An email sent to Kathryn Jean Lopez and posted on The Corner (re: preliminary attempts by the New York Times to have the adoption records of SCOTUS nominee John Roberts’ children forcibly opened):
How stupid are you? Wait, don’t answer.
Roberts’ adoptions are relevant because he has two adorable, white blond kids. He probably exerted pull to get them, leaping ahead of the tens of thousands of other adults who want kids like that.
Moron.
Lopez doesn’t really answer—instead, she rather predictably uses the email as an opportunity to pimp another NRO subsite— but I’m willing to pick up the slack:
Just out of curiosity, what other “probable” offenses are “progressives” willing to cede require the kinds of fishing expeditions the New York Times was set to embark on? What other cosmetic circumstances justify the aggressive invasion of a person’s privacy ? Is being a Muslim on a subway enough? How about being underage and having an abortion (if, say, the govenment claims that it is merely combing through records checking for potential instances of statuatory rape?).
Seriously: if the mere appearance of impropriety (and in this case, it’s a stretch to call it that, inasmuch as adoptions of white children do indeed happen) justifies the kind of “investigation” you’re supporting here, then I expect your support for the PATRIOT Act is strong, and that you routinely side with law enforcement against “likely” criminals who file complaints about having their civil rights violated.
Right?
Bottom line: there is absolutely no justification for what the Times was preparing to do, unless adopting a white child is now inherently suspect—and, in the calculus of progressives, even more suspect than, say, being picked up on an Afghan battlefield, or buying bushels of Castor beans and having them delivered to your local Islamic center.
****
update: For more highbrowed progressive justifcation, check out this TBogg follow-up to yesterday’s painfully strained, caricaturish justification for digging into private adoption records (h/t TalkLeft).
It’s relevant because he’s a Republican!
Interesting. My father-in-law managed to adopt two white, blonde kids. Now I wonder who he had to kill to make that happen.
The kids were adopted from Latin America, as I understand it, and the progressives are saying he must have bought them from a super secret elite nazi stem cell/cloning research facility. Because of the Hypocrisy.
I’m not sure I agree, JG. If the Times had reason to believe that the adoptions were illegal, e.g., if they involved bribery or the black market, that would be relevant to Roberts’s candidacy.
If they didn’t have reason to believe the adoptions were illegal and were just off on a fishing expedition, then yeah, very scummy.
Did you know that there are organizations that object to white parents adopting black children because the children will not have a connection to their heritage? Also remember in the aftermath of the Tsunami last year, there were Asian governments that would not allow the children who had lost their families to be adopted by non-Muslim parents.
With that kind of opinion very prevalent, how could there be anything unethical about John Roberts adopting 2 white children?
Allah – I don’t think anyone thinks the adoptions were illegal. It’s just unseemly for Roberts to have two cute white kids instead of handicapped brown ones.
How’d he get that cute white wife, too? What kind of pull did it take for him to jump ahead of all the tens of thousands of other men who want a woman like that?
Allah—From what I understand (granted, I’m taking Brit Hume’s word here, and he is THE BEAST, so take it with a grain of salt), there was impropriety alleged. They just wanted to see if they could find some. By opening sealed adoption records.
There are legitimate circumstances I can think of, but simply adopting white children isn’t one of them. And that’s speaking as an adopted white child myself, whose parents hold no special elite status (other than being Jews and controlling the universe, of course).
“unless adopting a white child is now inherently suspect”
Actually, simply being white is sin enough for many progressives.
I have two adopted kids too, one “cute white kid” AND a “handicapped brown kid.” The latter one is a drug affected foster child I’ve had since he was born. The white kid was a distant relative, adopted when her mom went off the deep end.
Relative adoptions happen all the time, so do foster kid adoptions. It isn’t about the Judge however, the privacy of the kids is paramount regardless of where they came from or how they were adopted. Lots of them are cute white kids too.
