by georgia10
Thu Jan 12, 2006 at 01:31:32 PM PDT
The media is universally declaring that Alito is headed towards confirmation. I've been bothered by the spin from reporters that Alito will be confirmed because the Democrats failed to challenge him properly at the hearing. The burden was never on Democrats to grill Alito until he cracked. Alito was coached for months, including by Lindsay Graham, a committee member. So this notion that the Democrats "failed" to put a kink in Alito's armor is ridiculous. There was no armor to begin with.
The burden, from the start, was on Alito to counter his record as a idealogue. Alito walked into that hearing room saddled with a record as one of the most pro-government Republican judges in the nation. He walked into that room with his objective memorialized in black and white: overturning Roe. He walked into that room already having established his contempt for our system of checks and balances.
The burden was on him to explain his record. And he didn't. Because there's no explaining away the fact that he believes the government can do whatever the hell it wants when it comes to stripping of our rights. To succeed in these hearings, Alito had to counter record, and he didn't.
Instead, we were subjected to a beige performance, a lackluster display which proved not that he is a sound and reasonable jurist, but that he's darn good at memorizing boilerplate answers. I was bored to tears watching the hearing, and I'm a law nerd.
And indeed, it should be those tears that matter, not the tears of Mrs. Alito that are replayed time and time again on televesion. What should matter is the fact that Alito flatlined. He gave absolutely no viable defense of his atrocious record, chosing instead to drone on and on in generic terms, probably hoping that his questioner would be asleep by the he the time he finished evading the question. That should be the news story. Alito's performance, not the Democrats. Alito failed to meet his burden of proven he is worthy of the highest court in this land.
At the time of Bork's nomination, I was more interested with jungle gyms than judicial nominess, but I gather he was not, as Alito claims, "one of the most outstanding nominees of this century." Alito's explanation of that statement? I was a political appointee. When confronted with his argument that Roe should be dismantled, he said he was writing as an advocate. And when it came to why he boasted about been a member of the radical group CAP, he said he was just a job applicant.
He repeatedly minimized his record, instead of embracing it. For Alito, all his disturbing statements can be chalked up to sucking up for a job, blowing kisses into the ears of those in power. He reminds me of the job interviewee who, when asked what their biggest fault is, says "I work too hard." So why should we believe anything he has said over the course of these hearings?
Three days of mind-numbing testimony and all I get is this: Alito is simply not credible. There is a impassable canyon between the old Alito--who was undoubtly an extreme conservative bent on restricting individual liberties--and this brand spankin' new Alito whose views were dipped in bleach and sterilized for public consumption. There is a uneasiness in his constantly shifting explanations and his inconsistent application of his "judicial philosophy." Alito had a chance to embrace his record; instead, he shrank from it. If Alito is indeed confirmed, the question becomes which Alito do we get on the Supreme Court?
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Pelosi Wants Probe of "Corrupt Congress"
House Democratic Leader Pelosi Urges Investigation of Republicans Linked to Lobbyist Abramoff
By JIM ABRAMS
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said Republicans had created "one of the most closed, corrupt congresses in history" and urged the House ethics committee to investigate GOP lawmakers linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
"It's hard for the American people to understand how corrupt it is here," the California Democrat said at a news conference.
In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Pelosi said Democrats expect the ethics committee to look into the "alleged violations of criminal laws and the rules of the House" by former Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Texas, and three other Republicans with ties to Abramoff Bob Ney of Ohio and Californians Richard Pombo and John Doolittle.
Abramoff has pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud charges for his influence-peddling activities, but so far no member of Congress has been indicted.
Pelosi's letter did not ask the ethics committee to investigate an unrelated case involving Democratic Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana.
A former aide to Jefferson, in pleading guilty to aiding and abetting bribery of a public official, said Jefferson had demanded bribes for promoting business opportunities in Africa, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
Pelosi didn't comment on the Jefferson case, but stressed that "we have said all along that, Democrat or Republican, anyone who doesn't follow the rules or the law has to be held accountable. That's the difference between us."
