Enter stage Left, armed with a French Fry

How else to combat Judge John Roberts?

Beldar Blog shreds Dahlia Lithwick for this snide aside:

[Judge John Roberts] doesn't appear to be crusading for a wholesale national retreat to the good old days of executing miscreant 'tweens (although he seemingly finds arresting them for French-fry possession to be a cornerstone in good parent-child relations).

But Lithwick is not alone is misrepresenting the case. Brit Hume interviewed Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard University about Roberts. Here's what Tribe said on the French Fry case:

TRIBE: It’s a little hard to say. I was, I have to say, frankly, a little stunned at this strange case of the French fry, this case of Ansche Hedgepeth, because, even though it’s just one small case with one 12-year- old girl, there were things about it that I wanted really to ask John about.

I mean, in particular, in saying that the Constitution afforded no protection against a flat rule that allowed no tolerance whatsoever when someone, like a little kid, eats a piece of food in the subway, why didn’t think that violated liberty?

After all, Justice O’Connor (search), whose place he would take, thought that even a less stringent rule, a rule about seat belts, which did allow the police discretion, violated liberty. She was in dissent in that case, and he extended the Supreme Court’s rather narrow view of liberty.

And I think that’s sort of a window. So I want to know, you know -- that’s not consistent, really, with the sort of humane and decent John Roberts that I thought I knew.

HUME: Well, let’s ask about that. Is it your contention that he was clearly off-base in ruling that the Constitution did not forbid the local transit authority from having that stringent -- what they call a no- tolerance rule, and that the rest was therefore unconstitutional?

TRIBE: It is my view that the statute was unconstitutional. But I think it is also true that one could make an argument -- John Roberts did and two colleagues joined him -- one could make a respectable argument the other way.

You can read the whole interview here.

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