The latest anti John Roberts missive from HRC, the abortion rights lobby that targets gay and lesbian donors, manages to sidestep abortion. This isn't so surprising, given that the Washington Post reports that, in the wake of the NARAL ad fiasco, the plan of Roberts' opponents "calls for emphasizing rights beyond abortion in an effort to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate."
HRC head Joe Solmonese dismisses Roberts aid to gay lawyers in the Romer case (although those same lawyers said Roberts help was conceptually very important). Instead, he focuses on decisions he believes indicate Roberts would not extend constitutional protections - such as his finding no constitutional violation in a teenager's arrest for eating french fries on the Washington subway (in violation of a local ordinance).
The arrest may well be seen as unreasonable, but not everything that's good or reasonable is premised on a constitutionally guaranteed right. And in the french fry case, as Eugene Volokh noted, Roberts was bound to follow a Supreme Court precedent - the Atwater v. Lago Vista decision, written by Justice David Souter, that ruled the disproportionality of arrest to offense was not unconstitutional (after a mother was taken into custody for violating the seatbelt law).
HRC's anti-Roberts release, by the way, was sent out the same
day that the upper left page-one headline in the Washington Post
was "Roberts
Unlikely To Face Big Fight: Many Democrats See Battle as
Futile." But HRC soldiers on, against a nominee whose history
suggests an open-mindedness on gay matters that few
expected.