Posted on 01/26/2006 10:22:20 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
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.]
John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
You and I may finally be in agreement on something.
A google search returned only 48 results for the terms "Martha-Ann Alito" and "Mary Jo Kopechne".
When I tried "Martha-Ann Alito" and "Mary Jo Kopeckne" (which is how it is spelled in the article), I got no matches.
I don't see why it would take "hours" to go through that.
"Martha-Ann Alito's in-laws could have known Mary Jo Kopeckne and might have mentioned it to her" isn't as exciting.
Don't want anything 'verified' in particular. I trust the Congressman?
I'll admit to curiousity as to how he unravelled everything, but my real purpose was anticipation of the soon-to-follow claim of "Swift Boating" of Kennedy by this piece. If the press & the left don't ignore this fine piece of research, they'll attack it.
Some years ago a crash-reenactment laboratory normally hired by insurance companies to investigate suspicious accidents, re-staged the Kennedy incident.
They concluded Kennedy was not in the 1967 Oldsmobile when it went off the bridge, and that he might haved died with Mary Jo if he had been. His handlers told him to claim he was in the car, escaped, but attempted a rescue.
The researchers further concluded that the reason for Kennedy's ten hour delay in reporting the accident was that he literally did not know what had happened.
Interesting, yes?
>>>>was that he literally did not know what had happened.
Maybe. Or was he waiting to see if she surfaced? If she was fleeing from him, that may have been a piece of information he was interested in.
THANK YOU, for this post...the anger, I feel towards the LMSM, has increased.
It's Teddy who will be crying when Judge Alito is the newest associate justice of the Supreme Court.
My lest post to you notwithstanding (re; Shelby Steele), this is rich. Very rich indeed...
That should read:
"My last post to you notwithstanding (re; Shelby Steele), this is rich. Very rich indeed...
FatFingers
A Shocker!, June 4, 2003
Burke tells an exciting story in a book that is hard to put down. I was unaware of Teddy's sexual and otherwise illegal exploits, so if you were like me, this book will prove to be very informative. Burke reveals much about the character of the man for whom he worked and worshipped.
Well I personally think you did a great job on this story, and it should be on the front page of EVERY newspaper in America, just to show and to bring up what a scum sucking drunk, fat idiot the people in MA elect to represent them in Washington D.C.
Sure glad I don't hang my hat in that state, what a disgrace....
Who's laughing today? bump
And one small vote on the Court, but one giant step for the Constitution, Bump!
Tears may have been from frustration, I doubt it had anything to do with Koepeckne, her family knew the girl she didn't.
"Yea, technically she wasn't killed in the accident. It was the subsequent drowning that killed her."
No kidding! Kind of like the gunshots weren't what killed Kennedy. It was the subsequent loss of brain that killed him.
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