Byron York on Roberts, Day Two:

With that, some of Roberts’s supporters began to wince; one conservative observer said shortly afterward that he knew the nominee’s words would cause unhappiness among the president’s pro-life base, who would certainly want to know why Roberts had been quite so respectful of the status of Roe as "settled law." But the observer said Roberts was trying to "thread the needle" — that is, to make carefully crafted statements on abortion that would satisfy Democrats (and the pro-choice Specter) without actually saying very much. Roberts was succeeding, but perhaps too well; to the casual listener, his words sounded quite pro-Roe. If conservative constituents had had one of those dial-o’-meter approval-rating devices in their hands, Roberts’s graph would have headed straight down.

But Roberts’s adversaries on the Left heard something else. "Yesterday he talked about baseball," said Ralph Neas of the liberal lobbying group People for the American Way, as he held court in the lobby outside the hearing room. "Today, he’s playing dodgeball." And Nan Aron, president of the equally liberal Alliance for Justice, said Roberts had given "the illusion of candor and the appearance of openness. But in question after question, he dodged giving the answer and evaded responding to senators’ real questions."