I am very reluctant to see internal stuff revealed except where there is some clear public reason for doing so, ... No one seriously thinks that Roberts is a raving lunatic, and as a pragmatic matter he is simply not going to be defeated. So neither on public nor partisan grounds do I think that my presumption of confidentiality is overcome.

Despite all of the references to 'senior policy maker,' the principal deputy solicitor general isn't really that.

It is rather unlikely that memos signed by the deputy solicitor general will be crassly or even overtly political. What is said will be said, almost certainly, in terms of supposed 'professional' judgments about what would persuade the Supreme Court.

I'm inclined to think my fellow Democrats are making a mistake wasting a lot of energy -- indeed, wasting any energy at all -- on these memos.

That Roberts is a conservative Republican willing and no doubt enthusiastic to be part of Bush I, we already knew, ... We will not learn much else from any memo from his time at the solicitor general's office unless [improbably] a personal note from him to the attorney general was revealed.

The current attorney general is known for having had a focus on children and issues concerning children. That kind of focus and devotion of attention and energy is something that is obviously and legitimately in the attorney general's prerogative. But no, he or she must enforce the laws that Congress chooses to enact.