Here is NARAL’s 3rd grade attempt at claiming Judge Roberts ‘supports’ fringe anti-abortion groups: he supports the right to free speech.

The first TV ad opposing federal Judge John Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court ignited controversy Monday by accusing him of supporting violent anti-abortion “fringe groups” in a case before the court in 1991.
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It stemmed from a case Roberts argued on behalf of the first Bush administration as an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general. Roberts successfully argued that a federal civil rights law should not be used to prevent anti-abortion protesters from blocking access to women’s clinics.

Protesting is a right of all US citizens. Violent protesting is not allowed, but protesting is allowed. And there is no legal connection between protesting and impinging on someone’s civil rights anymore than a union picket line impedes someone’s civil rights.

NARAL’s ad focuses on Roberts’ work in Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Clinic. In that case, the court voted 6-3 against a Virginia clinic and others that said the group Operation Rescue had denied women their right to abortions by blocking access to clinics. (O’Connor was among the three dissenters.)

The clinics wanted to use an 1871 civil rights law to make women a protected “class” of citizens who were under threat from clinic blockades. The clinics also accused Operation Rescue of encouraging those behind “hundreds of acts of violence,” including 48 bombings, at clinics.

Roberts argued that it would be wrong to use that law against Operation Rescue. The law initially was designed to protect ex-slaves from Ku Klux Klan harassment. The first Bush administration said applying the law could violate protesters’ speech rights.

What is mind numbingly stupid is Roberts simply argued the case. The decision was 6-3, not even close. But arguing this case, which the Supreme Court decided in his favor, is far from supporting fringe abortion rights groups!

Does the left really have that little respect for the average American’s intelligence???

More on this at Drudge, which also links to a fact-check result here.

And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn’t deal with bombing at all. Roberts argued that abortion clinics who brought the suit had no right use an 1871 federal anti-discrimination statute against anti-abortion protesters who tried to blockade clinics. Eventually a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed, too. Roberts argued that blockades were already illegal under state law.

The images used in the ad are especially misleading. The pictures are of a clinic bombing that happened nearly seven years after Roberts signed the legal brief in question.

These folks are nuts and grosss to boot.

UPDATE:

Is there any surprise this has come to the attention of Capt Ed?

Redstate also jumps in with the proper level of disgust and shock CNN is willing to run this garbage.

In hindsight, Daly Thoughts gives this story the amount of space and effort it is probably due.