Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Samuel Alito: Situated and celebrated in New Jersey
Fourteen hours into Judge Alito's confirmation process, and I'm thinking that the Princeton angle is being ignored. No longer.
Samuel Alito's entry in the Nassau Herald of 1972:
Sam intends to go to law school and eventually to warm a seat on the Supreme Court.
Let's hope he does more than "warm a seat."
The Daily Princetonian tells us that Judge Alito is quite the goofball underneath his robes:
Classmates at Princeton described Alito, a member of ROTC who led Whig-Clio's Princeton Debate Panel, as intelligent and reserved with a dry sense of humor.
"Sam [Alito] has always been a very quiet guy," said Mark Dwyer '72, who was Alito's roommate for three years at Yale Law School. "He was quiet enough to be characterized as shy by people who didn't know him ... He's also very funny. That's not something you see in his public persona, but Sam has an advanced sense of humor."
David Grais '72, who roomed with Alito for three years at Princeton, said they were both "too studious for [their] good." But he, too, experienced his roommate's lighter side.
"One of our other roommates pulled some practical joke on Sam, which I do not remember," Grais said in an email. "The other guy drank scotch-on-the-rocks every night. Sam retaliated by putting salt in the water used to make ice cubes in the refrigerator in our room. The other guy went through a full bottle of terrible-tasting scotch before realizing that his ice cubes had been sabotaged."
Sounds like just the kind of guy we need on the SCOTUS.
As it happens, I -- TigerHawk -- am but one degree of separation from Judge Alito, not once, but several times. For example, we were both advised by Professor Walter Murphy. Murphy, who himself fantasized about being both Chief Justice of the United States and Pope, described Alito as "the most judicious student I ever had." WTF? How am I not "the most judicuous student" Murphy ever had?
(FWIW, the Junior Paper I wrote for Murphy was some of my best work as an undergraduate, but it would disqualify me from today's federal bench. As I recall, the title was "The American Civil Liberties Union and the campaign to legalize birth control." Alito may have a similar problem: The senior thesis he wrote for Murphy, which the Prince describes only as having to do with the "Italian Constitutional Court," is unaccountably "missing" from the University archives. Somebody, it seems, has swiped Alito's undergraduate thesis.)
Also, my classmate, Chris Eisengruber'83, whom I have met, in turn "met Alito when organizing a Princeton event." This, according to the Prince, qualifies Eisengruber to opine that Alito is "exceptionally bright and decent [for a] conservative." OK. So I've slightly misrepresented what Chris said. But only slightly.
Alito was in the ROTC the year its Princeton offices were firebombed. Do you suppose that the experience had an impact on how he thinks about terrorism, or the military? The last-laugh potential of Alito's nomination is just desserts, I would say, for the commies that did that dirty deed.
3 Comments:
By 
La Cot, at
Tue Nov 01, 12:55:00 AM:
Thank goodness someone is paying attention to the *really* important aspects! I would be tempted to confirm him for the ice cubes alone--bloody brilliant.
By Counter Trey, at
Tue Nov 01, 12:58:00 PM:
I'm beginning to think many Jerseyans can claim one degree of seperation. My brother-in-law coached his son in soccer and talked to him on Sunday after church, the day before his nomination. Go Alito!
By the way, I'm not fishing, but Senator Leahy made a statement on Alito on the Senate floor yesterday that could lead to an interesting trade. I wrote about it here:
http://countertrey.blogspot.com/2005/11/senator-patrick-leahys-unofficial.html
By Dymphna, at
Tue Nov 01, 05:17:00 PM:
TigerH:
It's probably my lack of political soul, but this kabuki dance of SCOTUS nominees has got to be the most *boring* thing I've endured since the last round of July 4th speeches...
In the end, whoever hops up on the bench doesn't do a damn thing about:
1.the metastasis of government into every cell of our commonweal.
2.the need for tax reform yesterday.
3.the incompetence and inability to respond of our top-heavy bureaucratic "emergency defenses." (Try reading Annie Jacobsen)
4.the imminent fate of Israel.
They might be able to do somethign about #s 1 and 2 if they'd, say, declare the current state of income tax unconstitional, and ditto the Dept of Education (just for starters). Other than that...eh.
That Harrier Meirs' romp was just a shill's game, as I wrote here:
Basta
Of course I wrote it at one am with a glass of Jameson's by my side...
