Hillary Rodham Clinton now leads John McCain by 9 points in a head-to-head presidential matchup, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.

Third round of questioning and it was almost all Democrats. Someone must have been coaching Roberts about his robotic presence because he was struggling to come across as more human.

When Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) quizzed him about this memo where he basically took the side that children of illegal immigrants should not be allowed to attend public school, someone might have taken his slightly lowered head as a sign of compassion. He said that of course he believed personally that all children should be educated . . . but the legal question was a different matter. Well, that certainly is comforting isn’t it?

Then there were six panels of witnesses both for and against Roberts. Generally speaking all the civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights and disability rights organizations and advocates along with progressive academics opposed Roberts. I noticed that the first woman to testify was Jennifer Braceras who used to work for everyone’s favorite backstabbing women’s organization the Independent Women’s Foru (which has all of 400 members). Needless to say, she’s a big fan of Roberts.

Honestly, although it was quite a relief to listen to other people talking besides the senators, the panels were pretty predictable and they didn’t seem to matter much because the vast majority of the Committee members were not in the room at the time. The witnesses all turned in their statements so I guess the senators can always read them later. I think it’s safe to say, perhaps with a few exceptions, most of them have already made up their minds one way or another.

So the Judiciary Committee vote is scheduled for late next week and then the entire Senate will vote.

And I know just as much about Roberts as I did when the hearing started and that ain’t much. I know he’s brilliant and he knows all there is to know about the law. I know he wrote a bunch of truly odious memoranda and whatnot back in the 80s. I know he’s conservative. I know he’s anti-abortion.

Most importantly, though, I know that he would be deciding what my rights are and how they should be applied for something like the next 40 years. That’s a very long time in a very powerful position for a person whose only stated positions on the issues that I hold dear are in complete opposition to my own. Plus, I don’t like the man’s eyes.

Here’s hoping that some of the senators feel the way that I do.

Until Tuesday's hearing . . .

More of the same evasion today. Roberts is nothing if not slippery, even if he has started to look a bit haggard. But his dodging seems to be getting on the nerves of everyone, even the Republicans. Specter became quite irritated with him when he refused to answer his questions about the Supreme Court limiting Congressional power. Roberts is doing an especially bang-up job of stone-walling any question that might trap him into betraying the slightest consideration for civil or women's rights.

The only time that Roberts does give a straight answer is when he is asked a question about the role of the federal judiciary. For the record: Roberts thinks that the federal judiciary should have a limited role in the government and he is concerned with "judicial activism." Of course, what constitutes judicial activism varies depending on who you ask so the more pertinent question is what Roberts thinks is judicial activism. He probably wouldn't answer that though.

Roberts often comes across as a legal android and the Democrats spent today trying to get him to show any human characteristics at all.

Instead of answering questions, Roberts will often give a legal history lesson and during these times my eyes inevitably stray to his wife sitting behind him in a dark suit and her glazed eyes indicate that she is probably as bored as I am. I wonder what their home life is like? What will they talk about after they leave tonight? They'll probably discuss strategy while sticking pins into dolls dressed like Joseph Biden (D-DE) and Charles Schumer (D-NY).

At this point, being a concerned citizen is difficult. It is exasperating and frustrating to listen to the Senators ask the same questions over and over and never get an answer. I don't know whether to be more irritated with Roberts for not answering or with the Senators for continuing to ask. It's mind-numbing to sit through Senators' posturing and Roberts' evasion for eight hours straight.

I would simply like to know whether in five years I will still have the right to have an abortion if I need one. Will my civil liberties exist past the War on Terror? Will I be allowed to build a life that is legally and financially stable with a person that I love regardless of their gender? Will my sisters in Mississippi or North Dakota have the same rights and freedoms as I will if I live in California or New York?

I have heard that the Committee might be planning to vote on Roberts tomorrow and I cannot say that I will miss listening to Roberts' prevarications and the Senators' longwinded questions, but I do wish that I knew a little more about the guy who will be heading up the highest court in the land.

Was anyone else unpleasantly surprised that these hearings last until 8:30 at night?

I decided not to go back to the hearings after in person after Monday because all the cameras and the oh-so-important people walking around directly in my line of sight made it difficult to concentrate. Instead I watched the hearings on C-Span.

And things shaped up pretty much the way everyone thought they would. This is how it worked: all of the Senators got 30 minutes to question Roberts on anything they wanted to and Roberts could answer (or more likely not answer) as he saw fit.

