Word: bork
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...advocate of judicial restraint, Bork has not been terribly successful at exercising personal discipline in recent years. He regularly smokes two packs of cigarettes a day, despite promises to himself to quit. After breaking his arm in an accident on icy steps outside his home two years ago, he began losing control of his now Falstaffian weight. A series of exercise machines -- a rowing machine, cross-country machine, stationary bicycle -- sit broken or largely unused in his attic. Bork has taken up poker in a floating game that regularly includes Scalia, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Education Secretary William Bennett...
...jovial man whose company is enjoyed even by ideological foes, Bork amiably uses smiles and quips to soften his forcefully expressed views. After a Justice Department official commented that a certain decision would be made "over my dead body," Bork noted, "To some of us, that sounded like the scenic route." His disarming humor is likely to help him seem personally sympathetic and even comfortably moderate during the televised hearings. But the prolonged wait has taken its toll, and his irritation with the drum roll of criticism sometimes prompts him to grind his teeth nervously and show flashes of anger...
...Bork has shown his independent streak even after his nomination. The afternoon that Reagan offered him the job, Bork was taken aside by William Ball, the White House legislative liaison, and told not to talk to the press. He nodded, but within hours was giving thoughtful interviews about his life and legal beliefs. He also disregarded advice not to talk to Senators about his legal philosophy. His strategy worked well, both to humanize his image and to explain his complex ideas. Even though he has successfully assured the Senate on two previous occasions that some of his forceful and abrasive...
...inquiry promises to be a grand piece of political theater, with enough ( ideological conflicts, impassioned players and historic resonance to make it a worthy sequel to this summer's Iran-contra civics lesson. But the hearings into the nomination of Robert Bork as the nation's 104th Supreme Court Justice offer something more. At issue on the 200th birthday of the Constitution will be the most fundamental questions at the heart of that document and in the soul of the nation it constituted: What inalienable rights -- ranging from free speech to equal justice to personal privacy -- are guaranteed to citizens...
This Tuesday the bearish federal judge and former law professor, who is as amiable in person as he is controversial in his concepts, will begin three days of intensive grilling by the 14 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Bork and his supporters will argue that he is a fair, open-minded, brilliant jurist whose philosophy of judicial restraint represents a reasonable antidote to 30 years of excessive social activism by the court. His foes, led by Chairman Joseph Biden, will seek to show that he is a right-wing radical whose opinions and writings reveal a reading...