Chief Justice Roberts hits head in accident...

... and some reports state he was foaming at the mouth shortly there after:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a seasonal resident of Hupper Island, located off Port Clyde, was taken to Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport mid-day Monday.

St. George Ambulance responded to a call at about 2 p.m. Monday of a man who had fallen 5 to 10 feet and landed on a dock, hitting the back of his head. The patient was ashen and was foaming at the mouth. As of Monday afternoon, Penobscot Bay Medical Center would not confirm that Roberts was a patient.

Troubling stuff, not just for the sake of the man's health and his well being, which is troubling enough, but given this spewing from Senator Chuck Schumer last week, it is most troubling:

Were we duped? Were we hoodwinked? Were we too easily impressed with the charm of the nominee Roberts and the erudition of nominee Alito?  In case after case, our most recently confirmed justices have appeared to jettison decisions recently authored by their immediate predecessors.  Although Roberts and Alito both expressed their profound respect for stare decisis at their confirmation hearings, many of their decisions have flouted precedent.

...

So every day I feel more comfortable with my vote against Chief Justice Roberts, and every day I'm pained that I didn't do more to try and block Justice Alito.  I was one who felt we ought to filibuster, but my colleagues convinced me we just didn't have the votes.  We should have done everything we could to have blocked Alito.  Alito shouldn't have been confirmed.  We should have done our job better.  Take the president at his word.  When a president says he wants to nominate justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, believe him.  The burden always lies with the nominee to show that he or she is within the mainstream, and that burden cannot be met, as we've seen, by mouthing pleasant platitudes with modesty and stability at a confirmation hearing.

This is typical leftist ranting about the appointment of a conservative judge and so perhaps we can dismiss it easily as such however if we're to take Schumer seriously then it suggests strongly that Bush will have one helluva time getting an Alito or a Roberts or a Thomas or a Scalia appointed when or if that time comes before his Presidency is over and if that be the case then it foreshadows the appointment of someone the court, and the country, needs not. 

We do not need a judge that Schumer would approve of, or Kennedy or Biden or any of the other leftist mouthpieces on the judiciary committee.  Let's pray, for Roberts sake and the sake of the country's near future that he recovers fully.

In the mean-time, fully expect a leftist full court press that will question Roberts health from now until only God know when.  And they will be incessant and brutal about it and their compliant and sycophantic friends in the press will oblige them.

Watch and see.

UPDATE: That didn't take long:

Wonkette:

Chief Justice John Roberts has died in his summer home in Maine. No, not really, but we know you have your fingers crossed.

B-b-but . . . I thought hate speech was a problem only on prominent righty blogs — not prominent lefty blogs. Didn’t Rick Ellensburg say so?

So did Erasmussimo but who's counting?

Comments

[Erasmussimo]

I too pray for Mr. Roberts' rapid recovery; although I disagree with some of his decisions, I wish harm upon no man.

On the other hand, I see nothing wrong with Mr. Schumer's statements. He's expressing his political opinions, and he does so with civility and reason. Calling it "ranting" seems a misuse of the term to me; there's no obvious anger or meanness in the quote.

Yes, you can be certain that the Democrats in the Senate will block many of Mr. Bush's appointments in the future. Why shouldn't they? Their Constitutional duty is to vet the President's appointments. If he offers an appointment that, in their sole judgement, falls short of their standards, then they should reject it. It's their call. There should be a straight up or down vote on the nominations, and if the vote is down, then Mr. Bush will just have to go back and find somebody else until he produces somebody the Senate approves of.

[eric]

John Roberts is an intellectual titan, and Charles Schumer is an intellectual ant. Nobody is indispensable, but Roberts is as close as it gets. I pray he recovers immediately, and those that slander him pray sincerely for him.

I am contacting conservative bloggers around the country since I am one as well. I hope this email is not an intrusion. I saw your site through Pajamas Media, since I am a fan of that site.

If you are open to doing a link exchange, I get some pretty decent traffic. I figure cross promotion is a win win for all involved. If and only if you feel my blog is of a high quality, I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

eric aka www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com

P.S. I am # 6 in the country for best political blog at the bloggers choice awards. http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/21020

[Rick]

Eric,

On the blogroll you go... and I urge my readers to check you out... good stuff...

