Get ready for the circus

Here’s Theodore Olson with “John Roberts deserves a dignified process”

A political Gresham's law has debased Senate confirmation proceedings so that they now tend to combine the worst features of reality TV, professional wrestling and celebrity criminal trials. And the more lofty the judicial position, the more the process has sunk into an unseemly and demeaning spectacle. The pathway to service on our most prestigious courts has come to resemble a theater of the absurd, during which prospective judges are probed, humiliated, scolded and scorned. Those who somehow make it through the excruciating process may be forgiven for being embittered by the experience.

It’ll never happen but I’d love to see Judge Roberts snap back the same way Brendan Sullivan did in 1987 when he told Senator Daniel Inouye “I’m not a potted plant.” Why should Roberts sit there as Joe Biden eats up 9 ½ minutes of his 10-minute slot giving a speech? It would be priceless if Roberts got up and said: “I’ll be back when you have a question.”