New York Times: No on Alito! Good On Ya, Gray Lady!
It's a stiff assignment these days keeping up with it all. Perhaps we should be grateful that Fitz apparently has enough of his daytime job in Chicago going that the Plame investigation is presumably just simmering nicely, to be served up somewhere down the line. The airwaves (well, okay, the Net anyway) could hardly find bandwidth were he to be making announcements right now.
I ran across advance notice of a great NY Times editorial apparently slated to come out tomorrow. It reportedly opposes the Alito nomination and explicitly calls the White House out on their attempts to manufacture a play to the effect that the nomination is a done deal. The gravy is that it calls out Chaffee, Snowe, and Collins by name as Republicans whose public postures on right-to-choose are mighty tough to reconcile with Alito's history.
On this score, I have been disappointed that neither of my senators have yet made public announcement of their opposition to the nomination. I await responses to emails I sent them yesterday with explicit instructions, for the specific purpose of counteracting this latest propaganda-injection of the rovebots.
DailyKos has the scoop:
In an editorial published in tomorrow's edition, the New York Times comes out against Alito:
If Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearings lacked drama, apart from his wife's bizarrely over-covered crying jag, it is because they confirmed the obvious. Judge Alito is exactly the kind of legal thinker President Bush wants on the Supreme Court. He has a radically broad view of the president's power, and a radically narrow view of Congress's power. He has long argued that the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He wants to reduce the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans, and has a history of tilting the scales of justice against the little guy.
. . . It is likely that Judge Alito was chosen for his extreme views on presidential power. The Supreme Court, with Justice O'Connor's support, has played a key role in standing up to the Bush administration's radical view of its power, notably that it can hold, indefinitely and without trial, anyone the president declares an "unlawful enemy combatant."
. . . There is every reason to believe, based on his long paper trail and the evasive answers he gave at his hearings, that Judge Alito would quickly vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. So it is hard to see how Senators Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, all Republicans, could square support for Judge Alito with their commitment to abortion rights.
. . . The White House has tried to create an air of inevitability around this nomination. But there is no reason to believe that Judge Alito is any more popular than the president who nominated him. Outside a small but vocal group of hard-core conservatives, America has greeted the nomination with a shrug - and counted on its senators to make the right decision.
The real risk for senators lies not in opposing Judge Alito, but in voting for him. If the far right takes over the Supreme Court, American law and life could change dramatically. If that happens, many senators who voted for Judge Alito will no doubt come to regret that they did not insist that Justice O'Connor's seat be filled with someone who shared her cautious, centrist approach to the law.
Indeed.
I ran across advance notice of a great NY Times editorial apparently slated to come out tomorrow. It reportedly opposes the Alito nomination and explicitly calls the White House out on their attempts to manufacture a play to the effect that the nomination is a done deal. The gravy is that it calls out Chaffee, Snowe, and Collins by name as Republicans whose public postures on right-to-choose are mighty tough to reconcile with Alito's history.
On this score, I have been disappointed that neither of my senators have yet made public announcement of their opposition to the nomination. I await responses to emails I sent them yesterday with explicit instructions, for the specific purpose of counteracting this latest propaganda-injection of the rovebots.
DailyKos has the scoop:
In an editorial published in tomorrow's edition, the New York Times comes out against Alito:
If Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearings lacked drama, apart from his wife's bizarrely over-covered crying jag, it is because they confirmed the obvious. Judge Alito is exactly the kind of legal thinker President Bush wants on the Supreme Court. He has a radically broad view of the president's power, and a radically narrow view of Congress's power. He has long argued that the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He wants to reduce the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans, and has a history of tilting the scales of justice against the little guy.
. . . It is likely that Judge Alito was chosen for his extreme views on presidential power. The Supreme Court, with Justice O'Connor's support, has played a key role in standing up to the Bush administration's radical view of its power, notably that it can hold, indefinitely and without trial, anyone the president declares an "unlawful enemy combatant."
. . . There is every reason to believe, based on his long paper trail and the evasive answers he gave at his hearings, that Judge Alito would quickly vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. So it is hard to see how Senators Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, all Republicans, could square support for Judge Alito with their commitment to abortion rights.
. . . The White House has tried to create an air of inevitability around this nomination. But there is no reason to believe that Judge Alito is any more popular than the president who nominated him. Outside a small but vocal group of hard-core conservatives, America has greeted the nomination with a shrug - and counted on its senators to make the right decision.
The real risk for senators lies not in opposing Judge Alito, but in voting for him. If the far right takes over the Supreme Court, American law and life could change dramatically. If that happens, many senators who voted for Judge Alito will no doubt come to regret that they did not insist that Justice O'Connor's seat be filled with someone who shared her cautious, centrist approach to the law.
Indeed.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:36 PM
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