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Aug

21

Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts — & Hugh Hewitt’s “Adopt a Box o’ Docs”

Posted By: 'Okie' | 3:03 pm — 8/21/2005 | Comments Off See comments below:

During last Friday’s Hugh Hewitt radio show, Hugh and his producer Duane, AKA “Generalissimo”, who blogs at Radioblogger.com, called for volunteers to “adopt a box of docs” in order to facilitate a friendly eyes review of materials having to do with Supreme Court nominee John Robert’s White House years. These boxes of memos, letters, notes and such had been released by the Reagan Library on Thursday, with links to 90 boxes of those being published online by the New York Times on Friday. Yours truly asked for, and was then assigned the second section out of three in box #25 that deal with the subject of The American Flag. My section contains 35 pages.

I don’t see any great revelations or smoking guns in here, and nothing that the MSM will jump on to discredit Roberts, and only one item that the truly lunatic leftist fringe might try to twist into something, however I did find one item that seems to support the notion that Roberts will not let his religious faith interfere or override his duties to the Constitution if/when confirmed to the Supreme Court. I’ll present this first, and then do a rundown of all the items in Box #25.

On September 10th, 1983 a request was made of President Reagan in a letter [Doc. 182927] from the Rev. Lawrence S. Staples of the East Hartford, Conn. Hockanum United Methodist Church. The Rev. was asking Reagan to amend the U.S. Flag Code to include the following:

Within religious sanctuaries and during ecclesiastical ceremonies, flags and insignia representing devotion to the Supreme Being may properly be given the place of highest honor. Nothing in the National Flag Code is designed or intended to belittle or demean the flags or other symbols of things spiritual.

A similar, almost identical, letter [Doc. 184153] was written to the President on Oct. 3rd by Don Zook, pastor of the United Methodist Church of Leoti, KS. This second letter reminds the President of how easily this could be done by citing Section 178 of the code which authorizes the President to make changes to the Flag Code via proclamation “whenever he deems it to be appropriate or desirable”.

In his memorandum to his boss, Fred Fielding, Roberts, noting the similarity of the two letters, refers to them as being “essentially in haec verba” and cites the sections above of the Flag Code that would allow the President, acting alone, to comply with these requests should he decide to do so. However, he goes on to cite the section of the code [Sec. 36 §175] that pertain to allowing a religious flag to be placed at a higher prominence to the U.S. Flag. He notes that this is only allowed “during church services for the personnel of the Navy”, which “suggests other church services are not excepted.” He then goes on to note that in the same section of the code, the display of the flag during church services is “explicitly addressed” and states that the U.S. Flag should be “in a position of superior prominence” and “in the position of honor”.

Going over the history of this particular provision of the code, he notes that the legislators had decided that the U.S. Flag should “take precedence over religious flags”, and quotes a witness testifying before a Congressional Subcommittee in 1974 as saying “that it was important …

…in a time when some religious leaders forget that their right to preach their religious views is guarded and protected only by the strength of Constitutional guarantee.”

Roberts then recommends to Fielding that President Reagan not make the change to the Flag Code as requested by these ministers even though he certainly would have had the authority to do so. This seems to me to be supportive of Robert’s ability to disengage himself from his own strongly held religious beliefs and make decisions that are best for the country. Reagan might have owed his religious constituency something, but not the deference of our national symbol to that of any religion’s official symbol. Or, certainly I could be reading way too much into this.

Here is the only thing I found that a total lefty lunatic might grab onto. In the closing paragraphs of this memo, Roberts reminds Fielding that the Flag Code is “only hortatory” and not a “set of legal rules”, and says that “[I]f some church gives its flag the place of prominence over the Stars and Stripes, the pastor is hardly going to be sent up the river” and then suggests that Fielding’s reply to the ministers “subtly point out” these facts to them without “explicitly inviting the pastors simply to ignore the ‘law’ if they really feel that strongly about it.” He then suggests that the President should take the position that any changes as urged by the pastors should come from Congress.

On Dec. 2, 1983, letters from Fred Fielding went out to both ministers expressing all the points outlined by Roberts. There are no followups to this matter in this box of files.

A 2nd instance that year where President Reagan is asked to amend the Flag Code is also addressed by Roberts. William G. King and Ralton Harris of the Louisburg, NC police department wrote and requested that he declare it permissible for the honor of the American flag to cover a fallen officer’s casket during a funeral, regardless of the officer’s having been or not been in the military.

Roberts responded in a memo to Fielding that “[t]here is no federal law governing the question of when the American flag may be used to cover a casket.” The provision in [Sec.] 36 §175 only covers how the flag is to be displayed and §901 describes the instances where the flags would be supplied by the Veterans Administration free of charge. Fielding sent a letter to King and Harris stating that to their knowledge there was nothing in federal law to prohibit draping an officer’s casket with an American flag, but that there could be state laws that might address this question.

The rest of the file consists of routing slips & tracking sheets, 6 pages of the flag code, with 4 proclamations by President Nixon, apparently for examples of such, and multiple copies of the Fielding letters as per above.

A hand written note to provide a presidential flag to the McClean Community Center, a non-profit county agency plus noting a grant of $25 to the Friends of McClean Community Center with $16 to go “for [not legible] of balcony of theater.”

President Reagan’s proclamation of October 23, 1983, ordering the displaying at half staff of the flag in respect for the American and French military personnel who died in the Beirut, Lebanon bombings.

A June 1985 memo to David L. Chew, staff secretary, stating that the Office of the President had no objection to President Reagan mentioning the Patriots of Fort McHenry in his Flag Day speech, with a caution to the speech writing office that “the President should not explicitly endorse the fund raising activities of the group.” OK to laud the goals, just don’t ask for bucks seems to be the message delivered.

The President’s Flag Day Proclamation for Flag Week 1985 & a press release from The White House announcing the President’s signing of H.J. resolution 211 which recognized the pause for the Pledge of Allegiance as part of National Flag Day in 6-14-’85. I guess if you hate the pledge, you might want to make something out of that!

I’m a designer, not a lawyer, but I did enjoy being a small part of something truly big, like helping to secure the approval of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Thanks again Hugh and Duane for hosting this effort, and for allowing me to participate! (db)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2005 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Focus On Politics, S.C.O.T.U.S.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |  Print This Post Print This Post  |  Email This Post Email This Post

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