{"id":2429,"date":"2005-09-14T09:40:11","date_gmt":"2005-09-14T09:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html"},"modified":"2005-09-14T09:40:11","modified_gmt":"2005-09-14T09:40:11","slug":"what-did-he-say-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html","title":{"rendered":"What did he say anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/york\/york200509140900.asp\">Byron York on Roberts, Day Two:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>With that, some of Roberts&#8217;s supporters began to wince; one conservative observer said shortly afterward that he knew the nominee&#8217;s words would cause unhappiness among the president&#8217;s pro-life base, who would certainly want to know why Roberts had been quite so respectful of the status of <em>Roe<\/em> as &quot;settled law.&quot; But the observer said Roberts was trying to &quot;thread the needle&quot; \u2014 that is, to make carefully crafted statements on abortion that would satisfy Democrats (and the pro-choice Specter) without actually saying very much. Roberts was succeeding, but perhaps too well; to the casual listener, his words sounded quite pro-<em>Roe<\/em>. If conservative constituents had had one of those dial-o&#8217;-meter approval-rating devices in their hands, Roberts&#8217;s graph would have headed straight down.<\/p>\n<p>But Roberts&#8217;s adversaries on the Left heard something else. &quot;Yesterday he talked about baseball,&quot; said Ralph Neas of the liberal lobbying group People for the American Way, as he held court in the lobby outside the hearing room. &quot;Today, he&#8217;s playing dodgeball.&quot; And Nan Aron, president of the equally liberal Alliance for Justice, said Roberts had given &quot;the illusion of candor and the appearance of openness. But in question after question, he dodged giving the answer and evaded responding to senators&#8217; real questions.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Byron York on Roberts, Day Two: With that, some of Roberts&#8217;s supporters began to wince; one conservative observer said shortly afterward that he knew the nominee&#8217;s words would cause unhappiness among the president&#8217;s pro-life base, who would certainly want to know why Roberts had been quite so respectful of the status of Roe as &quot;settled&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What did he say anyway? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What did he say anyway? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Byron York on Roberts, Day Two: With that, some of Roberts&#8217;s supporters began to wince; one conservative observer said shortly afterward that he knew the nominee&#8217;s words would cause unhappiness among the president&#8217;s pro-life base, who would certainly want to know why Roberts had been quite so respectful of the status of Roe as &quot;settled&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-09-14T09:40:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What did he say anyway? - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What did he say anyway? - Via Media","og_description":"Byron York on Roberts, Day Two: With that, some of Roberts&#8217;s supporters began to wince; one conservative observer said shortly afterward that he knew the nominee&#8217;s words would cause unhappiness among the president&#8217;s pro-life base, who would certainly want to know why Roberts had been quite so respectful of the status of Roe as &quot;settled&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-09-14T09:40:11+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html","name":"What did he say anyway? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-09-14T09:40:11+00:00","dateModified":"2005-09-14T09:40:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/what-did-he-say-anyway.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What did he say anyway?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}