According to JimH's analogy, this is on topic, because it may be of
concern to someone who owns a boat!!!

White House won't let Democrats look at some of Roberts' writings
Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times

Monday, July 25, 2005


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Washington -- Defying Senate Democrats, the Bush administration will
withhold some documents written by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts
while he worked for earlier Republican administrations, advisers to the
White House said Sunday.

The documents, written while Roberts worked in President Ronald
Reagan's White House and President George H.W. Bush's Justice
Department, will be withheld on grounds of attorney-client privilege,
they said on Sunday news shows. But some Democratic senators disputed
the need to keep them secret, and argued that precedent suggests they
should be released.

Roberts, 50, worked in the Reagan White House counsel's office from
1982- 86. He served in the Justice Department of the first President
Bush as principal deputy solicitor general.

Fred Thompson, a lawyer, actor and former Republican senator who is
advising the nominee, said that releasing documents written while
Roberts was deputy solicitor general would bring to light "internal
documents, memos about ongoing recommendations and positions." He
compared them to privileged conversations with a priest, a physician or
a spouse.

"There are lots of good reasons why (making them public) is a bad
idea," Thompson said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, appearing on three of the Sunday
news shows, warned that releasing internal documents written by Justice
Department lawyers "does chill communications between line attorneys
and their superiors within the Department of Justice."

On "Fox News Sunday" he characterized the documents as "very sensitive,
very deliberative information, not something that the administration or
any White House would be inclined to share, because it is so
sensitive."

Thompson, who served three decades ago as the chief counsel to the
Republicans on the Senate Watergate Committee, contended that leaders
in both parties, from "(Watergate special prosecutor) Archibald Cox on
down," have believed that such documents should be withheld.

But Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, disputed that there was a lawyer-client privilege.


"It's a total red herring to say, oh, we can't show this," he said on
ABC's "This Week."

He said Chief Justice William Rehnquist, former federal appeals court
judge Robert Bork, former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and others
had given up documents written while they worked for the Justice
Department.

"Those working in the solicitor general's office are not working for
the president," Leahy said. "They're working for you and me, and all
the American people." He said there was much precedent for providing
such documents.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appearing on ABC, said he believed the
administration might be able to release material written by Roberts
when he was in the solicitor general's office, but not when he was in
the White House counsel's organization.