Hastert's spokesman, Ron Bonjean, said it was "hypocritical for Leader Pelosi to throw mud" when a fundraising committee run by the Democratic leader had been fined last year for improperly accepting donations over federal limits.
He said Republicans hope Pelosi "will stop playing politics and will support our comprehensive lobbying effort that will help change the way work is done in Washington."
Hastert has asked Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., to craft lobbying ethics legislation to address some of the abuses that led to the Abramoff scandal. One idea they have proposed is to bar lawmakers from accepting any privately funded trips.
Pelosi said she welcomed that proposal, "but that's only the beginning." Legislators from both parties have recommended tougher rules on accepting gifts and lengthening the period between when a lawmaker retires and can accept a job as a lobbyist.
She added that "if we are ever really going to have real change here, we must kill the K Street Project." That initiative, spearheaded by DeLay, pressured lobbying firms to hire only Republicans and direct money to Republican causes.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
By JIM ABRAMS
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said Republicans had created "one of the most closed, corrupt congresses in history" and urged the House ethics committee to investigate GOP lawmakers linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
"It's hard for the American people to understand how corrupt it is here," the California Democrat said at a news conference.
In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Pelosi said Democrats expect the ethics committee to look into the "alleged violations of criminal laws and the rules of the House" by former Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Texas, and three other Republicans with ties to Abramoff Bob Ney of Ohio and Californians Richard Pombo and John Doolittle.
Abramoff has pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud charges for his influence-peddling activities, but so far no member of Congress has been indicted.
Pelosi's letter did not ask the ethics committee to investigate an unrelated case involving Democratic Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana.
A former aide to Jefferson, in pleading guilty to aiding and abetting bribery of a public official, said Jefferson had demanded bribes for promoting business opportunities in Africa, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
Pelosi didn't comment on the Jefferson case, but stressed that "we have said all along that, Democrat or Republican, anyone who doesn't follow the rules or the law has to be held accountable. That's the difference between us."
Hastert's spokesman, Ron Bonjean, said it was "hypocritical for Leader Pelosi to throw mud" when a fundraising committee run by the Democratic leader had been fined last year for improperly accepting donations over federal limits.
He said Republicans hope Pelosi "will stop playing politics and will support our comprehensive lobbying effort that will help change the way work is done in Washington."
Hastert has asked Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., to craft lobbying ethics legislation to address some of the abuses that led to the Abramoff scandal. One idea they have proposed is to bar lawmakers from accepting any privately funded trips.
Pelosi said she welcomed that proposal, "but that's only the beginning." Legislators from both parties have recommended tougher rules on accepting gifts and lengthening the period between when a lawmaker retires and can accept a job as a lobbyist.
She added that "if we are ever really going to have real change here, we must kill the K Street Project." That initiative, spearheaded by DeLay, pressured lobbying firms to hire only Republicans and direct money to Republican causes.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
Elizabeth Holtzman-from Nixon to Bush & the Case For Impeachment
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Bio
A few days before the New Year, soon after the New York Times reported that Bush had authorized the warrantless wiretapping of thousands of Americans, I called Elizabeth Holtzman. I remembered that Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons.
And memories of Holtzman as a young leader on the House Judiciary Committee, during Watergate, made me sure she'd be a rigorous, thoughtful voice on this gravest of issues.
I reached Holtzman at her New York city law office. Anyone who knows Holtzman respects her level-headed, no-nonsense manner. That afternoon, however, her voice rose as she expressed outrage about the recent revelations of Bush's wiretapping, and she was quick to drew parallels to Watergate-era abuses. But Holtzman hesitated before agreeing to take on this assignment, asking for a few days to pull together her material and arguments. A few days later, she sent me an e-mail saying I'd have it a few days after the new year.