PS, My state keeps a catalog of about 4000 adoptable foster children at any given time. They’re legally free, and the state pays the fees and pays you child support in most cases. If you’re one of the dissenfranchized wanna be adoptors out there waiting in line behind the power brokers of the VRWC, contact your state’s child welfare department about adopting foster kids. There’s lots of “cute white kids” in there too.
PPS, The “handicapped” ones come with a $10,000 tax credit as an added incentive to those inclined to make excuses why they would prefer a healthy white baby.
You know, even joking that Brit Hume is the beast makes me uncomfortable. Some things are just untouchable.
I”m sorry I read anything past the “purse dog” crack…
No attempt to joke here – Tbogg made me ill.
I said, “Healthy white baby? Five years? What else you got?” Said they got two Koreans and a negra born with his heart on the outside.
And TBogg is a member of the “reality-based” community. You know, the community that thinks it’s realistic to smear thousands of decent Americans who adopt from a foreign county, all in service to a stupid partisan political fight, and then expect their vote next time ‘round.
“The Cancer of Partisan Rage.” Ah.
Why is it worth getting upset about an anonymous letter to National Review about Drudge’s muckraking portrayal of a story that no one has seen? Maybe it’s an unjustifiable invasion of the family’s privacy. Maybe it’s anodyne, or even complimentary- the Times hasn’t been terribly scathing about Roberts. Maybe the damn thing doesn’t exist- Drudge gets a lot wrong.
We’re blessed with tremendous reserves of moral outrage in this country. We don’t need to generate more. Can ths wait until the story, if it exists, is published?
The letter to The Corner was merely a jumping off point for a post, Ted; go read TBogg and others who, in between vicious accusations about the motives of these particular adoptive parents and the conservatives who are defending their privacy, is quick to defend the tack the Times was evidently prepared to take. This post addresses arguments I’ve read defending the paper.
And for what it’s worth, Brit Hume reported yesterday that he’d done reporting on this story himself, and the Times had indeed made overtures to lawyers to find out how they might get into those files (one of those lawyers evidently talked to Hume).
My unimpeachable confidential source tells me that none other than JEFF GANNON and his 8” CUT GAY PORN COCK OF LIES made a barnstorming tour of Latin-American sperm banks in the late 1990s.
ARE THE ROBERTS CHILDREN PART OF ROVE’S SINISTER GANNON PLOT? DIG DEEPER, T-BOGG AND ARAVOSIS!!!
Umm. You would think the NY Times letter from Joe Plamebeck explaining their behavior was admission enough that they HAD ENGAGED IN SAID BEHAVIOR.
Although we could continue to chalk it up to Drudge muchk-raking, just for shits and giggles.
But that is just me…
Excuse me. That is Plambeck, not Plamebeck.
Also, the Times admitted to making inquiries in the email sent to readers who wrote in. Sorry, this is sleazy and reeks of desparate partisan bullshit. That lefty site. It made me sick, and the commenters are full of cancerous rage. Good call, Jeff.
Let us not forget that they adopted two WHITE children from Latin Amreica. That’s some freaky shit, right there?
SINCE WHEN ARE THERE ANY WHITE PEOPLE IN LATIN AMERICA?!!
Three words, baby: Boys from motherfuckin’ Brazil.
Sean: Since millions of Germans, Italians, and Irish immigrants moved there in the Great Migrations of the early 20th century. One of them was almost my grandfather, who missed the cutoff for Argentina by some tiny margin and came through Ellis Island instead.
Also, the fact that the whole continent was invaded and colonized by Spaniards over several hundred years- go look at a Madrid or Andalusia streetscene sometimes- might have given you a clue.
Or are you saying that ALL Latin Americans are dark, swarthy, oily types?
Um, Dave, you don’t have to go as far as Madrid or Andalusia. Just flip on one of the more popular telenovelas, and you can pick up on the same “clue.”
Speaking of clues, my overwrought use of caps should’ve given you one that I was being facetious.
