Senator Ted Kennedy and Mrs. Alito’s Tears

On 12 January, 2006, the New York Times ran an article entitled “Thrust into the Limelight, and for Some A Symbol of Washington’s Bite.” It was a mini-biography of Mrs. Martha-Ann Alito, and it purported to explain the reasons for Mrs. Alito’s tears during her husband Samuel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It blamed them on a follow-up question by Senator Lindsay Graham, rather than on the verbal savaging of Judge Alito by the Democrats on the Committee, led by Senator Ted Kennedy.

The Times should have gotten the story right, because one of the three reporters on the story was in their New Jersey Bureau, and based in Caldwell. But they didn’t. Here are the operative paragraphs from that article on the cause of her tears:

She has sat behind him [her husband] all week, a pleasant-looking woman in sensible clothes, peering through rimless glasses as Democrats grilled Judge Alito about his investments and his affiliation with a conservative Princeton alumni group and Republicans tried to provide him some relief.

On Wednesday, one of those Republicans, Mr. Graham, tried to mock the Democrats with a question about the alumni group, which opposed affirmative action.

"Are you really a closet bigot?" Mr. Graham asked, at which point Mrs. Alito drew her hands to her face and left the hearing room weeping.

Source: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20C14FD3C5B0C708DDDA80894DE404482

As the article explained, Mrs. Alito is “fiercely protective” of her husband. And she was upset by the attacks on him as if he were dishonest, or a bigot, or a poor judge. But there was an additional reason, much older and much darker than what happened at that hearing. It concerns the fact that Senator Kennedy led the attack against Judge Alito.

Mrs, Alito was born Martha-Ann Bomgardner in Ft. Knox, Kentucky. The family moved with her father’s profession as an air traffic controller to New Jersey, where she attended Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Kentucky, she returned to New Jersey and became a librarian in the US Attorney’s office, where she met her husband.

Through her husband’s family, she learned of their personal friendship with another young woman who was also an only child. This other woman and her family were staunch Catholics. On occasion, they attended the same church in Roseland, New Jersey, as the Alitos, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, one of only two churches in that town of 5,298. The Alitos live in Caldwell, population 7,584, where this other woman graduated from Caldwell College, probably as a commuter student from her home, rather than a resident student.

From the personal memories of this woman that Mrs. Alito got from her husband’s family, and from her own understanding of what it means to be an only child, Mrs. Alito knew of the worst thing that any human being could do to another. She also heard of its impact on the family.

That other woman’s name was Mary Jo Kopeckne. She was killed by Senator Ted Kennedy, in an auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, on 18 July, 1969. That was the other reason for Mrs. Alito’s tears.

[Author’s notes: The author did not bother any of the three families referred to here in writing this. All the information was gathered from reputable Internet sources. If the Times puts a competent reporter on the story, it can find the same information. It should also then apologize for its original article, in which the three reporters presented their personal assumptions as facts on the cause of Mrs. Alito’s upset at the hearing.]

In their never ending quest to ~~publicly humiliate any Republican they can~~ protect the rights of women, the Democrat Solons of the Senate Judiciary managed to reduce Judge Alito's wife to tears.

But check out the spin from the DNC's Associated Press:

Alito's Wife Leaves Hearing Room in Tears

WASHINGTON (AP)

The wife of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito left his confirmation hearings in tears Wednesday.

Martha-Ann Bomgardner, who had sat behind her husband for hours of questioning over several days, left as her husband was being questioned by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

"Are you really a closet bigot?" Graham asked Alito. The nominee said no, and Graham said, "No sir, you're not."

Graham's questions came after withering questions from several Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats.

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah suggested that she was upset with the questioning from Democrats. "She's sick and tired of the mistreatment of her husband," Hatch said. He also said that she was suffering from a migraine headache.

She returned to the hearing room after a committee break, smiling and holding her husband's hand.

Yeah, it was really the questioning from a Republican Senator that caused Mrs Alito to cry.

Update!

Behold the rest of what "mean Republican" Graham actually said, from the Senate transcript:

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Are you really a closet bigot?

JUDGE SAMUEL ALITO: I'm not any kind of a bigot.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: No, sir, you're not. You know why I believe that? Not because you just said it but that's a good enough reason because you seem to be a decent, honorable man. I've got reams of quotes from people who have worked with you, African-American judges, glowing quotes about who you are, the way you've lived your life, law clerks, men and women, black and white, your colleagues who say that Sam Alito, whether I agree with him or not, is a really good man.

And you know why I believe you when you say that you disavow those quotes because the way you have lived your life and the way you and your wife are raising your children.

Let me tell you this: guilt by association is going to drive good men and women away from wanting to sit where you're sitting. Judge Alito, I am sorry that you've had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this.

And of course it was this reference to the things the Democrat titans had been saying about her husband that brought on Mrs Alito's tears. Funny how the AP left that part out.

By the way, speaking of our one party press's bias, here is a photo of her return to the chambers. The AP made it sound like it had all been just an act, and that she flounced back in all sunshine and daffodils like a giddy schoolgirl:

She still looks pretty upset to me. But the AP (agit-prop) never stops.

One thing I can't figure out from reading that YTedK.com site.

When they pulled that car out of the pond, was the car door opened?

Because if Ted opened the door and swam out, wouldn't that have caused the car filled with water?

So, if the water seeped in to suffocate her, vs. drown her, that would mean that the car door didn't open. No?

So did Ted actually go over in the car? Or did he drive her there, 'to talk'? And the 'talking maybe didn't go well' and she get upset and try to drive away and accidently went off the bridge?

I'm just trying to figure out this air thing in the car.

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