Posted on 01/12/2006 10:57:34 AM PST by napscoordinator
Liberal Former Alito Clerk: Don't "F" Alito By opposing Alito, my fellow liberals and I run the real danger of shooting ourselves in our own left foot. Jan 12, 2006 by Susan Sullivan ( bio | archive )
At Most efforts at evaluating the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court have fallen along predictable party lines. By opposing the nomination however, my fellow liberals and I run the real danger of shooting ourselves in our own left foot.
I was one of Judge Alito's law clerks from 1990-1991, the year the Casey decision was decided. I consider myself a social progressive. I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU and a liberal pro-choice advocate who supports abortion rights. I favor gun control, support gay marriage and oppose the death penalty. I also don't have a problem if you want to take "God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. In short, no one is likely to mistake me for a conservative any time soon. Yet, I support the nomination of Judge Alito, because I know from having worked closely with him, that he is not a political ideologue and is not intent on advancing a conservative political agenda.
As a liberal, what scares me is not the prospect of having Sam Alito on the Supreme Court; what scares me is the way my fellow liberal Democrats are behaving in response to the nomination. I’m appalled and embarrassed by the fear mongering, the personal attacks and what I see as an irresponsible and misleading distortion of his real judicial record as well as his character. Now the threat of a filibuster lurks, and Senator Kennedy’s tirade about documents being concealed seems like little more than a pretext to justify such a threat.
In light of the Alito feeding frenzy, I feel compelled as a liberal and a former clerk to speak out and attempt to offer a different perspective to perhaps stem, or at least counter, what I see as a short-sighted, ill-considered and counter-productive attack strategy, made, sadly, by the very same liberal groups whose mission and philosophy I ordinarily support and embrace. I did not want to be part of the spin, but I don’t know how to stop it except to say what I know and hope some will listen.
In all candor, I expect that if I did not know Judge Alito, I may have responded to the nomination with the same distrust, fear and suspicion with which I usually respond to everything the Bush administration does, so I understand the genesis of the attacks by my fellow liberals. However, having worked closely with Judge Alito, I know that he is not a political ideologue intent on advancing a conservative political agenda. If he were, we would not have the decisions in which he reached or supported "liberal" outcomes. These include pro-choice decisions that affirmed and applied Roe v. Wade, as well as cases favoring plaintiffs bringing discrimination suits, cases that ruled in favor of criminal defendants, or a case that expanded a women's rights to seek political asylum on the basis of gender. These are just not the results you would expect to see if he were a conservative ideologue.
In my experience, having worked closely with him, Judge Alito never allowed his personal or political opinions to dictate the outcome in any case irrespective of its subject matter. On the contrary, he approached every case, including Casey, thoughtfully and carefully. He was always open to discussion and argument and always willing to listen and consider all relevant points of view. Judge Alito heard thousands of cases and wrote hundreds of opinions. Cherry picking “sensational” cases is at best unhelpful. Over-simplifying and mischaracterizing his record serves no one. Making unfounded personal attacks to insinuate he is racist or sexist is not only personally offensive to me as one who knows him, it denigrates the entire proceeding.
At this point, Democrats should be playing chess, not checkers. The threat of a filibuster is not only premature, it's short-sighted. Consider this: Democrats' attempts to filibuster Alito prove successful, because some Republicans are reluctant to change the long-standing rules of the Senate. Consequently, Alito's nomination fails. Check! In his place, President Bush then nominates a true conservative ideologue. We Democrats would most certainly and desperately want to filibuster such a choice but would be unable to do so because now those same Republicans who were reluctant to change the rules beforehand, would be frustrated by what they would see as Democrats' serial filibustering, and so they would now exercise the "constitutional" option and change the rules. No filibuster and we liberals end up with a super conservative justice on the court. Check mate! Now that's the really scary outcome.
I believe we need to tread carefully, temper our partisan distrust and think carefully before reflexively voicing outrage. Otherwise, we may actually undermine our own best "liberal" interests as well as the interests of everyone else. If you really want a Supreme Court justice who will approach each case carefully, thoughtfully and will reach a decision irrespective of his own personal or political agenda, please don’t “F” Judge Alito.
Susan Sullivan is an attorney in San Francisco. She was Judge Alito's law clerk in 1990-1991, the year in which Planned Parenthood v. Casey was decided.
Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com
We can hope!