As promised, Holtzman got us the piece. Over the course of a week, and working with senior editor Betsy Reed, Holtzman revised the article--adding more facts, reviewing arguments with legal colleagues, and updating (for example,the Pentagon study disclosing that proper bulletproof vests would have saved hundreds of lives came out just days before press date).
So, today, some thirty years after Watergate, a leader in the impeachment of Richard Nixon--former member of the House Judiciary Committee Elizabeth Holtzman--returns to the national stage, with her cover story in this week's Nation, to make the case for impeachment again: this time against President George W. Bush.
The article is especially powerful because of its sober tone, its rigorous argumentation and fastidious documentation. It is also moving because it is informed by Holtzman's personal experience and political history.
"I can still remember the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach," Holtzman writes, "during those [Watergate] proceedings, when it became clear that the President had so systematically abused the powers of the Presidency and so threatened the rule of law that he had to be removed from office." Holtzman understood then, and understands now, that impeachment is a "tortuous process"-- the most extreme Constitutional act in a democracy, a "last resort." Voting for impeachment, she remembers, was "one of the most sobering and unpleasant tasks I ever had to undertake...[And] At the time, I hoped that our committee's work would send a strong signal to future Presidents that they had to obey the rule of law."
"I was wrong," Holtzman admits. And "now that President Bush has thrown down the gauntlet and virtually dared Congress to stop him from violating the law, nothing less [than impeachment] is necessary to protect our constitutional system and preserve our democracy."
This is not a partisan argument. As Holtzman argues eloquently, appealing to all citizens who care about our democracy: "A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law---and repeatedly violates the law--thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office."
For all Americans who want to preserve and protect our democracy, please read and circulate Elizabeth Holtzman's Nation article.
Use it to spearhead letter-writing campaigns to newspapers, to organize petition drives, and send it to your Representatives demanding that they support hearings and investigations into Presidential deceptions and abuses. And, as we head into this crucial 2006 election year, remember, as Holtzman points out, " If a Republican Congress is unwilling to investigate and take appropriate action against a Republican President, then a Democratic Congress should replace it."
Bio
A few days before the New Year, soon after the New York Times reported that Bush had authorized the warrantless wiretapping of thousands of Americans, I called Elizabeth Holtzman. I remembered that Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons.
And memories of Holtzman as a young leader on the House Judiciary Committee, during Watergate, made me sure she'd be a rigorous, thoughtful voice on this gravest of issues.
I reached Holtzman at her New York city law office. Anyone who knows Holtzman respects her level-headed, no-nonsense manner. That afternoon, however, her voice rose as she expressed outrage about the recent revelations of Bush's wiretapping, and she was quick to drew parallels to Watergate-era abuses. But Holtzman hesitated before agreeing to take on this assignment, asking for a few days to pull together her material and arguments. A few days later, she sent me an e-mail saying I'd have it a few days after the new year.
As promised, Holtzman got us the piece. Over the course of a week, and working with senior editor Betsy Reed, Holtzman revised the article--adding more facts, reviewing arguments with legal colleagues, and updating (for example,the Pentagon study disclosing that proper bulletproof vests would have saved hundreds of lives came out just days before press date).
So, today, some thirty years after Watergate, a leader in the impeachment of Richard Nixon--former member of the House Judiciary Committee Elizabeth Holtzman--returns to the national stage, with her cover story in this week's Nation, to make the case for impeachment again: this time against President George W. Bush.
The article is especially powerful because of its sober tone, its rigorous argumentation and fastidious documentation. It is also moving because it is informed by Holtzman's personal experience and political history.
"I can still remember the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach," Holtzman writes, "during those [Watergate] proceedings, when it became clear that the President had so systematically abused the powers of the Presidency and so threatened the rule of law that he had to be removed from office." Holtzman understood then, and understands now, that impeachment is a "tortuous process"-- the most extreme Constitutional act in a democracy, a "last resort." Voting for impeachment, she remembers, was "one of the most sobering and unpleasant tasks I ever had to undertake...[And] At the time, I hoped that our committee's work would send a strong signal to future Presidents that they had to obey the rule of law."
