The National Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund today attacked Supreme Court nominee John Roberts for his comments on a memo when he worked for the White House counsel's office during the Reagan Administration.

The memo, which addressed an upcoming American Bar Association scuba diving trip, contained the suggestion that if the scuba equipment turned out to be substandard, then hundreds of lawyers would end up on the ocean floor. Roberts called the possiblity of so many dead lawyers on the ocean floor "a good start."

"This is typical of Republican administrations," said Robert Kennedy Jr., a lawyer representing the EDF. "They have no concern for the pollution so many decaying corpses would have on the fragile ecosystem."