60 votes busts up a filibuster. If enough Democrats support Alito, then Kennedy, Leahy, Schumer and the other lunatic fringe liberals are neutered. Now run along and let the adults discuss this.
Exaggerate much? Even if Roe v Wade were overturned (unlikely), the matter would be dealt with by the states. Now remind me who is trying to divide the country with wild baseless claims and scare tactics such as yours?
If Republicans didn't have the abortion, gay marriage, and school prayers issues to polarize their base, I doubt they would hold the political clout that they do now. Which is sad for me, really, since those three issues are not the ones that I care about the most.
Too true! And it shows without a doubt who truly holds power within the republican party that the wingnuts can influence a president like that. Bush has become irrelevant and a sideshow for the next three years.
reason 1: his beliefs are WAY OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM, he was the lone dissenting vote on a number of key cases over the past 15 years - the majority of America does not share his low view of women or his beliefs that woman can't and shouldn't be able to do anything w/o their husband's permission
You should have seen the interview his wife did on the Today show this morning. Poor woman. She was so scared to even say anything. Was even timid about how she felt about her husband being nominated. Seemed like she didn't want to answer any questions that might contradict her husband.
Obligatory Catonian diatribe against Scalito * I would like the media to know that I am a very clever person, and I can actually hold two thoughts in my head at the same time. Seriously. That means I want to see stories about both the corrupt, criminal behavior of this administration and their blatant pandering to right wing extremists with their supreme court nomination. Don’t insult my intelligence, or that of every other American, by pretending there’s only room for one story. * Samuel Alito is a polyp sprouting from the diseased colon of the Republican party. I don’t care if he’s kind to his family, has a wonderful sense of humor, or refrains from branding women with an iron in the shape of an “A”—his political lineage is unambiguous, and that makes him a scabrous chancre not suitable for the office. He’s a last-gasp representative of an absolute failure of an administration, the final ghastly moan of a set of bankrupt political policies that are utterly wrong for our country. He must be opposed. Sign on to MoveOn’s petition. * Right-wingers, don’t even try to play the game that he’s not going to foster discrimination or that he’s not going to want to overturn Roe v. Wade. He’s the choice of the Dobsons and Delays and Santorums and the rest of the Neandertal wing of the Republican party, so to pretend that he ought to be palatable to progressives is offensively stupid. If you want a rabid wingnut on the court, you’re getting one…so at least be honest enough to admit it rather than acting as if he might harbor a liberal whim or three somewhere in his fossilized brain, and that we ought to therefore support him. * Democrats, you’d damn well better oppose this guy with every breath in your bodies. You may be outnumbered and your resistance may be futile, but if you aren’t gutsy enough to vote for progressive principles against a scumbag Scalito, don’t ever ask for my vote again. And yeah, I’m looking at you, Russ Feingold. Once was enough, and marshmallows do not constitute appropriate representation of my views. http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2005/10/31/obligatory-catonian-diatribe-against-scalito/
Reason 2: If confirmed, Alito would be, of the 9 justices, the: 8th caucasion 8th male 8th from east of the Mississippi 8th attendee of either Harvard or Yale 7th from the northeast 5th Roman Catholic It is a small pool from which to select Supreme Court Justices. Are only white males from the northeast who attended Harvard or Yale qualified to make reasoned judicial decisions? Only one southerner (Thomas)? No other colleges need apply?
