John Roberts -- Weasel

Confirmation Report - Oh, the humanity! By Dahlia Lithwick: "Senate Democrats have had it up to here with 'John Roberts the lawyer.' And it's hard to blame them. John Roberts the lawyer won't answer any questions. At least, as the sole arbiter of what questions he'll answer, he's doing a rather phenomenal job of broadly defining great classes of questions as unanswerable:

* He won't answer questions about any case currently pending before the Supreme Court (abortion, right-to-die);
* He won't answer questions about any case that might someday conceivably be pending before the Supreme Court (separation of powers, contested presidential elections);
* He won't answer questions he's decided on the court of appeals (since they may someday conceivably be pending before the Supreme Court);
* He won't answer questions about prior nominees (Robert Bork) because that is not appropriate;
* He can't answer questions about general legal doctrine because they are too general;
* He can't answer questions about specific legal doctrine because they are too specific;
* He can't answer questions about his early memos because a robot wrote them."