Batfink's Beep -- 1-13-06

Alito nomination looking good

January 13, 2006

Well, for all the time they had to dig, and for all the abortionistas they had pushing them to throw the works at Judge Alito, it doesn't look like the Senate Dems are going to be able to stop the ascention of Bush's latest nominee to the Supreme Court.

As has now become the established pattern, the candidate stayed calm, the inquisitors turned ever more agitated as each successive question fell inert, and the gallery learned more than it ever wanted to know, not about the judge, but about the Senate gasbags trying to stop him. Joe Biden, the heir apparent to Ted Kennedy's throne as the gassiest man ever to own a Senate seat, told us how he feels about [Alito's alma mater] Princeton, as well as fellow liberal Dianne Feinstein's glasses. Harry Reid, who didn't even bother to be there for the hearings, released a statement to say that Alito was "no Sandra Day O'Connor." He apparently feels that is a bad thing. Kennedy threatened to subpoena the papers of former National Review publisher William Rusher to get to the bottom of Samuel Alito's membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a tactic he probably wouldn't approve using to find out, say, who leaked national security secrets to the New York Times about an NSA program. And showing what passes for deep thought among Democrats these days, Patrick Leahy said, "I know the judge probably thinks he's doing nothing here but being on the hot seat but we're talking about a lifetime appointment." I'm glad he told us.

What was even more informative, though, was that, when a veritable "Who's Who" of Alito's peers on the Federal bench presented themselves to the panel to report on their experiences with him over the years, Leahy, as well as Dick Durbin, declined to ask any questions of them. Democrat presidential hopeful Russ Feingold (wow; and I managed to keep a straight face...), in saying he also would ask no questions, actually tried to turn the overwhelming positive peer review into a negative, and throw in a threat, to boot, claiming that there may be ethical problems with having these witnesses testify, since their cases may someday come before Alito in the Supreme Court.

How bad is it going for the Dems? Well, even The Washington Post says the inquisition is not going well, in an editorial dated today:

The hearings were less illuminating than one might have hoped. Democratic senators often seemed more interested in attacking the nominee -- sometimes scurrilously -- than in probing what sort of a justice he would be. Even when they tried, their questioning was often so ineffectual as to elicit little useful information.

The WaPo tries to pivot off this partisan heresy by attempting a 'Republicans are just as bad', complaining that the GOP Senators aren't ALSO trying to tar Alito:

Republican senators, meanwhile, acted more as fatuous counsels for the defense than as sober evaluators of a nominee to serve on the Supreme Court.

Now there's a telling indictment of the GOP -- they have the nerve to seem to support a SCOTUS nominee whose peers sing his praises to the sky, and whose most motivated partisan opponents couldn't find anything better to complain about than, well, that his peers sing his praises to the sky.

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