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Sunday, January 8, 2006

Alito Nomination: Time isn't right

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

In another time, with a different president, under slightly changed circumstances, Judge Samuel Alito might make a fine addition to the U.S. Supreme Court. But there is too much at stake for him to be confirmed now.

Even before Senate hearings start Monday, it's clear that Alito is a decent, honorable person and a distinguished legal thinker. But it is impossible to imagine that he can say anything in the hearings that would remove the concerns created by the clear record of his legal philosophy. He is a brilliant ideologue whose presence on the court would make much of the nation ache for the very justice he would replace, the court's great reconciler of differences, Sandra Day O'Connor.

The nation faces a domestic spying scandal, an administration's obsessive desire for control and a wrongfully launched war. His presence on the court would tip power the wrong way on issues of the role of government and executive power and personal privacy. Indeed, Alito has done more than his share to heighten tensions.

Early in his career, Alito outlined a strategy to erode the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights. That should be a particular concern for this state, with its history of support for women's rights and reproductive rights. Long before al-Qaida, there was Alito, then an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, writing a 1984 memo proclaiming that government officials should be able to order domestic wiretaps without fear of legal retaliation by their subjects. Almost every worry about the Bush administration goes back to its arrogant, sweeping view of executive powers. There again, one finds Alito. In 1986, as The Washington Post reported, he outlined an idea, picked up occasionally by President Reagan and used frequently by President Bush, of having the executive issue his own view of legislation he signed. Although courts haven't paid much attention, the aim is to give the president more say in how laws passed by Congress are interpreted.

While favoring executive powers, Alito's judicial record also indicates great deference to the business sector. Again, such pro-corporate attitudes have played a role in unraveling the country's ability to act on a sense of the common good.

Last week, Bush kept pushing the envelope of presidential power by issuing a long, provocatively timed list of "recess appointments" of officials who normally would be subject to congressional confirmation. When senators get back to work Monday, they should look at Alito's nomination in the proper context, one in which administration excesses have voided the deference normally due a presidential nominee to the court.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/254770_alitoed.asp?source=rss