Guess I'll post this here. I wish the 2 threads about Alito could be merged. They were both posted at the same minute. At any rate, here's the editorial from The New York Times concerning this nomination. I suggest people read it, and then consider just how different Alito is from the Justice he would be replacing. I would like to add my own voice to whoever posted it here first... this was an opportunity for George W. Bush, with his Presidency in free fall, to nominate someone in the moderate mainstream of America, as O'Connor was, and to attempt to bring together the country, as he made the most important nomination a President can make. Instead, he gave yet another example of just how dishonest and bankrupt his slogan was, "I'm a uniter, not a divider." The man is a liar, unfit to hold the nation's highest office. The New York Times November 1, 2005 Editorial Another Lost Opportunity The nomination of Samuel Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court raises a lot of questions about the judge's attitudes toward federalism, privacy and civil rights. But it has already answered one big question about President Bush. Anyone wondering whether the almost endless setbacks and embarrassments the White House has suffered over the last year would cause Mr. Bush to fix his style of governing should realize that the answer is: no. As a political candidate, Mr. Bush had an extremely useful ability to repeat the same few simple themes over and over. As president, he has been cramped by the same habit. The solution to almost every problem seems to be either to rely on a close personal associate or to pander to his right wing. When the first tactic failed to work with the Harriet Miers nomination, Mr. Bush resorted to the second. The Alito nomination has thrilled social conservatives, who regard the judge to be a surefire vote against abortion rights. Judge Alito is clearly a smart and experienced jurist, with 15 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The nominee should be given a serious hearing. The need for a close and careful review of Judge Alito's record is all the more crucial because he will be replacing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been the swing vote of moderation on so many issues. The concerns about this particular nominee go beyond his apparent hostility to abortion, which was most graphically demonstrated in 1992 when his court ruled on what became known in the Supreme Court as the Casey decision. Judge Alito was the sole judge on his court who took the extreme position that all of Pennsylvania's limitations on abortion were constitutional, including the outrageous requirement that a woman show that she had notified her spouse. Judge Alito has favored an inflated standard of evidence for racial- and sex-discrimination cases that would make it very hard even to bring them to court, much less win. In an employment case, he said that just for a plaintiff to have the right to a trial, she needed to prove that her employers did not really think they had chosen the best candidate for a job. When lawyers for a black death-row inmate sought to demonstrate bias in jury selection by using statistics, Judge Alito dismissed that as akin to arguing that Americans were biased toward left-handers because left-handed men had won five out of six of the preceding presidential elections. At least as worrisome are Judge Alito's frequent rulings to undermine the federal government's authority to address momentous national problems. Dissenting in a 1996 gun control case, he declared that Washington could not regulate the sale of fully automatic machine guns. In 2000, Judge Alito said Washington could not compel state governments to abide by the Family and Medical Leave Act, a position repudiated by the Supreme Court in a decision written by Justice William Rehnquist. When a judge is more radical on states' power than Justice Rehnquist, the spiritual leader of the modern states' rights movement, we should pay attention. There are more moderate rulings in Judge Alito's record as well, and it will be up to the Senate to sort this out. Does he show merely a conservative bent, or a zealotry outside the mainstream that poses a threat to basic rights and protections? Whatever the answer, this nomination is yet another occasion to bemoan lost opportunities. Mr. Bush could have signaled that he was prepared to move on to a more expansive presidency by nominating a qualified moderate who could have garnered a nearly unanimous Senate vote rather than another party-line standoff. He could have sent a signal about his commitment to inclusiveness by demonstrating that he understood his error with Harriet Miers had been in picking the wrong woman, and that the answer did not have to be the seventh white man on the court. But he didn't, any more than he saw Sept. 11 as an opportunity to build a new, inclusive world order of civilized nations aligned against terrorism. Anyone who imagines that the indictment of Lewis Libby and the legal troubles of Karl Rove will be a cue to bring fresh ideas to the White House should read the signs. With more than three years to go in this term, the bottom line is becoming inescapable. Mr. Bush does not want to change, and perhaps is not capable of changing. The final word on the Supreme Court is yet to come, but the message about the presidency could not be more disheartening. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/opinion/01tues1.html Keep D&D Civil.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, accused Mr. Bush of making a "needlessly provocative nomination" to appease conservative critics of Ms. Miers. "Instead of uniting the country through his choice, the president has chosen to reward one faction of his party, at the risk of dividing the country," Mr. Leahy said.
given the complete impotency of the republican party i think nothing could be better than roe v. wade being over turned. the 60% of americans who are pro-choice would wake up and the liberals would finally take this seriously.
