January 12, 2006
WE'RE ALL JOHN BIRCHERS NOW:
George Bush's rough justice: The career of the latest supreme court nominee has been marked by his hatred of liberalism (Sidney Blumenthal, January 12, 2006, The Guardian)
Alito's manner before the Senate judiciary committee's hearings has been prosaic and dutiful. He seems like an understudy for the part of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. But behind the facade of the supplicant who wants to be liked seethes a man out to settle a score.Few public figures since Nixon have worn their resentment so obviously as Alito. The son of a civil servant, he attended Princeton and Yale law school. "Both opened up new worlds of ideas," he testified. "But this was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart and privileged people behaving irresponsibly."
In his application to the Reagan justice department, Alito wrote that his interest in constitutional law was "motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren court decisions ... particularly in the area ... of reapportionment" - which established the principle of one person, one vote. Alito's law career has been a long effort to reverse the liberalism of the Warren supreme court.
Has Grassy Knoll been paying any attention to the past quarter century of reversals for liberalism? Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2006 4:22 PM
Mr. Judd;
I've been somewhat luke warm on Alito, but if he really does have a visceral hatred for modern liberalism, I would become an active supporter.
Impeach Earl Warren!
Posted by: oj at January 12, 2006 5:18 PMFunny how readily the libs self-identify as having been the ones who behaved badly. Alito named no names.
Posted by: ras at January 12, 2006 5:29 PMHad Sid been in the Judiciary Committee hearing room Wednesday, he would have jumpped up and slapped Mrs. Alito around when she started that crying thing, before making her confess it was all a set-up to begin with (Sid would know about these crying things, because he saw it work so well before while he was working in the White House).
Posted by: John at January 12, 2006 7:18 PMHere's hoping Alito leads a string of rulings sending the Warren Court into the twilight.
Sid is losing, and he doesn't like it. Perhaps he and Carville and Begala should go to work in South America - their kind of politics seems to be doing better there.
Posted by: jim hamlen at January 12, 2006 11:04 PM"But this was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart and privileged people behaving irresponsibly."
Renounce the 60s and they will hate you. The last few years have been about the boomers discovering that they are old farts whose supposed best years were in fact wasted.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 13, 2006 1:53 AM