John the evangelist?

摘要

"What, if any, is the appropriate role of religion in government?" It is not only Iraqis who have to worry about such things. The question is one of several that Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the Democrats' chief inquisitors, has promised to put to John Roberts, George Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, when the Senate starts grilling him on September 6th. Mr Roberts's views matter a lot, not least because the judge he is to replace, Sandra Day O'Connor, was often the swing voter on cases dealing with the separation of church and state. She helped keep abortion, including "partial-birth" abortion, legal. She voted to ban prayer in schools, at graduation ceremonies and at school football games. And she frowned on religious displays on public property. In June, for example, she voted to remove framed copies of the Ten Commandments from the walls of two Kentucky courthouses, and to remove a monument inscribed with the Decalogue from outside the Texas capitol. In the former case, she was on the winning side; in the latter, she sided with the losers.