I must say, while Mr. Roberts certainly seems competent, calling him an intellectual titan seems more a matter of partisanship than cold constitutional scholarship. So far, none of the opinions he has written have been impressive. There are some I disagree with; there are some that constitutional scholars find, shall we say, inexplicable; there are some, mostly on technical issues, that seem competent to me. The biggest complaint I have seen so far is that his opinions aren't very well written -- they're a bit on the muddy side.

I'm not prepared to dismiss Mr. Roberts as a bad judge the way I dismiss Mr. Thomas. I'd like to see how he fills out in his role. I'd like to be able to assess a large body of work. But I certainly don't see any reason for calling him "indispensable".

[Erasmussimo]

Rick, regarding your update: you refer to Wonkette as a "prominent lefty blog". Perhaps you should examine it. Here are some of the headlines there:

"The Democrats are sad, ineffectual and weak — and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon."

"Since the FBI director’s testimony, Gonzo has hardly been speaking to the FBI but he’s probably just practicing his right to remain silent."

"8 million Iraqis are in immediate need … of a month long vacation for their government! "

"Maybe $3 million is a lot of money when you’re running for Congress in, say, Mississippi."

"The best thing about this new ethics reform BS is the phrase “conservatives plan fight for transparency.”"

" * Ken Starr's Law Firm Has a Crush On Hillary"

"Lipstick Lesbians Say 'Go Ron Paul!'"

"Richy-Rich Obama Confuses Iowa Working People With His Fancy Lettuce Talk"

You call this a "prominent lefty blog"?!?!?!

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Erasmussino,

As you continue to police people's viewpoints on things in Rick's comment sections, someday I'd like to see from you a treatise thoroughly exploring the attributes of what you are so fond of calling a "reasonable person," which is now soundly established as a person who's opinions are identical to yours with every issue that comes along.

This reasonable person doesn't think Wonkette is a lefty blog, or that the New York Times has compromised its credibility in any meaningful way. I also understand the reasonable person regards the IPCC as a scientific institution rather than a political one, even though the inconvenient facts say it is a political institution with political rules for draft, review, and publication of the political instruments that happen to be widely treated as scientific research papers.

When you say things that confuse others, these reasonable people infer my confusion is an unmistakable sign that you're much smarter than everybody else. I notice also, when others say things that confuse you, the reasonable people infer your confusion to mean -- that you are much smarter than everybody else.

What else do these reasonable people think? Bit by bit, I'm coming to conclude this clique of "reasonable" people, is a bit more of an exclusive club than you would like us all to think. I mean, what's next...that Michael Moore's documentaries are unfairly slanted to the right?f

[Erasmussimo]

Mr. Freeberg, you're pursuing a personal dispute; your comments have nothing to do with Mr. Roberts. I have no interest in proving my worthiness or disparaging yours; my goal is to clarify issues.

If you'd like to discuss Mr. Roberts' jurisprudence, I'll be delighted to join you.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

It's just that if there's any use whatsoever to attacking the vital distinction between subjective & objective by pointing out what a "reasonable person" would think -- well, to me, a "reasonable person" would characterize the Wonkette resource in exactly the way Rick has done it.

And here you are challenging this assertion as if there was any point in challenging it. It's like challenging whether the earth is round.

If you want to assert that all not-quite-proven assertions are open to legitimate challenge, without regard to how solidly they've already been supported, go right ahead. There is value in this. But I think it would be healthy to do this in a more even-handed way, instead of systematically challenging whatever solid assertions you personally find inconvenient.

And...essentially demanding we take other, more fragile and whimsical assertions as proven facts, barring rock-hard directly-contradictory evidence that's so undeniable as to suit your fancy.

Regarding Chief Justice Roberts, if you are indeed one & the same as this "blank" guy, I agree with you. It's too early to pass judgment. But I'm not looking for passage of a specific amount of time, I'm looking for him to do something groundbreaking. And I think we're in for a long wait, because Roberts is a devotee of minimalist disruption from the High Court upon the law as we know it.

And I think that's good. I would like someone to go through systematically and tear apart all these crazy left-of-center "landmark" rulings one by one, just as well. But I'll take Roberts' way. It's more gradual, more conducive to soothing the public agitation, and probably a lot healthier.

On the issues expressed by Schumer and others about stare decisis, you can find my comments here. But I don't think you're capable of giving those comments fair treatment, unless you fundamentally change the way you think these things out. As you've presented yourself in these exchanges, you're little more than a Geiger Counter with a slightly bloated vocabulary -- you see something that arouses your personal disagreement, you start "clicking." I've not known you to actually digest anything complex, and break it down, as of yet. But there's always hope.