It’s Alito! Yeah So...Who’s Alito?

Today President Bush announced that his new nominee to the Supreme Court Justice would be Samuel Alito-55, currently a sitting judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Candidate Alito, graduate from Princeton and Yale Law School is well known as a strongly conservative judge who is sometimes called “Scalito” for his conservative record and his Italian heritage. He has been on the 3rd Circuit Court for 15 years. He has a long record for the Senate Liberals to evaluate so there should be no whining complaints from them about a lack of information on his background.

Judge Alito has acquired a reputation as a strong and intelligent voice on the court. He is considered to be as predictably Conservative as is Justice Scalia, but is considered to be less acerbic in demeanor, being generally less emotional and more polite than Scalia who is known for his sharp wit and stinging dissents.

As to the major issues, from his past court decisions:

• Roe v. Wade-He was the lone dissenter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992. In which the 3rd Circuit Court struck down a Pennsylvania law requiring a married woman to notify her husband prior to having an abortion. The court’s decision was upheld by the SCOTUS in a 6-3 decision. The Justices supporting the decision were, O’Conner, Souter, Kennedy, Stevens, Blackmun, with Rhenquist concurring some and Scalia, White, and Thomas dissenting in part, and concurring in part.
• Civil Rights-In a sex-discrimination case Sheridan v. DuPont he dissented in his opinion by objecting only in the use of an absolute restriction: ”the majority here holds that when the plaintiff has made out a prima facie case and has offered enough evidence to support a finding that the explanation was pretextual, a defense motion for summary judgment or judgment as a matter of law must always be denied.” Judge Alito disagreed, stating that there are some occasions (by stare decisis) which contradict the use of the word always.
• Civil Rights-In Fatin v. INS he wrote the majority opinion stating that an Iranian woman could establish a valid claim for asylum by showing that she might be persecuted because of her gender, belief in feminism, membership in a feminist group, or failure to follow gender-specific laws such as those mandating she wear a veil in public.
• Civil Rights-In a freedom of speech case Saxe v. State College Area School District, he wrote the majority opinion striking down the schools anti-harassment rule restricting nonvulgar, non-school-sponsored speech posing no realistic threat of disruption to the learning environment.
• Civil Rights-In a sexual harassment/disabilities case, Shore Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S Alito wrote the majority opinion ruling that by not protecting a student from “severe and prolonged harassment” for not being athletically inclined, and because of his perceived sexual orientation the school failed to provide free access to education.
• Church-State “Separation”-He wrote a dissenting opinion in ACLU v. Schundler, supporting the right of a municipality to display a crèche and a menorah did not violate the Establishment Clause because it also incorporated secular features such as Frosty The Snowman and a banner proclaiming commitment to diversity.

Judge Alito has argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court. In his earlier career, Samuel Alito, Jr. began as a Law Clerk for Judge Leonard I. Garth of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals 1976-77. He was named Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, 1977-81. He was then Assistant to the U.S. Solictor General for the Reagan Department of Justice ’81-85 and then was named as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, again for the Reagan Justice Department ’85-87. From 1987 until he was seated on the bench of the 3rd Circuit Court in 1990, he was the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Basically what all this means is that Judge Samuel Alito, Jr. is imminently qualified to ascend to the Supreme Court of the United States. For the Democrats, this nomination is a nightmare. Why is that? Because he was unanimously approved by the Senate, including the extremists on the Left like Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Patrick Leahy, Chris Dodd, and Harry Reid. So what are they going to object to now? We know that they will object to him and vote against him, they have already come out whining. Edward (the Killer) Kennedy said:

“Rather than selecting a nominee for the good of the nation and the court, President Bush has picked a nominee whom he hopes will stop the massive hemorrhaging of support on his right wing. This is a nomination based on weakness, not on strength...

“Although he is clearly intelligent and experienced on the bench, that is only the beginning of our inquiry. If confirmed, Alito could very well fundamentally alter the balance of the court and push it dangerously to the right, placing at risk decades of American progress in safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms...”

So now, Conservatives are not just “heartless” and “uncaring,” but now, according to “the Killer,” we’re actually “dangerous.”

Leakey Leahy stated:

“This is a needlessly provocative nomination. Instead of uniting the country through his choice, the President has chosen to reward one faction of his party, at the risk of dividing the country. Instead he should have rewarded the American people. America could have done better through consultation to select one of the many consensus conservative Republican candidates who could have been overwhelmingly approved by the Senate...

“With the announcement of Judge Samuel Alito to fill the position being vacated by Justice O’Connor, the White House failed to follow through with initial discussions and engage in meaningful consultation. The Democratic Leader of the Senate and I wrote to the President last week, urging him to pick one of the many qualified mainstream women and minority candidates who can win widespread bipartisan support in the Senate and among the American people. I regret that the President has not chosen the clear path of a consensus candidate to unite the American people and the Senate. The nation and the Senate would have overwhelmingly welcomed his choice if he had.”

What’s that Patrick? “Blah, blah, blah, talking points, talking points, blah, blah, blah. President Bush didn’t do what we told him to do!” Well what do you expect; they are just parroting what their extreme Left-wing boss, Ralph Neas of People for the American Way told them to say:

“President Bush put the demands of his far-right political base above Americans’ constitutional rights and legal protections by nominating federal appeals court Judge Samuel Alito to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor...

“Replacing a mainstream conservative like Justice O’Connor with a far-right activist like Samuel Alito would threaten Americans’ rights and legal protections for decades. Justice O’Connor had a pivotal role at the center of the Court, often providing a crucial vote to protect privacy, civil rights, and so much more. All that would be at risk if she were replaced with Judge Alito, who has a record of ideological activism against privacy rights, civil rights, workers’ rights, and more...

“President Bush wasn’t willing to stand up to the far right, so Americans must count on senators to stand up for the Constitution. Americans will have to live with the next justice long after President Bush has left office. It is senators’ duty not to act as rubber stamps for the President’s nominees, but to examine all the evidence about the nominee’s record and make an independent judgment. We are confident that a careful examination of Samuel Alito’s record and judicial philosophy will ultimately lead to his rejection by the Senate.”

This is the same garbage the extremists of the Left tried to fling at Roberts, and I predict it will have the same result. The Left can come up with no arguments to detract form Judge Alito’s qualifications; he is entirely qualified as to temperament and experience. His hearings will probably sound like Roberts Redux. They hope to stop his nomination be lying about his record as they have already begun to do on the People for the American Way webpage. Their only weapons are those with which we have become so familiar, lies, half-truths, twisted words, and personal attacks on him and his family. I hope this to be so because the more they show their true nature, the more they will alienate the American voters.

My prediction is a Senate Judiciary Committee Approval, probably along party lines maybe with a couple of Democrat votes. That will be followed by a filibuster by the most extreme liberals in the Democrat Left-wing which will be broken by the “nuclear option.”

What do you think?

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