I can't tell you how much this story warms my heart

John Roberts, stealth candidate no more - at least if he hasn't changed his beliefs since his 20s.

This article in the Washington Post (hat tip: The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru) gives a summary of numerous documents released by the White House on John Robert's stint as a special assistant to the AG in 1981-82. It shows a young man unafraid to express and defend his beliefs, even to superiors, and even to, surprisingly, Ted Olsen.

My earlier post about Robert's niceness, speculating that he would therefore be an easy target for the left's persuasion, is no longer apt, apparently. Rather, as John Derbyshire noted (also quoted in my earlier post) it appears that John Roberts does have a distinct "streak of opinionated crankiness and contrariness." And, the views he expresses in these writings (unless the WaPo reporters only took selections of the documents showing Roberts at his most right-leaning moments, and did not report a host of center-leaning writings) are uniformly correct - i.e., originalist.

Perhaps, just this once, a stealth candidate will turn out OK.