"I was wrong," Holtzman admits. And "now that President Bush has thrown down the gauntlet and virtually dared Congress to stop him from violating the law, nothing less [than impeachment] is necessary to protect our constitutional system and preserve our democracy."
This is not a partisan argument. As Holtzman argues eloquently, appealing to all citizens who care about our democracy: "A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law---and repeatedly violates the law--thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office."
For all Americans who want to preserve and protect our democracy, please read and circulate Elizabeth Holtzman's Nation article.
Use it to spearhead letter-writing campaigns to newspapers, to organize petition drives, and send it to your Representatives demanding that they support hearings and investigations into Presidential deceptions and abuses. And, as we head into this crucial 2006 election year, remember, as Holtzman points out, " If a Republican Congress is unwilling to investigate and take appropriate action against a Republican President, then a Democratic Congress should replace it."
Alito and his coaches
Alito and His Coaches For Supreme Court nominee, hearings are an inside game
by James Ridgeway with Michael Roston
WASHINGTON, D.C.--In the first hours of Samuel Alito's Senate confirmation hearings on Monday, Judiciary Committee member Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, may very well have irreparably compromised himself.
At the hearing, Graham told Alito, nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, that he had already decided in Alito's favor. "I don't know what kind of vote you're going to get, but you'll make it through. It's possible you could talk me out of voting for you, but I doubt it. So I won't even try to challenge you along those lines."
That certainly ought to be the case. Graham is one of a group of Republicans who have been coaching Alito behind the scenes. The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire reported before the hearings began:
"On Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the 'gang of 14' who sits on Judiciary, joined a so-called moot court session at the White House.''
The coaching session for Alito has raised a few eyebrows.
"Coaching a judicial nominee behind-the-scenes is not the proper role for a Judiciary Committee member who must subsequently sit in judgment on that nominee," writes Think Progress, a project of the American Progress Action Fund. "It could be a violation of the ethical duties of a senator."
Writing about the Alito situation, Think Progress cites Senate Rule 37 in the Senate Ethics Manual. The rule says: "No Member, officer, or employee shall engage in any outside business or professional activity or employment for compensation which is inconsistent or in conflict with the conscientious performance of official duties."
Think Progress further cites the ethics manual, saying that language has been interpreted as prohibiting "compensated employment or uncompensated positions on boards, commissions, or advisory councils where such service could create a conflict with an individual's Senate duties due to appropriation, oversight, authorization, or legislative jurisdiction as a result of Senate duties."
If this is true, how can Graham make an impartial decision about Alito based on what he learns at the Alito hearings? Graham has already made up his mind.
by James Ridgeway with Michael Roston
WASHINGTON, D.C.--In the first hours of Samuel Alito's Senate confirmation hearings on Monday, Judiciary Committee member Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, may very well have irreparably compromised himself.
At the hearing, Graham told Alito, nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, that he had already decided in Alito's favor. "I don't know what kind of vote you're going to get, but you'll make it through. It's possible you could talk me out of voting for you, but I doubt it. So I won't even try to challenge you along those lines."
That certainly ought to be the case. Graham is one of a group of Republicans who have been coaching Alito behind the scenes. The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire reported before the hearings began:
"On Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the 'gang of 14' who sits on Judiciary, joined a so-called moot court session at the White House.''
The coaching session for Alito has raised a few eyebrows.
"Coaching a judicial nominee behind-the-scenes is not the proper role for a Judiciary Committee member who must subsequently sit in judgment on that nominee," writes Think Progress, a project of the American Progress Action Fund. "It could be a violation of the ethical duties of a senator."
Writing about the Alito situation, Think Progress cites Senate Rule 37 in the Senate Ethics Manual. The rule says: "No Member, officer, or employee shall engage in any outside business or professional activity or employment for compensation which is inconsistent or in conflict with the conscientious performance of official duties."
