On the off chance that you live under a rock and were unaware, I am no fan of Bush Jr. I think he is an overly conservative, foolishly persistent, ineloquent Texas bully who should be relegated to dishing out fire and brimstone sermons on the horror of gays and pro-choicers in some hellhole Bible-beater church in Mississippi. Considering that view of Dubya, it is no surprise that I am praying that his nominee Alito is not confirmed by the Senate. The following are some little goodies, brought to you in part by the Washington Post, that illustrate why Alito is a winner:
“In 1991, he was the lone dissenter in a 3rd Circuit decision striking down a Pennsylvania law’s requirement that women tell their husbands before having an abortion.”
“Three years ago Alito drew conflict-of-interest accusations after he upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit against the Vanguard Group. Alito had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested with the mutual fund company at the time. He denied doing anything improper but recused himself from further involvement in the case.”
-Christopher Lee, Staff Writer, Washington Post
“And when I look at that record in light of the 1985 job application to the Reagan Justice Department, it’s even more troubling. That document lays out an ideological agenda that highlights his pride in belonging to an alumni group at Princeton that opposed the admission of women and proposed to curb the admission of racial minorities.
It proclaims his legal opinion that the Constitution does not protect the right of women to make their own reproductive decisions.
It expresses outright hostility to the basic principle of one person, one vote, affirmed by the Supreme Court as essential to ensuring that all Americans have a voice in their government.
This application was not a youthful indiscretion. It was a document prepared by a mature, 35-year-old professional.”
-Senator Kennedy, Transcript from Jan. 9, 2006 hearing, Washington Post
“At no point that I heard did Alito express sympathy for the men and women who came to his court looking for help — and were turned away. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked him about some of those people.
One was a black man convicted of murder by an all-white jury sitting in a courtroom where local prosecutors had eliminated all African American jurors in five consecutive murder trials in the space of a year. Alito, dissenting from a verdict overturning the conviction, wrote that the makeup of the jury was no more significant than the fact that “Although only about 10 [percent] of the population is left-handed, left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections.”
Durbin asked why he had used an analogy that his fellow judges had called totally inappropriate and suggestive of a disregard of “the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants.”
Alito responded, “Well, the analogy . . . went to the issue of statistics and the use and misuse of statistics, and the fact that statistics can be quite misleading . . . that’s what that was referring to. There’s a whole — statistics is a branch of mathematics, and there are ways to analyze statistics so that you draw sound conclusions from them and avoid erroneous conclusions from them.”
That perfectly bureaucratic response betrays not the slightest doubt about the human consequences of his reasoning.
Durbin cited other examples, including the mentally retarded man who was harassed and almost raped by other workers, and whom Alito denied a new trial because of the inadequacies of his lawyer’s brief.”
-David S. Broder, Op-Ed Columnist, Washington Post
“Alito was pressed about his statement in a 1985 job application letter to the Reagan administration that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” It is a reasonable view shared by millions of Americans. Republican Sens. Sam Brownback (Kan.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) were refreshingly open in their denunciations of Roe v. Wade .
But Alito would neither embrace nor back away from what he had said. He did allow that “there is a general presumption that decisions of the court will not be overruled.” Well, yeah.”
“And there was something odd about the gap in Alito’s memory concerning his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a right-wing group whose publications said some rather unpleasant things about blacks, women and gays.”
“Democrats seem to be wary of mounting a filibuster. What they should insist upon, to use a euphemism Alito might appreciate, is an extended debate in which his evasions will be made perfectly clear to the public. If moderate senators want to vote for a justice highly likely to move the Supreme Court to the right, they can. But their electorates should know that’s exactly what they’re doing.”
-E.J. Dionne Jr., Op-Ed Columnist, Washington Post