Democrats Take aggressive Tack; Depantsing

If precedent proves you can knock off a supreme court nominee for reasons like pot use (goodbye Ginsberg), alien nanny services (auf wiedersehen Wood), and awful facial hair (buh-bye Bork), I suppose you're going to go after what looks like a Teflon Supreme Court candidate with both barrels. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the arsenal they've aimed at Alito is comprised of a super soaker and cherry tomatoes.


My Dems are in a tough spot with Alito sitting across from them in the confirmation hearings this week. Even though we all know the dude has a long record of anti-Roe musings, we're pretty sure he's anti-affirmative action, isn't so big on this whole "starre decisis" bidness, the Democrats just don't have the votes or the power to derail his nomination on these grounds. And since the dorkbot Alito has wanted to be a Justice since his days in college--days when most of his coevals were experimenting with drugs and cheering at Yale football games--he can't quite be taken down for his youthful indiscretion, either.

However, thanks to something he did once he graduated from Princeton University, the Democrats have finally found ONE thing to latch on to. Alito went ahead and joined "Concerned Alumni of Princeton," a conservative group co-founded by William Rusher, former publisher of the National Review. In an essay published in a magazine put out by the group in 1983, stated:

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 that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children.

Now Alito has said he hadn't read the essay and I'm inclined to believe him on this. I'm also inclined to believe that he joined this group not because he was trying to keep women out of Princeton, per se, but because he was an opportunist looking to secure his cred as he was trying to get a job in the Reagan administration.

This doesn't make me fear him any less as a nominee, it just makes me sad. No, not sad that the intimation that he was a bigot made his wife start boo-hooing at the hearings. Sad that this is all we got against him and that the seat of Sandy D. is going to warmed by a man whose beliefs I think will lead this country further in the wrong direction.