Just watching the confirmation hearings here on my lunch break and caught Senator Whitehouse D-RI. He addressed his comments, in part, to those republicans worried about Sotomayor's "judicial activism". I dont have the transcript but he quoted Jeffrey Toobin
I dont have the transcript but he quoted Jeffrey Toobin in arguing that those same republicans who are worried about "judicial activism" put the most ideologically pure republican on the bench as there could be. The quote from Toobin that Whitehouse stated was, regarding Roberts,"In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff."
Great Job Senator Whitehouse
UPDATE: From the NYTimes live blog..
Baseball, Baseball, Baseball | 12:18 p.m. Yes, we all know the judge is a Yankees fan and that John Roberts characterized his role as a justice to be that of an umpire. But in the latest senator’s statement, that of Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, he utters the umpire metaphor, calling balls or strikes, far too many times. Senator Whitehouse tried to depict Chief Justice Roberts as anything but an umpire in the four years he’s been on the bench, criticizing his rulings as taking sides — for the prosecution against the defendant, for the corporation against the plaintiff, etc.