That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post, in which I discuss how and why I helped launch Bench Memos way back in 2005—in brief, because I anticipated a Supreme Court vacancy and was eager to avail myself of the opportunity that the Internet provided to knock down attacks on a nominee’s record before those attacks gained traction. I also explain how I was very pleasantly surprised by the readership that my blogging on the Roberts nomination earned from the outset. An excerpt:
From the first week on, reporters were calling me to walk them through cases and to respond to conflicting claims. A Washington Post reporter told me that she and her colleagues were checking Bench Memos several times a day.
The same reporter told me that she and her colleagues even wondered whether I was the White House’s communications vehicle on Roberts. I found that speculation particularly amusing, as I had not any contact with the White House on the Roberts nomination.
What’s more, a major reason that I was blogging was that I feared that the White House communications office, staffed (I assumed) with veterans of election campaigns, would have an instinct to run to the political middle any time a controversy arose, rather than to offer a robust defense of conservative jurisprudential principles. The office also could not be expected to have the expertise to address complicated legal issues, and it would in any event be very wary of speaking out forcefully on matters that Roberts himself could be expected to address at his confirmation hearing.
Please sign up for Confirmation Tales.