Think Progress further cites the ethics manual, saying that language has been interpreted as prohibiting "compensated employment or uncompensated positions on boards, commissions, or advisory councils where such service could create a conflict with an individual's Senate duties due to appropriation, oversight, authorization, or legislative jurisdiction as a result of Senate duties."
If this is true, how can Graham make an impartial decision about Alito based on what he learns at the Alito hearings? Graham has already made up his mind.
Attention, Medicare Shoppers . . . - New York Times
The New York Times
January 10, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Attention, Medicare Shoppers . . .
By LISA DOGGETT
Austin, Tex.
THIS winter, Medicare recipients shouldn't limit their bargain-hunting to
post-holiday blowout sales. Despite its serious deficiencies, the new
Medicare
prescription drug benefit offers a myriad of savings opportunities, which in
my grandmother's case totaled more than $2,000 a year. By asking the right
questions and comparing plans, the savvy consumer can save more with
Medicare than at Macy's.
The new federal benefit subsidizes drug costs for the 42 million Americans
covered by Medicare. It's confusing and complex, but its bigger flaw is that
it prohibits the government from negotiating Medicare drug prices with
producers as the Veterans Administration does for our veterans. The plan's
estimated
$724 billion price tag over the next 10 years could have been substantially
reduced had the government retained its bargaining power. Instead, the
program
allows the insurance industry to develop for-profit plans, leading to an
overabundance of imperfect choices for the average Medicare recipient.
Choosing a plan is an overwhelming and cumbersome task. While many patients
lack the knowledge and skills to pick the most cost-effective plan,
overburdened
physicians can't be expected to counsel each individual patient with plan
selection. But for those Medicare recipients who are able, it is worth
taking
time to understand the options and investigate possible savings on their
own.
As most of my patients have low incomes and lack prescription drug coverage,
I have become an expert penny-pincher. My patients and I adjust medications
to less expensive, often generic, drugs. We look for coupons, break pills in
half, search for the cheapest pharmacy, find free samples and enroll in
patient
assistance programs sponsored by drug companies.
Now, my 88-year-old grandmother and I have used some of these same
strategies to reduce the price of her eight monthly prescriptions, which had
cost about
$260 per month, more than $3,000 a year.
Realizing the challenges of enrolling for someone who has never switched on
a computer, I offered to select a Medicare prescription plan for her. I
started
the process at the fairly straightforward Medicare Web site, and after
entering her ZIP code I learned that she had 48 plans to choose from, each
offering
different lists of covered medicines (known as "formularies"), co-payments
and deductibles.
After entering the names of her current medications, I was presented with a
list of estimated costs for several plans. To my dismay, the "best" plan
cost
$3,242 annually, even more than her current drug bill without any insurance.
But I didn't stop there. I studied her medication list and discovered that
with a few medically insignificant changes, she would reduce her total drug
costs
substantially. The key is understanding that most medications are considered
part of a "class" based on how they work, and each class usually includes
two or more medicines of similar effectiveness.
Often, a brand-name medication has a high prescription price, but another of
the same class that works equally well is available as a lower-priced
generic
or sold over the counter. The prices of most medications are difficult for
doctors to estimate, and we frequently don't mind making a substitution if
it
will enable the patient to afford the prescription.
Reviewing my grandmother's medication list, I removed just one medicine,
Prilosec, a heartburn drug. My grandmother was getting it by prescription,
but
since 2003 it has been available over the counter for less than $25 a month.
By switching to the cheaper version, my grandmother lowered her projected
costs, according to the Medicare Web site, to $1,945 annually, a net savings
of more than $1,000.