I would like some DNA testing to see it TBogg is related to Sheets Byrd. I think that is the vilest leftwing blog I have seen to date. Imma go take a shower now.
WHITE PEOPLE HAVE NO LEGIT REASON FOR LIVING SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR!!! IT’S COLONIALISM!!! WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!!
My cousins in Costa Rica are blonde haired and blue eyed. Whacky shit eh? Somehow I got the dark skin.
What I don’t understand is – who gives a shit? As soon as person X steps into the national spotlight, someone somewhere is going to try to find anything incriminating. Abortions, murders, unpaid parking tickets, it doesn’t matter. The right did it with Clinton, the left does it with anyone who has ever mentioned the word Bush (even if they were referring to Anheuser Busch).
The people who hate Roberts are going to try this stuff relentlessly. The reason it gets any traction is because someone out there gives the accusers some sort of credibility. If his adoptions are legitimate, great. If not, great.
Right now we should be more concerned with the low ratings “The Dukes of Hazard” movie has been getting. It’s about as relevant as anything else.
South America is made up of lots of people. Incans in Peru. Decendants of black slaves in Brazil. Lots of Germans in Chile. There’s even a school in Argentina established by some Scotsmen. Blonde South Americans are not unheard of.
Something else smells fishy in the “explanation” variously put forth by the Times.
Simply that: “the look into the adoption papers [is] part of the paper’s ‘standard background check.’” Presumably, “standard background checks” are not solely reserved for once a decade Supreme Court nominees, but are performed frequently regarding newsworthy and noteworthy individuals of some public standing. So then the Times would be expected to know that adoption records are sealed through the paper’s experience performing “standard background checks”.
Therefore, why is the paper “asking lawyers who specialize in adoption cases for advice on how to get into the sealed court records” unless they are interested in un-sealing the court records. (This sounds eerily like the withdrawal of the 2004 Illinois Republican Senate candidate over the exposure of his “sealed” divorce record.) That one lawyer turned down the Times is not a defense of the motivation, much less of the ethics. Persons are regularly charged with “attempted” crimes when they are unsuccessful in their illegal efforts, and similarly so, this effort is indefensible, and therefore unethical, IMO.
The Times Public Editor email provides craven misdirection on this point when it claims that as Executive Editor Keller is an adoptive parent, Keller is “particularly sensitive about this issue”. Efforts to invade sealed court records are directly at odds with such characterization of sensitivity towards adoption. As such, instead of providing cover, it suggests a consciousness of guilt regarding the underlying motivation of the sealed adoption records inquiry.
Rotten…as in fish…this is a smelly explanation.
And did I say that TBoggs is particularly unhinged? (Is he related to Tommy Boggs of the big-time Demo lobbyst firm Patton, Boggs?)
“The people who hate Roberts are going to try this stuff relentlessly.”
I agree, but the really remarkable thing here is that “the people” in this case is the New York Times, an organization that continues to claim, with a straight face, that it is a credible non-partisan news gathering outfit.
Never mind non-partisan, this makes it kind of hard to take them seriously as a credible news gathering outfit. That is to say, if you did up to this point. Which I didn’t really, but some people did, amazingly enough.
The NYT and Boggs ought to be drummed out of the human race for their despicable behavior.
ELIMINATIONIST!
but you have to love that the moonbats are defending this. They must be in a different “reality” than I appear to be in. In what world is this going to make people want to vote with them?
The moonbats have given up on winning elections. They’re going to fight tooth and nail for anything they can get as a minority party, and I think their tactics will just get dirtier and dirtier.
Don’t get me wrong, the Democrats will move back to the center (I hope, but with Dean as chair I may very well be wrong) and they’ll be fine. But the “reality-based community” is finished.
I’ve got two adopted kids, both cute as hell, both Asian, one handicapped. Oh, and my kids are both girls. Therefore, Roberts is a racist, sexist, lying bastard.
There. Have I managed to be even more stupid than the Times?