Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Senatorial Bloviation
In general, the reporting makes it clear that Alito will pass muster.
Update: (just a few minutes later)
Golly. If you really want to laugh your pants off at Joe "which way is the hot wind blowing" Biden, check this little bit out from radioblogger and Hugh Hewitt. It's enough to confuse a person about Princeton, TH.
UPDATE (from TigerHawk): Like an idiot, I stayed up until 1 am watching the Alito hearings rebroadcast on C-SPAN, and then saw another 20 minutes this morning. I caught most of Kennedy, who was incomprehensible (and I don't think it was the two beers in me that made him so), Biden, who was articulate but unctuous to a degree unexpected even from a Senator, and Leahy (in addition to various Republicans, who mostly just introduced evidence refuting points made by the Democrats). I missed Schumer, who supposedly rattled Alito a bit, and Feinstein, who (according to the New York Times graphic) spoke less and let Alito talk more than the other Democrats.
The most annoying thing about the "Princeton" testimony was the struggle by the Democrats to recharacterize the mission of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton years after most of the leadership of that organization had expired. They kept accusing the CAP of opposing the admission of "women and minorities," when in fact the CAP only opposed coeducation. As many others have pointed out, minorities had been admitted to Princeton for years (even if it was not as welcoming a place as some of the urban schools in the Ivy League). The very first line of The Sun Also Rises is (as I recall) "Robert Cohn was once middle-weight boxing champion at Princeton." My father's class of 1957 had Jews, blacks, Hispanics and Asians. True, the CAP did oppose affirmative action, but the Senate donks are acting like the CAP was some polo-shirted version of the Klan, which is absurd.
Related post here.
8 Comments:
By 
Lanky_Bastard, at
Wed Jan 11, 11:29:00 AM:
Princeton admits women undergrads in 1969. Compare that to Cornell who admitted women prety much from the get-go in 1870. It was signifigantly behind state schools. There's a reason for that, and tight-assed groups like CAP are a big part of it. Maybe CAP had modified it's goals some by the time Alito was in it, but don't tell me it wrought positive changes to the man's character. If it had he wouldn't be so forgetful about it now.
By TigerHawk, at
Wed Jan 11, 11:39:00 AM:
Lanky, I don't doubt that Alito is a bit more forgetful on this topic than is credible. But both CAP and the question of coeducation are being examined today according to a standard that nobody agreed with 30 years ago. It is highly unlikely that Princeton would have gone coed any earlier had there been no CAP. For starters, CAP wasn't founded until three years after Princeton took its first women. I'm sure it raised money on the coeducation issue, but it really was objecting to a whole range of changes on campus. Second, Yale went coed the same year, and it was then and is today a far more liberal place than Princeton. I have never heard of a group such as CAP at Yale, and had there been one it surely would have surfaced at some point or another given the huge number of Yalies in politics and on the bench. Third, single sex education was not, by and large, considered to be discrimination in the unlawful sense, and it still isn't today. Otherwise, Wellesley and Smith and Mt. Holyoke would be giant human rights violations. Single sex education is a legitimate choice, and worthy of debate. I have always thought that Princeton was better off for being coed -- I remember arguing the point with old alums at more than one cocktail party back in the day -- but it was a practical decision, not one that anybody seriously thought involved questions of justice.
By 
, at
Wed Jan 11, 01:48:00 PM:
To me, the hearings are moot. Alito lied about recusing himself from Vanguard cases in his previous confimation. He's not a man of his word, so any answers he gives int he hearings are worthless.
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Jan 11, 03:47:00 PM:
well then peteathome, i suspect you're going to be sad with the likely outcome of the hearings.
By , at
Wed Jan 11, 04:35:00 PM:
cardinalpark - would you confirm such a man? Would you confirm someone who lied to a Federal panel?
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Jan 11, 05:48:00 PM:
First of all, to be honest, I have no idea what the alleged lie is that bothers you so much. Please enlighten us with facts. But as I understand it, the ABA has blessed the Vanguard case and the man to the high heavens. Certainly if there were a real issue here, the Democrats on the panel, the NYT and Wash Post would be writing about it on page 1. Plus, he's already been confirmed as a judge.
So I suspect the answer is -- yes, I would.
Compared to the ethics of his rather obtuse questioners -- one left his mistress in a car to drown (murderer, drunk, adulterer, quite a trifecta), another plagiarized serially from a British Labor Party Leader rather hilariously, shall I go on? -- I think Mr. Alito's ethics and integrity shine as a beacon in Washington DC.
By , at
Wed Jan 11, 05:50:00 PM:
Bumiller? When she's not taking payola?
By , at
Wed Jan 11, 08:24:00 PM:
does alito like eggplant?
The good Senator Graham from South Carolina jerks tears from Sammy "The Sphincter" Alito's chattel wife by apologizing for having to answer tough questions from Democrats. So, is he a closet bigot? His family knows. I'd lay 8-5 that over the course of their lives, his collective family has uttered "moolie" more than the GOP would like to know. But, what the heck, he was otherwise raised well, right?