Roberts had an arsenal of reason why he could not answer any questions. The most popular reason was that the subject matter of the question might at some point come before the Supreme Court and therefore he could not speak to his views on the matter. The second most popular excuse was in response to any difficult question posed about the memos and whatnot that Roberts penned while working for the Reagan administration. These are not necessarily my opinions, he said calmly, I was a staff lawyer and I spoke for the administration and not for myself.

It was puzzling, though, that he did not take any of the numerous opportunities offered to him to retract some of the truly heinous things that he wrote in the 1980's. For example his crack that encouraging homemakers to become lawyers might not be for the common good or his reference to the "illegal amigos" of a Latino audience. When asked about these things he could have said that he was young and inexperienced and he probably would have been forgiven; instead he defended his tone and his statements and blew off any concerns they might engender. It reminded me of Bush and his make-no-apologies, make-no-compromises attitude.

So because Roberts kept his mouth shut, the bulk of the action took place while the Senators were talking.

Most of the Senators took about half of their time to pontificate on a pet issue if they were a Democrat or stroke Roberts' ego while pontificating o a pet issue if they were a Republican. Yes it's just as we all suspected: a lot of the people involved in this process are obnoxious.

Among the exceptions were Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Biden mercilessly grilled Roberts on his views regarding abortion and Title IX and Roberts sweated a little even as he artfully dodged everyone of Biden's questions.

Feinstein was brilliant. Before she started, several people had asked Roberts about abortion -- but by asking him five rapid questions about the specific issue all of which he declined to answer, she made it completely clear to everyone that he has no intention of expressing his views on Roe. She also - bless this woman - pinned him down to an answer about the separation of church and state. He said that he would not look to the Bible for answers to legal questions. I wonder what his friends Pat Robertson and Tony Perkins will have to say about that. They probably know better.

Toward the end of the day, Roberts started to look a tired and he lost his cool a bit when Russ Feingold (D-WI) and the delightfully rude Charles Schumer (D-NY) pressured him to be more forthcoming. I'm not holding my breath . . .

Well now. Attending the hearings in person was an interesting experience. The 40 of us who had tickets to the first time slot lined up at 11:15 to be escorted by police through the Senate building. They took us very rapidly up three flights of stairs and we were told by unsmiling staffers that we should go in and sit down immediately and be quiet. That was a ridiculous because the Russell Building Caucus Room was near deafening with the chattering of the press and the aides and the staffers, so why shouldn’t we talk? There were cameras everywhere and when Roberts entered the room accompanied by Committee Chair Arlen Specter (R-PA) and ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy (D-VT) it took me a few minutes to locate them through all the media.

When everyone was finally seated, Specter gave opening remarks and I couldn’t hear a damn thing he said over the camera clicking. Leahy was a bit more intelligible when he spoke about the importance of the Supreme Court and the federal government in general in ensuring the rights of the people. These were pointed comments because Roberts is generally known to be all about decentralizing power and giving states more authority. This, of course, would be very, very bad for minority rights.

Each of the Committee members had 10 minutes to speak about their position coming into the hearings and they used every one of them. Generally the Democrats insisted that Roberts should provide as much information as possible regarding both his judicial philosophy in general and his views on certain subjects. The Republicans countered that he should not answer any questions that might affect his impartiality as a Justice, giving Roberts a nice little loophole out of answering any controversial questions that the Democrats might pose.

Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Joseph Biden (D-DE) were inspiring, and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) talked about women before Roe v. Wade passing the hat to pay for a friend's abortion in Mexico. But the superstar of the day was Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Coburn would like you to know that he is a doctor. He repeated this several times during his remarks although it has nothing to do with anything. Coburn is a doctor who is very, very anti-abortion, like he wants to allow states to impose the death penalty on physicians who perform abortions. He is a doctor who is very, very anti-gay marriage and gayness in general. He definitely came across as the most conservative of the Republicans and that’s saying something, because Sam Brownback (R-KS) spent some serious time talking about the sanctity of life.

So this guy, one of the most divisive people in the Senate, literally shed public tears over the polarization of the country. He said it breaks his heart how we are at each others throats. Yes it is a sad state of affairs but I would hazard a guess that it has much to do with the fact that Coburn’s vision of “this great nation” does not include me, my values or most of the people that I care about. What a giant hypocrite.

Roberts sat through all the speeches with a frozen look of deep seriousness and grave consideration of the wise words he was hearing. His eyes were still crazy though. When it was his turn to speak he talked for exactly six minutes and said absolutely nothing of substance whatsoever. He did draw an extended comparison between the Supreme Court and baseball and waxed poetic about the fields of Indiana.

So I guess tomorrow they will get to the actual questions. But if today is any indication, Roberts will not reveal much at all.

This morning I stood in line to get a ticket (yes, you need a ticket) to sit in the opening day of the Roberts hearings. I was told by many people that I might need to camp out the night before because the line to get in would be incredibly long. This was not the case and I can't help but wonder why. By all accounts, Supreme Court hearings are generally very well attended and taken very seriously.

Tickets were to be handed out at 8:00am so I showed up at 6:30 to take my place in line. There were about 20 people there waiting and over the next hour and a half maybe another 30 turned up. At 8:00, seven well-dressed staffers marched out of the Senate building looking oh-so-ready to manage the unruly crowd. Really, the looks of disappointment on their faces were heartbreaking. They went down the line and handed us our tickets, saying that because there were so few people we might be able to stay longer than the half-an-hour time slot we were given. All in all, the whole experience was anti-climactic.

I think it probably has to do with all of the ridiculous rules that they instated this year. You have to wait in line in the morning to get a ticket that will give you a particular time to come back and line up again. Then you can sit in the hearings for a full 1/2 hour before they kick you out. There was also supposedly only 12 seats open to the public. And you can't bring anything in with you. This all seems calculated to discourage participation as much as possible and from the small group of people who showed up this morning, I would say it worked well.

Three cheers for the feminists though. They were the only progressive group to show up with signs and chants against Roberts' confirmation. They stood on the other side of the road from the ticket line before heading over to the Supreme Court where women in bright green shirts were pushing around empty baby carriages in support of Roberts. A bizarre but effective demonstration; there was a fair amount of media there.

Okay. Time to go to the hearing.

The Roberts hearings have been postponed till Monday so that Bush can mourn Rehnquist (RIP) and try to do some damage control after his administration's gigantic train-wreck of a response to Hurricane Katrina. I have to hand it to the media though, they are very properly raking him over the coals for his astounding inefficiency and grossly inappropriate blasé attitude.

It is very clear to me now that if Roberts gets a seat on the Supreme Court (as Chief Justice no less) it would be a Very Bad Thing. And not only because his vacant, soulless, blue stare is vaguely reminiscent of Charles Manson. This is the man who has said that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, ridiculed crazy-radical concepts like pay equity and women being lawyers and repeatedly questioned the existence of the pay gap. And since Bush will not release any documents from the time that Roberts worked as the top "political deputy" at the Solicitor General's office, it's anyone's guess as to what other God-awful things Roberts has written, but given his general misogynistic tendencies I am willing to bet money that I wouldn't like them much.

I am curious to see who Bush will pick for the second Supreme Court vacancy. There are rumors that this pick will not be a white man. But then again, those same rumors went around when O'Connor resigned (thanks for nothing Sandra) and here we find ourselves with Roberts. We shall see.

Hello all, my name is Rebecca. I am 24-years-old and I live and work in the District of Columbia. I have been a feminist and social justice activist for some time but politics has never been my strong suit. When I moved to our nation’s capital, all of the sudden I was thrown into this world where legislation and senators and all matter of "inside the beltway" gossip and intrigue were of paramount importance. Simply put, I am the anti-wonk. I didn’t listen enough to School House Rocks and consequently I don’t really know how a Bill becomes a Law or many other important things.

I think many progressives are like me. We care about the state of our country and the world, but do not have the time (or maybe the inclination) to watch C-Span all day. We recognize that our rights are being threatened and in some cases eliminated and we are desperately concerned about the right-wing takeover of our government but let’s face it, what with paranoid security measures and cynical, re-election strategies, taking part in the democratic process these days as a simple citizen is next to impossible.

So now we are dealing with the Supreme Court. And this completely backwards Bush nominee John G. Roberts who is now being nominated not only to be on the Supreme Court, but to be the Chief Justice. And if this happens, we are basically screwed. And by "we" I mean anybody who is not rich, white, straight, male and completely able-bodied. Really, anybody who might need the law to protect them at some point.

In order for all this to happen, Roberts has to make it through a hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee. In an attempt to be an active citizen, I am going to watch the hearings from beginning to end and post my thoughts here. This was supposed to start tomorrow but Chief Justice Rehnquist died so everything got postponed.

Keep checking back and I'll post more information about what’s going on with the hearings and Roberts' nomination process.