Betsy Newmark has been doing a good job covering the flap between Illinois Senator and Minority Whip Dick Durban and Jonathan Turley. Here she reviews the basics of the story and comments:
Remember the story about Dick Durbin asking John Roberts about conflicts between his faith and decisions he might have to make on the bench? And remember that Durbin’s office first denied that the conversation took place as Turley said it did and then Turley got mad and revealed that Durbin had actually been his source for the story. Well, now Turley is still mad at being called a liar by a senator who was actually the one lying to him and he has revealed that he has the voice of Durbin’s spokesman on his answering machine approving the story and just requesting that Durbin’s name be left out of it as a source.
It appears that the first lie was the way Durbin said the conversation with Roberts went in the first place. Durbin apparently lied to Turley at first by saying that Roberts said he would recuse himself from any decision that conflicted with his religion. But the people who were from Roberts’ side deny that is what he said. And it would have been a big story if it had been true. But it wasn’t and Durbin himself denied that that was what Roberts said when the story broke. That is when Turley went public saying that Durbin was the source for the first story.
So, you have a senior Democratic Senator, the Minority Whip, claim that a Supreme Court nominee said he’d recuse himself from cases that conflicted with his Catholic faith. That is a major story. Given how circumspect Roberts has been on how he would plan to vote, this raises all sorts of interesting questions about what he would consider a conflict. Then it turns out that the Senator is LYING about what Roberts said. And he thought he could get away with it because he was hiding behind being an anonymous source. So now the story is that the Minority Whip of the Senate LIED about what a Supreme Court nominee said and he LIED about the conversation to a journalist in order to put a story out about Roberts and his religious faith. That is despicable and goes way beyond just a media story about lying to a reporter. He lied about what a potential Supreme Court justice had said. Was he planning to bring up the fictitious statement later on if Roberts got on the Court and didn’t recuse himself from some capital punishment or abortion case? Was he planning to use this fictitious statement in the hearings[?]
I won’t pretend to know with certainty whether Turley or Durbin is telling the truth, but I would tend to believe Turley. It could be because I’ve met and talked with Turley a few times, while I’ve met Durbin only once. It could be because the way that the story unfolded would seem to point to Turley being the more plausible truth-teller. Or it could be because of Durbin’s occasional lack of sound judgment and his reputation for twisting things for partisan benefit that sometimes goes beyond even the wide latitude given politicians for such twisting.
Although I have been voting mainly Democratic at the state and local level recently (as well as for the US Senate), one of my Democratic senators that I do not plan to vote for is Durbin. (To his credit, Durbin gave a good commencement address at the last Northwestern Law School graduation — and I told him so after his talk.)
Durbin’s offensive grilling of Viet Dinh was the first strike. His comments on Gitmo, for which he gave only a limited apology, were the second. Now, unless there is some reason to doubt Turley’s account, this is the third strike. It is true that lawyers and politicians are two groups in society not noted for honesty, but if Durbin adopts a tone of moral superiority in his questioning of John Roberts in the Judiciary hearings, it will be interesting to watch whether Durbin can pull it off with a straight face.
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