People are e-mailing me saying I was too hard on Arlen Specter because he insulted John Roberts by seeming to agree with Joe Biden that Roberts had been “misleading while he was trying to get Biden to shut up to let Roberts speak. I take the point — these were words spoken in heat and Lord knows it would drive the calmest of men to drink if it were his responsibility to get Biden — whose logorrhea almost reaches the level of a psychological disorder — to stop flapping his lips. As one of my e-mailers said, “of all the reasons we have to dislike Senator Specter, his handling of the Roberts hearings probably will not rank high on my list.”