(See article below and Vote at Adult Christian Forum Thread 90485.)
From a New York Post article, ALITO & THE CLOWNS :
ALITO & THE CLOWNS [/] January 11, 2006
PERHAPS Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee could rally to defeat Samuel Alito's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. But to do so, they'd have to conduct themselves like intelligent adversaries, rather than behaving like a gaggle of boorish, clownish, hectoring geese. [/] They would have to ask him probing questions that might lead Alito to contradict himself or back himself into a legal corner. They would have to engage in quick question-and-answer sessions in which they sought to make the nominee agree or disagree to various propositions and act disappointed if he tried to evade them. [/] Mostly, they'd have to stop talking and let Alito talk — because the only way Alito can be defeated is for Alito to defeat himself.
But Alito's opponents on the committee are just too deeply in love with the sounds of their own voices and too deeply limited by their own limited understanding of constitutional law to give the judge a run for his money.
Welcome to the court, Justice Alito. Your ascension is a foregone conclusion, thanks in large measure to people like Sen. Joseph Biden.
Yesterday, the Delaware Democrat delivered one of the most inadvertently hilarious performances in the history of televised hearings. [/] Each senator got 30 minutes to question Alito. Biden said his opening statement would be brief. It went on for 14 minutes. [/] […] [/] We learned also about his expansive definition of discrimination in the 21st century. "Can you tell me how you can tell the difference when an employer is saying, 'Ms. Feinstein, I am not going to hire you because the person seeking the job has a Rhodes scholarship and I like him better,' and it turns out they weren't a Rhodes scholar? The real reason is, 'I just don't like your glasses. I do not like the way you look.' And I'm not being facetious . . ."
No, alas for Biden, he was not being facetious. What he was being was asinine. Biden's courageous stance on behalf of myopic Americans might come as welcome news to a nearsighted person such as myself, but it had nothing to do with the ideological fight he was trying to pick with Alito. [/] Biden was trying to make the point that Alito had an excessively cramped and comfortable way of defining discrimination. But his inability to control his flapping gums caused the hearing room to burst into confused laughter.
In the course of Biden's questioning, Alito spoke for maybe four or five minutes, while Biden ran on for 25. This is not how you defeat a formidable adversary. [/] Nor do you defeat a smart and sober judge like Alito by looking down at a list of questions and reading through them as though you were a court stenographer asked to read back someone else's testimony. That's what Herb Kohl, the Wisconsin Democrat, did. Absurdly.
And you don't defeat a clever and substantive judge like Alito by archly demanding to know why on earth he would rule that it would be acceptable to strip-search a 10-year-old, as both Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Ted Kennedy of Chappaquiddick (oops, sorry, Massachusetts) did. Because when you do so, you give Alito the opportunity to knock one out of the park against you, as Alito did: [/] "Senator," Alito said to Leahy, "I wasn't happy that a 10-year-old was searched. Now, there wasn't any claim in this case that the search was carried out in any sort of an abusive fashion. It was carried out by a female officer . . . [But] I don't think there should be a Fourth Amendment rule . . . that minors can never be searched. Because if we had a rule like that, then where would drug dealers hide their drugs? That would lead to greater abuse of minors." [/] In your face, Pat Leahy. [/] In any case, as Alito also explained, the search of the 10-year-old wasn't the issue his court had been asked to adjudicate. The court was seeking to determine how far the search warrant in the case extended.
Over the course of hours and hours of testimony, the calm and measured Alito sat as he was hectored, badgered and lectured by senators who seemed far less capable of making reasoned judgments than the man whose nomination the Constitution requires them to judge. [/] To defeat Alito, they'd have to be his equal. Instead, they came across as his intellectual and temperamental inferiors.
If I were a Democrat, I'd be sickened by the inability of my party's leaders to figure out how to argue with a conservative jurist.
On the other hand, if I were a Democrat and heard just how incompetently my party's leaders were able to conduct an argument with a conservative jurist, I might start listening more intently and with more respect to the ideas of the conservative jurist. Like John Roberts before him, Alito has the better of the argument.
That might be because they have the better arguments. / E-mail: podhorez@nypost.com [My ellipses and emphasis]
