Free Republic

Supreme Court: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., announced that the confirmation process for Judge Samuel Alito will be the longest in more than 14 years. Advantage: mudslingers. Former Pennsylvania Rep. Pat Toomey came within a hairsbreadth of beating incumbent Specter for the Republican nomination last year, and there was a big reason: fears that, as the new Judiciary chairman, the socially liberal senator would sabotage President Bush's promise to appoint justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Now the worries about Specter are coming true. In spite of the White House request to wrap up...

As conscientious followers of politics are doubtless aware, the better sort of American liberal is troubled by the unprecedented vituperation that has stolen into the public discourse. The Clintons refer to it as "The Politics of Personal Destruction" -- well said, Bill and Hillary. They, and concerned citizens like them, recognize that this inflammatory rhetoric comes, in the main, from the right -- or as they put it, "the extreme right." Dr. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, likewise is alarmed by the abusiveness from the right or more generally from Republicans whom he has recently identified as...