There are a lot of reasons why the above post is typical liberal trash. 1. Alito's beliefs are not "way out of the mainstream". See the last few elections as evidence. No wonder the libs keep losing, with attitudes such as this. 2. Alito's personal political beliefs should not be the basis for which he is confirmed or rejected. The confirmation process is based on his ability to interpret existing laws. 3. Alito dissented on a single abortion case in which a woman needed permission from the FATHER of the baby. How you spin that into "women can't and shouldn't be able to do anything w/o their husband's permission" is really a mystery. Actually, it isn't. It's exaggerated trash intended to divide America.
TJ you keep repeating the mantra that it is the libs that are dividing America. But the last time I checked the Liberals aren't the one's who made the nomination. just a thought...
Quoted from MSNBC Article from Page 1 of this thread: Former appellate judge Timothy Lewis, who served with Alito, has ideological differences with him but believes he would be a good Supreme Court justice. “There is nobody that I believe would give my case a more fair and balanced treatment,” Lewis said. “He has no agenda. He’s open-minded, he’s fair and he’s balanced.” Liberals, why do you disagree with judge Timothy Lewis, a man who has ideological differences with Alito?
"I don't think there can be any question that Alito's ideology is a conservative one. While I don't think he's the kind of guy, because of his respect for the institution of the judiciary, who would seek to overturn precedent in a radical sort of way, I think he has the creativity and indeed the intelligence that chip away at existing precedents in a way I think some of us will regret over the years." -- Lawrence Lustberg, criminal defense attorney and friend of Alito
Great, he won't overturn precedent. So the liberals' exaggerated claims of overturning Roe v Wade are proven to be lies. Thanks Mulder.
1. last few elections ? the one where Bush had less votes than Gore? or the one where Bush won by the smallest margin for a sitting president in history? how you wingnuts keep thinking that victory equated a mandate is a big mystery - more wishful thinking than reality 2. I am not basing anything on Alito's personal political beliefs, I am basing it on his record as a Federal employee. His beliefs are published and on the record. (like his support for firing employees based only on the fact that they had AIDS) 3. Are you just playing an idiot or have your actually not read the case? "When the Third Circuit heard Planned Parenthood of Central Pennsylvania v. Casey – the case that, in the Supreme Court’s hands, became the source of the new standard for the constitutional right to abortion – Judge Alito was the only judge who voted to allow the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to require a woman to notify her spouse before having an abortion. Although both the Third Circuit and the Supreme Court in Casey allowed new restrictions on the right to abortion, both courts rejected his position. Justice O’Connor analogized the spousal notification restriction to common law rules that subjugated wives to their husbands and banned women from the practice of law." http://www.supremecourtwatch.org/alitoprelim1031.pdf
Well done flamingmoe. Personally I really enjoy TJs sensationalism. I mean it's beautifully over-the-top: "Dividing America" "Liberal Lies" "Ignoring the Mainstream" "Exaggerated Trash" It's like my own personal fox news feed on the BBS.
Well done? That's funny. He got called out on his lies and defended them by repeating himself. Hilarious. Let's see, he can't name the multiple mid-term and presidential elections that the libs have lost, he can't accept that political beliefs aren't the basis for confirming a judge, and he is still lying about the Planned Parenthood case. I guess that is "well done" when judged by the typical liberal standards...
Look, Liberal and Conservative alike, I think we can all agree that Miers was a feint--a little intrigue before the big show. As far as this justice is concerned as a legal mind, there is no QUESTION that he is infinitely more qualified than Miers sole qualification--Bush is God. He does seem to have support in the legal community from both sides of the isle or the bench as it were. As a liberal, I am concerned that he will chip away at precedent and swing the court to a decidedly conservative bent. However, he appears thoughtful and studied, far more than Clarence long-dong-silver Thomas. I am unsure on whether I should support him or not.... That said, his pedigree is clearly that of the conservative legal base that has been building through the Ivy League, to the circuit and appellate courts and on to the highest in the land for the last 30 years. He is the nexus of conservative thought and desire for control and is their reward, their new poster child. Based on the above, I am troubled.
