Douglas Kmiec in the WSJ today:

Judge Roberts listens carefully to the questions he is asked, and the extreme premise of Sen. Durbin’s question–as reported–was a judicial action requiring an immoral act. One would hope that all Americans, Catholic or otherwise, would recuse themselves from that.

Catholics do not have to recuse themselves, though, from judging the legality of, say, abortion or the death penalty: These are matters of constitutional, not moral, authority. When More was asked why he didn’t arrest a man directly for being "bad," he replied (as retold by Sir Robert Bolt) that, though he set man’s law "far below" God’s, he was most certainly "not God," and he wanted to draw "attention to [that] fact." "The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which [others] find such plain sailing," More said, "I can’t navigate . . . . But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I’m a forester. I doubt there’s a man alive who could follow me there, thank God."

There is no match for Judge Roberts, either, in the "thickets of the law," and the Senate Democrats should evaluate him on his high merit and avoid picking a fight with American Catholics.

At Get Religion, the Catholic Card, citing a piece in which George Neumayr visits the Roberts’ parish.

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