I've found the Alito hearings interesting to listen too but I am bothered by a couple of things. I understand this is an inherently political process and the Senate is an inherently political body but in some cases this is going to far. The Judiciary Committee's job is to find out about the nominee and issue a recommendation so all the speechifying and pre-judging on both sides seems both distracting and unneccessary. The speeches seem better suited to floor debate. The propensity of the Dems to lecture Alito I find annoying but I also find annoying, and pardon me phrasing it this way, Repubs sucking Alito's balls. You are US Senators Constitutionally charged with advice and consent and you're sitting on the Judiciary committee essentially to interrogate a nominee so you can issue a recommendation. Its your job to give tough probing questions not to act as an advocate. This man will be a USSC Justice and as such he's going to have to deal with the most difficult and controversial questions facing the country. If he is so emotionally fragile that he can't take tough questions then he shouldn't be a USSC Justice.
Thankfully, there are some responsible GOP old guard moderates left like Specter--listening to his questioning, I don't think that he has pulled any punches or stumped for the party like Graham(that man is flat annoying as Ted)
I agree that Specter has done a great job and I think on the otherside Feingold has done a good job of questioning and raising issues without lecturing. Kennedy, Schumer, Biden and Feinstein haven't covered themselves with glory and seem way more interested in speechifying and come off as arrogant lecturing Alito. I agree Graham is the worst offender of acting as an advocate followed by Hatch. Brownback, Kyle and Dewine seem to think this a committee session regarding legislation to overturn Roe and overrule the Judiciary.
The system is broken. These hearings have been a farce, and because of the ineffective questioning of the Democrats, as much as that of the Republicans. Mrs. Alito's little "scene" garnered more attention than the hearing itself, and small wonder... we were subjected to endless monologues by those who should have been grilling Alito. As for Alito, he appears to be a judge in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. I hope he dispels that impression on the bench and becomes a more moderate conservative, but that's what I'm seeing. Keep D&D Civil.
i agree but graham actually comes off as intelligent and fairly reasonable. sessions/cornyn come off as frat kids hung over from a party at SMU. specter and feingold have been great. schumer/kennedy have been fairly useless and biden is running his presidential campaign from the nomination hearing.
The far-right, fundamentalist extremists? Sure. The 30% who think his **** don't stink, no matter what BS Bush feeds them? Sure. The big corporate lobby who could care less, as long as Christmas keeps coming 12 months out of the year? Sure. The rich who keep getting their taxes cut in the middle of a war? Sure. The people who really got him elected by thinking he was a compassionate conservative, a uniter, not a divider, and that Saddam was behind 9/11, because everyone at the top of the Administration told them so? They're wondering what the hell happened, and how blind they were. Those are the Republicans I know outside of this board, and they can't wait to be rid of this travesty in the White House. They want another O'Connor. Keep D&D Civil.
This just proves that you know very little about the state of America. Did you notice that tax revenues were way up in December? Did you notice that there was a budget SURPLUS in December due to the increased tax revenues? The Bush tax cuts have been a smashing success in that they've stimulated the economy and tax receipts are up tremendously. Please educate yourself, Deckard. There is a lot that you can learn.
I wouldn't put myself in any of those groups, and I voted for Bush specifically because of the type of justice I thought he would appoint to the SCOTUS, at least in contrast to the type of justice Kerry would give us. On the other hand, maybe I am fooling myself and in fact am a far-right, fundamentalist extremist.
If you truly want a SC justice in the mold of Scalia and Clarence freakin' Thomas, then I would describe you as out of the mainstream, and firmly in the right wing of the GOP, leaning towards the outer reaches. My post was based on my personal experience interacting with numerous Republicans I've known for a long time, and some I ran into at parties and get-togethers recently. I wouldn't describe you as an extremist, or a far-right religious fundamentalist, based on your posts. My statement was a "broad brush" description of the various groups who support Bush, no matter what the chump does. I think you might fall under the same place I'd park basso... "the 30% who think his **** don't stink, no matter what BS Bush feeds them." You have no ideological problem with Scalia and Thomas? You want another SC judge , for life, in their mold? Keep D&D Civil.
I think what SM is saying is that there were a lot of people who voted for Bush for a variety of reasons. I gather SM primarily supports Bush for social reasons having to do with the USSC and what type of rulings they would hand down so he wants to see justices with a more socially conservative bent. He might not have supported Bush for the fiscal reasons but unfortunately its a package deal.
I wouldn't necessarily feel so confident about Alito protecting those. As our discussion regarding the DOJ's argument for warrantless wiretaps Alito is a strong supporter of the "unitary executive" which would grant the Executive branch greater powers to overrule the other two branches and abrogate the Constitution. That means that all rights, including the 2nd Ammendment, aren't as strong as we could presume.
Unfortunately, like politicians there are no judges whose views mesh perfectly with mine, but there are judges who share my position on some issues I feel are of paramount importance. I am hopeful that Scalia, Thomas, and now Alito will be part of the process that ends in the outlawing of abortion. That is why I voted for Bush, and I am probably not the only one.
