VP Biden Goes After Romney’s Anti-Woman Legal Advisor Robert Bork

In 1987, the Senate rejected Judge Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in light of Bork’s long record of extremism. Bork once described the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters as “unsurpassed ugliness.” He claimed that it is “utterly specious” to suggest that women have a constitutional right to use contraception. And he believes that the Constitution does not protect women from gender discrimination. Nor has Bork moderated his views in the twenty-five years since he was denied a seat on the Court. Bork said it was “silly” to say that women are discriminated against as recently as last October.

Mitt Romney, however, apparently finds this kind of outlook quite appealing, because he selected Bork to co-chair his “Justice Advisory Committee.” At a recent campaign event, Vice President Biden went after Romney for his poor judgment in selecting Bork for this role:

[Biden] addressed specifically the issue of contraception, saying that he “noticed today” that Judge Robert Bork, “a fine man, and a man who I disagree with a lot,” had been named as the Romney campaign’s “justice coordinator.” (He appeared to have read an editorial in today’s New York Times which addressed this fact. Bork was actually named as a chair of Romney’s “Justice Advisory Committee” last August, a Romney spokesperson confirmed.)

He discussed the Bork confirmation hearings, which he oversaw as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the discussion of Griswold vs. Connecticut.

“So we’re kind of returning to the past. You know that movie, ‘Back To the Future?’ It feels like to me that we’re going Back to the Future,” he said.

Not too long ago, of course, the Romney campaign spent days pretending to believe that President Obama’s own view of motherhood was somehow in question because someone who has no association with his campaign said something dumb on CNN. Meanwhile, Romney continues to trust Bork as one of his top legal policy advisors — even after Bork claimed that there’s no such thing as discrimination against women and that women who think there is are “silly.”