If Republicans want reasons to grill Roberts as much as Democrats, here's two.
First, famed lawyer and Harward Law Professor Lawrence Tribe says this about Roberts:
Laurence Tribe, a liberal professor of constitutional law at Harvard, remembers Roberts as a student there and has kept in touch with him over the years. He does not recall Roberts as a political conservative when he studied there.
"He's conservative in manner and conservative in approach," Tribe said. "He's a person who is cautious and careful, that's true. But he is also someone quite deeply immersed in the law, and he loves it. He believes in it as a discipline and pursues it in principle and not by way of politics"
And there's this:
Everyone knows that, like all good Republican lawyers, John G. Roberts Jr. is a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative law and public policy organization where right-of-center types meet to denounce liberalism and angle for jobs in the Bush administration.
And practically everyone -- CNN, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times and, just yesterday, The Washington Post -- has reported Roberts's membership as a fact. One liberal group opposed to Roberts's nomination, the Alliance for Justice, has noted it on its Web site.
But they are wrong. John Roberts is not, in fact, a member of the Federalist Society, and he says he never has been.
So one of his former law professors says that Roberts is not an ideologue, and he himself vehemetly denies being a member of the Federalist Society -- a must-participate for every conservative law student and lawyers in the nation.
Of course, we have evidence that he is a partisan, but the results are mixed. He could very well be the next Souter-type on the Supreme Court.
As such, it seems that those Republicans calling for expedited hearings, those Republicans claiming Roberts doesn't have to answer every question -- they might want to rethink things a bit. Perhaps it's in everyone's interest to take a closer look at the nominee so the country has a better idea of who they're putting on the court for the next 30 years or so.