Hey, can someone try to post this over at DU? I'm curious to see if it ever sees the light of day.
In short, this statement sums up the entire RAT-bastard position: Paraphrasing really says it all: "I am a card-carrying member of the American Communist party, and a pro choice advocate who favors unlimited baby murder, the freeing of all prison imnmates (since, after all, society made them do it) no choice for those who want the best means for self defense, an unlimited and all-powerful central government which controls all wealth with the state assuming the roles of god, parents, and the final arbiter of all human behavior"
This person sums up why I am a conservative. The Republic is in the throes of a civil war; some call it the Culture War. We may already have "progressed" too far down the road to total socialism for there to be a peaceful resolution of the differences between "us and them". I pray that it is not too late.
Nice try Susan but I don't think you're going to split Repulicans on Judge Alito. You are obviously smart enough to know that these personal attacks are the left's only hope for the SC. And you can't be oblivious to the fact that a non-ideological strict constructionist would have to vote, far more often than not, to block the agenda you hold so dear. Your leftist views are as antithetical to the principles of our Constitution as they can be.
Ahh, but the key difference is that as the justice in lower court rulings he is bound by the decisions handed down by superior courts. In this case he will be basing his decisions upon the constitution, rather than decided law; he will be the one defining the law. In listening to his answers under these senate hearings my confidence in the gentleman has increased. All I want is someone who intrepets the constitution. What the liberals are afraid of is that he will do just that, rather than rewriting the "living" document to mean whatever they want.
BTW, I wonder how far could I get if I claimed the tax codes were "living" documents?
Nah they'll still be wanting committee votes and revotes and revotes and revotes and revotes.
Let 'em talk, the more they talk the more they minimize themselves.
the case that led to the abortion decision on privacy grounds - was, in my opinion, a legitimate privacy case. the government should not be mandating the use of contraception between consenting adults. the extension of that privacy to unlimited abortion, is the insanity. you can be against Roe, and be for some privacy protections at the same time. the two are not mutually exclusive.
This is nothing more or less than propaganda intended to create doubts in conservatives. A clever piece, it doesn't reveal its true essence readily. She may be honest in wanting the Dem icons like Kennedy to stop acting like fools. That is making the entire left movement vulnerable to their own tactic; guilt by association. She knows it is true in substance as well as inference (unlike their attempt to smear Alito) and she knows the game is lost for now.
It's a call to retreat for the purposes of saving resources and the hail Mary hope of confusing the opposition.
Maybe this liberal will start taking a look at the justifications used to support many of the other things lists as supporting. They're just as hollow as the attacks on Alito. The justicication rely on just as many lies and misrepresentations.
No! Let the fat-man drink his fill... the farther left & crazy they get... the better for us.
Precisely!
That's it! When the enemy is killing themselves get out of the way.
There are times when the most useful thing you can do is check stores and clean bores.
"Susan" to the left may not necessarily denote female!
What's scary is that we're 12 posts into the thread and you're the first to notice that.
Then perhaps the modifier "she" at the end of the piece will help as well.
You can also be against Roe, and for an unlimited right to abortion. Certain aspects of Roe are Constitutionally defensible (e.g. the general right to privacy concept), but other aspects are blatant legislating from the bench which has no basis in the Constitution (e.g. references to trimesters).
While no intellectually honest person can defend the entirety of Roe as being consistent with the Constitution, the dilemma is that, in the absence of any Constitutional text on abortion, the issue should technically be left to the states. But that's not a very practical approach in this case, since in the course of a 9 month pregnancy, many women cross state lines many times just in the course of their ordinary activities, and quite a few change their state of legal residence. Since there is no Constitutional basis for barring pregnant women from crossing state lines, the effect of some states banning abortion would be lots of just-over-the-state-line clinics. Whereupon the whole matter ends up under the interstate commerce clause, and becomes a federal matter again. And for states which might give fathers the right to block an abortion, there's the problem of biological parents often being legal residents of different states, which again throws the matter into the realm of federal law.
So, they distrust & fear everything the Bush administration does, but just this one time, he did the right thing? Do they now want to reevaluate Bush? Does it occur to them to question the tactics that have been used to paint him as eviiiil?
But whatever you do, keep your eyes on the road!
As immortalized by Johnny Cash ... "my name is Sue ... how do you do ... and you're gonna DIE!"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.