Posted on 01/15/2006 7:21:22 AM PST by TaxachusettsMan
Millions of Americans watching last week’s senate hearings on the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito had good reason to be confused. Was this the right program? Desperate Democrats were acting like desperate housewives.
U.S. Senators are normally a polite and dignified body, but this time the Democrats were in a total frenzy in their attempts to derail the confirmation of President Bush’s right-leaning nominee. Despite their best efforts, however, it looks very much like Samuel Alito, 55, will win easy confirmation from the full Senate as the 110th Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Leading Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sounded an awful lot like the old McCarthy days when questions were sharply shouted out in search of closet communists. This time, however, it was our own esteemed Ted Kennedy leading the charge. Failing to get the desired rise out of the nominee, Kennedy teamed up with Illinois Senator Durbin and turned to the smear tactic.
As it turns out, some 30 years ago it was discovered that the nominee, while a student at Princeton, had been a member of CAP, or ’Concerned Alumni of Princeton’. CAP was a conservative group of students and alumni who took a strong stand against lowering admission standards at Princeton and an equally strong stand supporting ROTC on campus. After searching the CAP records, however, the smear campaign fizzled when the exhaustive examination by senate staffers found that Samuel Alito’s name simply didn’t appear anywhere.
Apparently, Senator Kennedy forgot that he himself was once a member of the all-male ’Owls’ during his student days at Harvard. That was at a time when women at Radcliffe were excluded from most student activities. Of course, that was also before our senior Senator was expelled from Harvard for cheating.
The belligerent tone and continuing badgering unexpectedly backfired when Judge Alito’s wife welled up in tears and left the hearing room to compose herself. As though that were not bad enough, Kennedy irritated Italian-Americans by regularly calling Judge Alito, "Judge Alioto" as he played to the cameras and the abortion crowd.
In the end, the unflappable Judge Alito fielded some 700 questions while demonstrating an extraordinary judicial temperament under intense cross-examination by increasingly frustrated Democrats.
The advice and consent role of the Senate remains an invaluable check and balance. The political nature of hearings is to be expected and television does let citizens see it all first hand. Nevertheless, the hearings did show what a bad idea it would be to allow television cameras into the Supreme Court’s deliberations. The committee hearings provided all the evidence anyone would need to see that once those cameras started to roll, the serene dignity of the Supreme Court would be replaced by antics ranging from the dramatic to the shamelessly disgraceful
It can be expected that, after 30 years of waiting, the Supreme Court will finally tilt towards the right. While Roe versus Wade may probably remain, at least for the foreseeable future, there is little doubt that the fringe questions like parental notification, late-term, and partial-birth abortion will be affected.
Die-hard Democrats may yet attempt a filibuster, but that would require 60 votes in the 100 member chamber, and 55 of them are Republicans. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, set the tone for Republicans when he told Judge Alito, "You are going to serve as an outstanding justice on the United States Supreme Court, and I will be supporting you here in the committee and on the floor."
Meanwhile, George W. Bush’s estranged base of support is back on track and you can expect the president’s popularity ratings to rise steadily with the confirmation of Judge Alito.
Of course, no one but us will ever know about this.
I understand he was also in Phi Delta Sigma (Fat Drunk & Stupid Club)
Kennedy needs to look at himself in the tapes, but as a idiot, would fail to recognize his imperfections. He instead is quick to point out other peoples shortcomings. I guess that is a characteristic of sanctimonious politicians.
I fail to understand how Mass. continues to keep that joker Kennedy in the Senate. He apparantly can keep most of the people fooled most of the time, at least at home.
Don't forget Ei Tappa Kheg.
Not to mention Grabba Betta Thigh.
"U.S. Senators are normally a polite and dignified body"
THAT statement hasn't been the NORM for the
past 25 years. Oh, sure, many of them still
utilize the fatuous introductory phrase,
"My Good Friend on the other side of the aisle...",
but the phrase that follows is more often acidic,
even vitriolic!
I thought he was a member of I Felta Thi, Tappa Kegga Brew and Signa Fi Nothing.
Howie Carr has been using that "we all make mistakes, God knows, I've made more than my share..." several times a day. If nothing else, the Alioto (sic) hearings were useful for that.
Huh? It takes 60 votes to OVERCOME and defeat the filibuster by forcing a vote, not 60 votes to conduct a filibuster.
Common sense and elementary logic tells you that if you had 60 votes to defeat the nomination, you could just call the vote and WIN THE VOTE!!, and you wouldn't need to filibuster in the first place!!
This just shows how breathtakingly ill-informed most 'professional' journalists are, and yet they have the nerve to insult bloggers and Freepers.
You know one of the reasons this moral reprobate keeps getting re-elected?
Let me give you a concrete example.
When he was running against Mitt Romney (as Howie Carr asked, "If you were going away for the weekend, where would you leave your teen-age daughters? At the Romney Household with those big normal red-blooded boys but two solid Mormon parents, or at the Kennedy Compound?"), I asked an elderly teaching Sister - this was a nun with a doctorate, mind you, who had taught at all levels right up through graduate school, "How could you POSSIBLY in good conscience vote for Ted Kennedy?"
"Oh, I know, dear," she replied, "but I always think about his two martyred brothers and all that poor Rose suffered over the years . . . and they say he's the champion of women and the poor, so . . . you know . . . "
Hopeless. He's there till Someone calls him home.
BTTT
Peni Erecti was a favorite of mine !
It is the same with Leftists in the advancement of their agenda.
This is only one of many things that the Left and Islam have in common.
I can't understand it either, but once, in Massachusetts, I made an aside remark about him that was not even derogatory or critical but could be interpreted as slightly so--and you would have thought I had insulted Mohammed in a gang of Muslims!
Private Kennedy also has trouble with Senator Obama's name.
"Osama Obama...hic!"
That is the sorry truth. If his name was anything but Kennedy, he'd have been gone a long time ago (after having served 6-10 years for involuntary manslaughter or vehicular homicide, plus leaving the scene of an accident.)
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