constitution in Exile.

• Schumer asks how Roberts will "divine" the right to privacy. Roberts says (emphasis mine):
  "The court...talked about the necessity of considering the nation's history, tradition and practices. As Justice Harlan always explained in his opinions, you always need to do that with limitations on the judicial role. You need to recognize that it is not your job to make policy, either under the constitution or under the statutes. The approp. judicial role focuses on those considerations as developed in the court's precedents. That's where I would start." More: "You begin with the precedents. You analyze them with the principles of stare decisis. All the justices recognize that in this area you need to be especially careful about the source of the content that you're giving to the right at issue because it is an area of the danger of the judges going beyond the limits of their authority."
  Um, all of the judges? Could he be any more vague? This is very similar to when, earlier, in response to a question from Biden about whether there is a right of privacy to be found in the liberty clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Roberts said (emphasis again mine):
  I do, Senator. I think that the court’s expressions, and I think if my reading of the precedent is correct, I think every justice on the court believes that, to some extent or another.
  This demonstrates nothing about how Roberts views privacy, since he is including Thomas and Scalia in the group of justices who hold a belief in a right ot privacy. Considering this, I do not think we could be encouraged by his comments on a right to privacy at all.

• Schumer: I have been pleasently surpirsed by some of your answers today."

• Graham is aking about the anti-Roberts ads, trying to make him a victim, as though there aren't way more pro-Roberts ads. "We're persecuted all the time by evil liberals" is part of the conservative elevator pitch.

• Lindsay Graham asks Roberts if he will be another Rehnquist. Roberts replies that his judicial philosophy is "in many respects similar to his."

• This passage where Roberts gets testy with Feingold demonstrates, I believe, the main problem that is developing with Roberts (emphasis mine):
  "Senator, you keep saying 'what I supported' and 'what I wanted to do.' I was not shaping administration policy. The administration policy was shaped by the attorney general on whose act I served. It was to extend the voting rights act without change...it was my job to promote the administration's position and that's what I was doing."
  We already know that Roberts, who has only been a judge for two years, has a very limited record of rulings through which we can understand his ideological slant. We also know that the Bush administration has refused to release many documents concerning Roberts. If we accept the argument in the above quoted passage, which Roberts has made consistently during the hearings and which many Republicans consistently made before the hearings, then we cannot take anything Roberts did when he was working for the Reagan and Bush administrations as representative of his personal views. Now, if we also accept the argument that Roberts should not discuss his view on any specific case, also put forward repeatedly by Roberts and almost every Republican on the planet, what the hell are we all supposed to know about this guy before making him the head of the American judicial system?

  This is absurd. Conservatives are demanding that we make Roberts the head of the American judicial system for decades as they simultaneously argue that we should not know anything about Roberts at all. That is unreasonable, and at least worthy of a no vote, if not a filibuster.

• Think Progress has a brilliant post on Roberts: 25 Ways To Not Answer The Question

• Feingold pushing hard on the Voting Rights Act, specifically the different types of tests. The point seems to be to argue that Roberts was wrong, more than anything else.

• Confrim Them is splitting. One poster, Marshall, claims that Roberts is going to be a strong conservaive because of the following:
  The bottom line is this: the key in looking at Roberts’ answers today is not to look at what Roberts is saying. You must look at what he’s not saying. He’s providing careful answers that will be viewed as non-controversial by the general public and the Senators considering his confirmation. But he’s also carefully leaving critical openings on nearly every issue.
  That sounds like something I would write, except draw the conclusion that it was a bad thing. Another Confirm Them poster, Andrew, is growing discouraged about Roberts's conservative propects:
  I’ve looked over the transcript for today’s morning session, up through Senator Kennedy’s questions, and can make a few comments. For me, the answers from Judge Roberts were not encouraging.(...)

  It now appears very possible to me that President Bush has nominated a pro-Roe vote in place of an anti-Roe vote. It appears from this morning’s testimony — and I could be wrong about this — that Judge Roberts will probably affirm the so-called right to obtain an abortion all the way up until viability, even though 72% of women in the United States have consistently said that abortion should generally be illegal months before viability.

  Even conservatives are not sure what to think about Roberts. It is not surising, since we know basically nothing about what the guy thinks.

• Roberts just rejected Korematsu. Good. At elast he isn't a fascist. It is interesting that he was willing to ofer a specific answer on that case, which he has repeatedly refused to do in these hearings. In fact, he just did it again on the Hamdi case.

• Feingold up. In his typical Gogo (Good Government) fashion, which I much admire, his first quesiton is a non-ideological, reformer one: he asks Roberts to televise Supreme Court proceedings. That's a good idea--I'd really like that.

• Over at Technorati, "John Roberts" has been doing mch better than ysterday,k hovering around sixth or seventh most of the day. It is sitll not good enough, but it is an imporvement.

• If nothing else, this process has been personally instructive to me as to the degree that the progresive judicial philosophy rests upon the right to privacy, the equal protection clause and the commerce clause. "Right ot privacy," is easily and obviously part of the Democratic / progressive elevator pitch, and a powerful progressive frame. I'm glad we at least have that.