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The paper chase

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President bush’s “document dump” of 75,000 pages of papers from John G. Roberts Jr.’s stint in the Reagan administration only fueled Senate Democrats’ demands for more, the Wall Street Journal writes. Democrats also want the Supreme Court nominee’s documents from his time as a top deputy solicitor general in the George H.W. Bush administration -- a move the Journal fears would impinge on executive privilege.

What the Journal doesn’t mention is that we don’t know much about Roberts other than that he’s a “brilliant attorney, a likable guy and a conservative of some sort,” the point USA Today uses to take the opposite stance. It notes that Roberts’ position as a federal employee supersedes any argument for executive privilege, and that Roberts’ papers could reveal his role in “shaping legal policy and writing Supreme Court arguments ... for the first President Bush.”

The New York Times is most concerned about the energy bill the administration has pushed for so desperately. Though not the “unrelieved disaster” opponents make it out to be, inevitable White House claims that the bill will move the country toward cleaner energy are “nonsense,” the Times writes, noting the bill’s “spectacular giveaways” in tax breaks and eased environmental regulations to oil companies.

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Paul Thornton

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