The attack is on

The MSM has launched its assault on John Roberts, with a story implying that he is a racist:

Just three miles from the nearly all-white community of Long Beach, two days of looting and vandalism erupted when Roberts was 15, barely intruding on the Mayberry-like community that was largely insulated from the racial strife of that era.

Envision Andy and Opie walking down the road to the fishing hole wearing white sheets and hoods!

It was here that the 50-year-old Roberts lived from elementary school until he went away to Harvard in 1973, and that decade — as well as the rest of his life — is receiving intense scrutiny as the Senate gears up for its Sept. 6 confirmation hearings on President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee.

Some of the attention focuses on Roberts' civil rights record as Bush replaces retiring Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor, the key swing voter on affirmative action issues.

Roberts' criticism of racial "quotas" in some documents from his work as a White House lawyer has alarmed civil rights groups and some Democrats, who say he may be a partisan for conservative causes. Other memos from his time in the Reagan Justice Department portray an attorney who urged his bosses to restrict affirmative action and Title IX sex discrimination lawsuits.

The fourth paragraph provides a fig leaf of objectivity:

It is hard to know how much Roberts' upbringing in this northern Indiana community on the shores of Lake Michigan influenced his views. Some say the fact that there were riots and restrictions on home ownership is not relevant at all.

Some say it's not relevant, but the AP knows better and so should you!

The family purchased land a few blocks from the beach in 1966 and built an unassuming tri-level house. The Roberts property did not include a racially restrictive covenant, according to LaPorte County deed records, and the restrictions had begun fading away by then.

Other homes built decades earlier in the town had covenants.

Oooh. Sinister.

The buried lede is in the very last paragraph and should have killed the whole story:

"I think it's legitimate to look at the past if it tells you anything about the person. But so what if there were race riots? Did he cause them? No. He was a 15-year-old kid. We don't shape the events that take place in our hometown."

No kidding. Can you imagine what they'd be screaming if this kind of innuendo was used against a Democrat?

If the press is worried about its loss of trust and low poll ratings, it should take note of nonstories like this and clean up its act. What is scary is that journalists have become so isolated from normal society that they think stuff like this is what people want to know.

Update: And today Roberts is against equal rights for women, which is code for abortion. As I keep saying, the Supreme Court has made the judiciary into a third political branch, and we're seeing the campaign.