I'll say one thing for John Roberts. He's no dummy.

According to this Washington Post story, SCOTUS nominee John Roberts has had at least a few moments of prescient wisdom in his career. When faced with a chance for his boss, President Reagan, to sign on to the Wacko Jacko fan club, he told the pop star to "beat it."

Tucked in the thousands of pages of documents released yesterday from Roberts's time in the Reagan White House is a collection of memos by the young lawyer about efforts by Michael Jackson's publicists to get presidential flattery for the Gloved One. Without exception, future judge Roberts voted to overturn.

"The office of presidential correspondence is not yet an adjunct of Michael Jackson's PR firm," Roberts wrote in a memo to his boss on June 22, 1984, opposing a request by the singer's publicist for a presidential letter praising the star's work against drunken driving.

I'll also give him credit. The guy clearly has a vocabulary that will be sending me scrambling for the dictionary on a regular basis.

The memo Roberts drafted for Fielding denying the request went further. "The visit of the tour to Washington was not an eleemosynary gesture," Robert wrote, using a fancy word for "charitable." "It was a calculated commercial decision that does not warrant gratitude from our nation's chief executive." Besides, he wrote, Bruce Springsteen got no presidential letter after his tour.

Say what you will, I have to admire a guy that can roll out "eleemosynary" on cue.