The lives of nearly a million innocent people being snuffed out every year is important to me. More important than illegal wiretapping, tax levels, and every other issue that has arisen around GWB. Ten Iraq wars wouldn't cause the yearly devestation of abortion on demand.
[rquoter] Alito's telling dissent in machine gun case He sought to limit reach of Congress For John Roberts, it was a "hapless toad'' in the path of a California housing development that represented the limits of the federal government's power to regulate activities within a state. For Samuel Alito Jr., it was a machine gun. In a lone dissenting opinion as a federal appeals court judge in 1996, Alito argued that the federal ban on possessing machine guns was unconstitutional -- a stand described by both admirers and detractors Tuesday as one of the most revealing cases in the lengthy judicial record of President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. "He understands the original design of the Constitution as being one of limited government,'' said Roger Pilon, director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. In his opinion, Alito said the federal ban on possessing machine guns exceeded Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce, but a majority of his court disagreed, and the Supreme Court denied review. He took no position on whether the Constitution protects an individual's right to possess firearms. Pilon said the case showed Alito's recognition that Congress' constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce is not a license "to regulate anything and everything.'' But Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the opinion is "perhaps the most powerful evidence that Judge Alito is very much a right-wing judicial activist'' willing to disregard congressional judgment. Another critic, Douglas Kendall, executive director of the Community Rights Counsel, said Alito's opinion is disturbing for reasons that have little to do with gun control. The case "suggests that he will impose rather significant limits on federal authority'' over interstate commerce, the basis for a wide range of laws, said Kendall, whose Washington, D.C., organization supports regulation of the environment and public health. He said the issue of federal power is critical to two cases the Supreme Court plans to review this term testing the limits of the government's authority to prohibit pollution of wetlands under the Clean Water Act. The machine gun case was decided by the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned as unconstitutional a federal law banning gun possession near schools. The Supreme Court said congressional power over interstate commerce does not extend to guns that might have been obtained within the state and were not being used for any commercial purpose -- the first ruling to overturn a law on interstate commerce grounds since the 1930s. Pennsylvania gun dealer Raymond Rybar Jr., sentenced to 18 months in prison for possessing and selling two machine guns, argued in his appeal that a 1986 federal law banning the possession or transfer of machine guns was unconstitutional because it applied to weapons that had never crossed state lines or affected interstate commerce. A 2-1 majority of the appeals court disagreed. Unlike the law on guns near schools, the court majority said, the machine-gun ban was supported by findings in federal gun laws since the 1930s that there was widespread interstate traffic in guns, including surplus military weapons from other countries, and that state regulation was inadequate. Another distinction, the court said, is that the 1986 law applied to all areas of the nation and not just to possession of guns in certain local areas. Alito began his dissenting opinion by suggesting that the majority was treating the Supreme Court's 1995 ruling as "a constitutional freak'' rather than a recognition that the Constitution "still imposes some meaningful limits on congressional power.'' Congressional findings about gun trafficking in older laws were irrelevant, he argued, to the question of whether possessing a machine gun has any effect on interstate commerce. Whatever role machine guns play in nationwide crime, Alito said, the mere act of possessing one within a state is no more of an interstate, or economic, activity than possessing a gun near a school. He said the law might be valid if it was limited to machine guns that crossed state lines, or if Congress had included findings about the impact of those weapons on interstate commerce. That suggestion was derided by the court majority, which said Congress was not required to "play Show and Tell with the federal courts'' to validate a law. The same legal issue arose during Roberts' confirmation as chief justice in September, based on a dissenting opinion he wrote as an appeals court judge in 2003. The opinion questioned federal authority to protect a "hapless toad'' that was found only in California and had no obvious connection to interstate commerce. Roberts, at his confirmation hearing, said he had never meant to suggest that the government lacked power to protect endangered species. The Supreme Court is closely divided on conflicts between federal and state power, in cases ranging from environmental regulation to civil rights. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom Alito has been nominated to succeed, has been a strong supporter of state autonomy. Critics of Alito's 1996 opinion point out that the machine-gun law has been upheld by every federal court that has considered it. Rybar, the Pennsylvania gun dealer, appealed his case to the Supreme Court, which denied review. "When conservatives decry liberal judicial activism, they purport to be talking about judges who are unelected and who second-guess the wisdom of elected legislators,'' said the Brady Center's Henigan. He said the same description applies to Alito's opinion. A supporter of Alito countered that the judge should not be criticized for going against the grain. "I think the lower courts after (the 1995 ruling) were resistant to the Supreme Court's direction. Judge Alito was not,'' said Pepperdine University Law Professor Douglas Kmiec. He said the ruling indicates that Alito, as a high court justice, would "strongly defend the federalist structure of the Constitution.'' [/rquoter] I am not at all concerned about his Federalist tendancies. Anything that pisses off congress has to be good, IMHO. I am, however, completely terrified of his deference to the will and power of the Executive branch.
This is a done deal, folks...Futures contracts trading at 99 for 100 expiry! GREAT news for America and a strong SCOTUS.
Texxx, not sure if you perhaps missed it - Alito gave sworn testimony that he thinks the Executive branch can take a sh-t on the other two branches of government without so much as a courtesy flush. So if by "strong" SC you mean "weaker", then you're correct.
