More memos have been released, and they don’t really tell us anything different. What we’re gaining is the picture of a young conservative lawyer dedicated to conservative causes, even in one memo where he “referred favorably to efforts to ‘defund the left.”

I think this type of partisanship from someone who aspires to be a Supreme Court justice, one who will serve a very long term, raises concern for further questioning. The general theme I’m seeing in these memos is that his dedication lied first to the President and Party instead of law, but there’s a lot of time to see his true stripes.

In fact we’d be able to get a greater picture of the judge if memos were released from his time as Solicitor General to George H. W. Bush, since that position makes him the government’s lawyer before the Supreme Court; we’d gain a better understanding for how he views key issues.

One of the most repeated criticisms is his views on equal rights for women and the documents recently released do little to remove that concern, instead they increase it:

Disparaged state efforts to combat discrimination against women and wondered whether “encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.”

Perhaps we should wonder if making someone with that view a Supreme Court justice contributes to the common good.