TigerHawk

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Scaliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiito...

By Cassandra at 1/12/2006 06:43:00 AM

The increasingly hysterical attempts of Senate Democrats to paint Sam Alito as some sinister underworld figure are starting to unravel. Listening to Ted Kennedy blather on, one can't help but flash back to the Roberts hearings when he tried to cast the hapless nominee in the role of the anti-Christ. The Senior Senator from Massachusetts' objections could pretty much be summed up thusly:

John Roberts must be stopped. If confirmed, he will drag this nation, kicking and screaming, back to the days when birth control was illegal and the American Womyn was chained to her Easy Bake oven for hours, forced to get perms and wear frilly aprons and churn out endless batches of tacky, decorated cupcakes with little sprinkles on top for hordes of sticky-fingered, whiny urchins who should have been aborted (like decent Wimmyn do, nowadays) instead of going to law school so she could rack up 80 or more billable hours a week while paying an undocumented au pair from Guatemala to care for her 1.5 children. We must not allow a return to those barbaric living conditions: it's like something out of Leave It To Beaver.

The man is dangerous. His guilt is manifest through the sheer lack of evidence that he has done anything wrong - just look at all the accusations that have been flung at him, yet not a single one has stuck. That alone should prove he is a slippery character who cannot be trusted.

But Ted Kennedy is a one-trick pony. The invaluable Tom Bevan reveals that the Tedster used exactly the same arguments against Robert Bork:

“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would have to sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police would break down citizen’s doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”

Yesterday, a desperate Kennedy was reduced to reading magazine excerpts from CAP that were written over twenty years ago for an enthralled Senate. The outraged Senator then opened his stately blowhole to ask whether Alito:

(a) knew that CAP had a magazine, and
(b)remembered reading a single paragraph from an article written in 1983.

After reading the first egregious paragraph, this hilarious exchange ensued:

KENNEDY: So a 1983 Prospect essay titled "In Defense of Elitism," stated, quote, "People nowadays just don't seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns, blacks and Hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and Hispanic. The physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports. And homosexuals are demanding the government vouchsafe them the right to bear children."

Did you read that article?

FEINSTEIN: Finish the last line.

KENNEDY: Finish the last line -- is, "and homosexuals are...

FEINSTEIN: No, "And now here come women."

KENNEDY: If the senator will let me just...

FEINSTEIN: Yes, I will...

(LAUGHTER)

KENNEDY: Can I get two more minutes from my friend from...

Of course Alito's response what about what you would expect: he doesn't remember reading two articles written well over two decades ago (I would be hard-pressed to remember any magazine articles from 1983 or 1984). Going to the heart of the matter (his views on 'inclusion'):

ALITO: I was not the son of an alumnus. I was not a member of an eating club. I was not a member of an eating facility that was selective. I was not a member of an all-male eating facility. And I would not have identified with any of that.

If I had received any information at any point regarding any of the matters that you have referred to in relation to this organization, I would never have had anything to do with it.

KENNEDY: You think these are conservative views?

ALITO: Senator, whatever I knew about this organization in 1985, I identified as conservative. I don't identify those views as conservative.

What I do recall as an issue that bothered me in relation to the Princeton administration as an undergraduate and continuing into the 1980s was their treatment of the ROTC unit and their general attitude toward the military, which they did not treat with the respect that I thought was deserving. The idea of that it was beneath Princeton to have an ROTC unit on campus was an offensive idea to me.

I'm waiting for Sunday's WaPo when Senator Kennedy (or more accurately, one of his junior staffers) will undoubtedly put out a translated version of the Alito hearings so we can finally learn what the nominee really meant:

Never apologize for your past, my friend. Never apologize. It’s a sign of weakness. Which I despise.

Yeah, I was a member of Concerned Alumni for Princeton. Who wasn’t, in those days? Everywhere you look… blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. Those people don’t know their place anymore. You know what I would do if you put me on SCOTUS? I would find their LEADER. The guy they respect and fear the MOST. And I would go up to that guy, and I would shake his hand and say I was glad to meet him, and with the other hand, I would put my piece in his mouth and ba-BOOM, I would earn myself a little respect.

You think I haven’t eliminated a few minorities and women in my time? Of course I have. Mainly law clerks.. you know, that sort of thing. You have to prune the ranks once in a while. To set an example. What happens if you don’t? They run roughshod over you. They give you no respect. So although I abhor violence, about once a month I grab one in the hallways, and I turn him around to face his buddies, and I take out my gavel, and ....well, you can guess the rest.

None of this is personal. It does not bring me joy. I just want to be able to relax with the Constitution and a cup of coffee and a cigarette and not have the neighborhood crumb-snatchers trampling my hydrangeas.

The simple pleasures. Aren’t those the things that really make life worth living? Of course they are. Of course they are, my friend....

Gentlemen, if you make me your next SC Justice, one thing I promise you: these lowlifes will never trouble you up on the Hill. On that...you have Scalito’s word.

I'm looking forward to Joe ("Talk to me like I'm your father") Biden grilling Alito about the NSA, individual privacy rights, and the "domestic spying" program. I can hear it already:

26 minutes into Biden's allotted time, and he still has not asked Alito a single question, nor allowed him to get a word in edgewise....

BIDEN: The world really went downhill, since 9/11. You know, Quasimodo predicted all of this.

SCALITO: Who did what?

BIDEN: You know, the middle east. The end of the world.

SCALITO: Nostradamus. Quasimodo's the hunchback of Notre Dame.

BIDEN: Oh, right. Notredamus.

SCALITO: Nostradamus and Notre Dame, that's two things different completely.

BIDEN: It's interesting that they'd be so similar, though. You know, I always thought "Ok, you got the hunchback of Notre Dame. But you also got your quarterback and your halfback of Notre Dame".

SCALITO: Notre Dame's a f***ing cathedral!

BIDEN: Obviously, I know. I'm just saying. It's interesting, the coincidences. What, you're gonna tell me you never pondered that?

SCALITO: [surreptitiously looking at watch] No. I never did...

Mrs. Alito looks at her watch, bursts into tears....

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6 Comments:

By TigerHawk, at Thu Jan 12, 09:03:00 AM:

I must say, being both the son of an alumnus and a member of a then all-male club (the glorious Tiger Inn, for nuanced readers), that bit of faux class war was not Scalito's most attractive moment in my living room. Ted Kennedy attacks you so you bash the WASPs. What did we ever do other than to move over so you could go to Princeton too? :)

Alito is obviously a good guy. I've forced myself through about six hours of hearings and read a lot of the coverage (see Power Line's interviews with his former clerks), and I affirmatively want him on the court. Candidly, he is more appealing to my light than Roberts. Good guy, good recovery from the Miers fiasco.

By Anonymous, at Thu Jan 12, 02:24:00 PM: