The Battle of Princeton - Borking has lost its bite.

Wall Street Journal ^ | Jan. 13, 2006 | DANIEL HENNINGER

[conservativecorner]

The grand hulk of Ted Kennedy ranted that he wanted to subpoena the papers of former National Review publisher William Rusher to get to the bottom of Samuel Alito's membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. At this moment, one sensed that perhaps at last the ghost of Robert Bork had finally been laid to rest. Borking was once a Democratic smear tactic. This week--amid intellectually exhausted and politically befuddled Democrats--it became a laugh track.

It is widely believed that all this started in 1987 when Sen. Kennedy raced to the Senate floor to bellow that "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, children could not be taught about evolution." But Borking began the year before, when President Reagan nominated William Rehnquist to be chief justice.

The locus of opposition turned not on his 15 years of high court rulings but on allegations he'd harassed black and Hispanic voters in the early 1960s in Phoenix. This same swamp tossed up the revelation that the deed to Justice Rehnquist's former Phoenix house, purchased in 1961, held a 1928 covenant barring its sale to nonwhites. "The basic issue is his sensitivity to civil rights," said Ted Kennedy, the Democrats' ancient mariner. A Republican-controlled Senate voted to approve the Rehnquist nomination 65-33 (including 16 Democrats).

[George Smiley]

Ted's bork is worse than his bite?

[neodad]

Ted's just going to have to bork on his own time now.

[Blood of Tyrants]

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, children could not be taught about evolution."

Compared to Kennedy's America where a 40 year old rapist of a 12 year old can take his victim to an abortion mill and get rid of the "evidence" with no questions asked, Christ is forced out of Christmans, politicians use the IRS to harass and intimicate their opponents, and the parents of 5 year old children could not object if a school taught ttheir child that homosexuality is not only acceptable, but that it is superior to heterosexuality.

[neodad]

Ted Kennedy tilted his full 20 minutes at the Princeton windmill, producing nothing more than a laughable spat with Arlen Specter, which ended with Sen. Kennedy weirdly admitting, "I regret I haven't been down in the gym since before Christmas."

ROTFLMAO!!!

[hflynn]

The grand hulk of Ted Kennedy has been turned into the grand sulk of Ted Kennedy by simply letting Ted Kennedy be Ted Kennedy.

[harpu]

This is great, from the end of the article...

"Late in the afternoon Lindsey Graham puckishly engaged in what for all the world sounded like a, well, filibuster, whose effect was to drive Sen. Schumer's turn to the exact stroke of six, when every cable network switched to news programming. Alone now on C-SPAN, Sen. Schumer rode the thin reed of the 1985 job résumé. Going nowhere, he told an odd mother-in-law story, which Judge Alito mistook for a question: "Senator, I think -- ." Sen. Schumer cut him off: " -- Just let me move on."

After 20 years of this, it's about time.

[Bob]

...Ted Kennedy, the Democrats' ancient mariner.

Sailing an Oldsmobile off a bridge doesn't make one a mariner.

[TheForceOfOne]

Ted reminds me of "Bumble the Abominable Snowman" from the children's story "Rudoplh The Red Nose Raindeer" after Yukon Cornelius pulled all his teeth. He's now reduced to a harmless bully.

[marshmallow]

Kennedy at al., are idealogues. They have assumed, incorrectly, that the nominees recently before them (Roberts and Alito) are also idealogues; just conservative idealogues.

Thus, confronted by men who give no evidence of this but simply discuss law in a minimalist and terse manner, they have no answers. Prepared for wrangling and polemics over ideology, they are totally unprepared for men with a comprehensive grasp of the law and the intellectual gravitas to back it up.

[conservativecorner]

"gravitas". I haven't seen that for quite awhile. They said Bush had none, but he's managed to win two Presidential Elections. :>)!

[tiki]

Ever wonder what the state of American politics and America itself would be like w/o Ted?

[wita]

Ted's character genes got scrambled. Wonder how he likes being the runt of the litter, or are all the Kennedy's really alike, and we've just forgotten due to passage of time, and respect for the dead. It is really sad, no, pathetic to look at, but he must get a great deal of pleasure out of playing the pompous ass. He does it so well. Wonder what he is like when he is off the senate floor?

[crz]

Teddy Kennedy had his two brothers killed...

[Paleo Conservative]

This Roman circus dissipates, however, with the arrival of Supreme Court nominations, which are held in full view of the American people. And what has been witnessed so far is first John Roberts and now Samuel Alito discussing the law, rather than Coke cans, which puts their Democratic questioners on unfamiliar ground.

[The Great RJ]

I'm expecting Teddy to claim Alito was a member of the Boy Scouts, an organization that openly discriminates against women.

[billhilly]

"Wonder what he is like when he is off the senate floor?"

Porky pig. They probably have replaced the dining room table with a forty foot trough.

[6SJ7]

Sen. Kennedy bears a physical resemblance to a canned ham, without the can.

[Bear_Slayer]

. . .and women are left to drown in a submerged vehicle

[Blood of Tyrants]

Christmas 1972.