[Originally posted (slightly different version) at TMH’s Bacon Bits]
From Bill Sammon on The Washington Times front page:
Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, wrote that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion” in a 1985 document obtained by The Washington Times.
“I personally believe very strongly” in this legal position, Mr. Alito wrote on his application to become deputy assistant to Attorney General Edwin I. Meese III.
The document, which is likely to inflame liberals who oppose Judge Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, is among many that the White House will release today from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
In direct, unambiguous language, the young career lawyer who served as assistant to Solicitor General Rex E. Lee, demonstrated his conservative bona fides as he sought to become a political appointee in the Reagan administration.
“I am and always have been a conservative,” he wrote in an attachment to the noncareer appointment form that he sent to the Presidential Personnel Office. “I am a lifelong registered Republican.”
More from Jay at STOP THE ACLU, who points out:
Why he needs an apologist on this postition has me scratching my head. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had no apologies in her long history of liberal activism. Jurisprudence is the buzz word. Just note, these are his personal opinions.
Now, I’ve been told that there are folk on both sides of the aisle who, regardless of their feelings on abortion, believe that Roe v. Wade was an ill-conceived decision and an abuse of the Supreme Court’s power. This I would like to see publicized by the dominant press.
Many Conservatives will cheer this news — “He’s one of US!” — even as Liberals will pull out their medieval political spin machine, with which they shall torture us with tirades and punish the sensibilities of the American people on this issue. Nevermind that most on the Right are asking that Alito simply be conservative in that he will take his lead, not from ideology, but from the Constitution. To the Left, they fear what for which they most yearn within their hearts: Judicial Activism (though to them, the bizarro version).
And in the process, who will be the “victim”? Justice Alito, a kind man and brilliant jurist who will be put on show-trial, found guilty of witchcraft, and burned at the stake, well before his nomination hearings begin in January. In fact, on that delay of Alito’s hearings, Thomas Sowell has a few choice words:
The recent announcement by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter that confirmation hearings on Judge Samuel Alito have been postponed until January was only the latest in a series of painful examples of what happens when Senate Republicans wimp out.
Senator Specter did not wimp out. The Senate Republican “leadership” wimped out when they made him chairman of the Judiciary Committee after he had fired a shot across the bow of his own President, right after the election, publicly warning President Bush not to nominate anyone to the Supreme Court who would stir up controversy in the Senate.
Further ramifications of this delay are even now more apparent. The prescient Sowell, who published this column on 9 November, continues:
The delay in Judge Alito’s confirmation hearings gives the Senate Democrats and all the liberal-left interest groups time to orchestrate a fear and smear campaign and raise the money to advertise those fears and smears, both directly and by organized protests that will get much free publicity in the liberal media.
There is another aspect to this. Liberal Senators have every incentive to drag out the confirmation process, regardless of how the final vote turns out, because the longer they stall the longer Sandra Day O’Connor remains on the Supreme Court. She is their kind of judge, one who makes policy instead of applying the law. [emphasis mine]
Will the Senate GOP show a spine? or continue down their path of invertebrate insignificance? Sowell warns:
Senator Orrin Hatch has aptly said that the coming battle over the nomination of Judge Alito will be “Armageddon.” It will be Armageddon for the Republican party.
If the Republicans are not willing to fight for the things that people elected them to do, then some of the people who elected them may not turn out to vote for them at the next election.
People who have for years not only voted for the Republicans, but donated their time and money to the Republican party, who have volunteered to stuff envelopes, man the phones and walk the precincts to get out the vote on cold election nights, deserve something better than Senators who wimp out at crunch time.
If the fate of the legal system in this country is not enough incentive for Senate Republicans to show some backbone, maybe concern for their own re-election will be.
Let the smearfest begin. Personally, though, I’d prefer to watch a good jousting match. At least you know that the challengers are duty-bound to do their best to defeat their opponent, but honorably, within the rules. But rules mean nothing if you have no honor. In their thirst for power at all costs, the Democrats sold their portion years ago to the gods of liberal elitism, who offered them moral relativism in return.
Will be Armageddon. Pfffffft. We’ve been fighting Armageddon over the courts since Judge Robert Bork was Borked. (BTW, Thanks for that, Senator Specter.)
There’s honor in this.
Said The MaryHunter @ 7:02 am | Permalink
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Alito: On Abortion Explodes the Battle
Bill Sammon’s scoop on the Washington Times fires up the battle - on the Right and on the Left - for the confirmation of Samuel Alito at the Supreme Court. in a 1985 document obtained by the newspaper, Alito wrote that “the Constitution does not prot…
Trackback by The Right Nation — 11/14/2005 @ 4:47 pm