Further switches among prescription cholesterol and blood pressure
medications lowered her costs further, to only $960 annually if she chooses
to receive
the medicines by mail (or to $1,267 if she prefers the local pharmacy). I
found these savings by reviewing the formularies on the Web sites of several
different plans and switching her to medicines that were "preferred" under
the drug benefit. Once her doctor agreed to the proposed changes, we signed
her up.
The lessons for Medicare patients are clear: don't automatically enroll in
the first plan that pops up as your "best" option; compare the covered drug
lists
of your top choices (available on line or by calling the companies directly)
and discuss the options with your doctor or pharmacist; ask if there are
generic
versions for any of the medications and, when possible, avoid the more
costly drugs that are not "preferred" by the plan.
Even those who have already joined plans can still save money by bringing a
copy of their covered drug lists to their doctors to discuss switching to
cheaper
medicines in the same class that are "preferred." (Beneficiaries may also
change their plans during the next annual enrollment period, Nov. 15 through
Dec. 31.)
I realize that after navigating the Internet maze required just to enroll in
a plan, few Medicare recipients will relish the idea of doing more research
and making changes on their own. But the savings can more than make up for
the effort - just ask my grandmother.
Lisa Doggett is a family doctor.
Posted by Miriam V.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Alito falters on CAP
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Alito's "Open Mind"
“Open Mind” is Not a Legal Term and Signifies Nothing
Judge Samuel Alito repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether he still holds his 1985 legal view that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” Instead, he tried to muddy the waters in his Senate Judiciary Committee hearings by pledging to keep “an open mind,” should he be in a position to reconsider precedent on that right.
The news media are trumpeting this statement as if it means something. It doesn’t. In fact, another Supreme Court nominee used this exact language to navigate hearing questions attempting to expose his not-so-secret anti-choice legal views.
In the fall of 1991, during his own hearings, Clarence Thomas said of the right to abortion, “I think that it is most important for me to remain open. I have no agenda. I am open about that important case. I work to be open and impartial on all the cases on which I sit. I can say on that issue and on those cases I have no agenda. I have an open mind, and I can function strongly as a judge
.
He went on to say, “I have no agenda, Senator. I have tried to here, as well as in my other endeavors as a judge, remain impartial, to remain open-minded, and I am open-minded on this particular important issue.
As we all know, however, once safely on the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas voted to overturn Roe v. Wade just months later, dissenting in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey – a dissent that likened abortion to polygamy, sodomy, incest and suicide.
So much for an “open mind."
By the way, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey came to Thomas and the Supreme Court through Samuel Alito's Third Circuit, where Alito too voted to restrict reproductive freedom.
Judge Samuel Alito repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether he still holds his 1985 legal view that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.” Instead, he tried to muddy the waters in his Senate Judiciary Committee hearings by pledging to keep “an open mind,” should he be in a position to reconsider precedent on that right.
The news media are trumpeting this statement as if it means something. It doesn’t. In fact, another Supreme Court nominee used this exact language to navigate hearing questions attempting to expose his not-so-secret anti-choice legal views.
In the fall of 1991, during his own hearings, Clarence Thomas said of the right to abortion, “I think that it is most important for me to remain open. I have no agenda. I am open about that important case. I work to be open and impartial on all the cases on which I sit. I can say on that issue and on those cases I have no agenda. I have an open mind, and I can function strongly as a judge
.
He went on to say, “I have no agenda, Senator. I have tried to here, as well as in my other endeavors as a judge, remain impartial, to remain open-minded, and I am open-minded on this particular important issue.
As we all know, however, once safely on the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas voted to overturn Roe v. Wade just months later, dissenting in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey – a dissent that likened abortion to polygamy, sodomy, incest and suicide.
So much for an “open mind."
By the way, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey came to Thomas and the Supreme Court through Samuel Alito's Third Circuit, where Alito too voted to restrict reproductive freedom.
Alito hearings
Momentum Shifts as Alito's Record Comes Through Despite His Evasive and Misleading Answers
Midway through the second day of testimony in the confirmation hearing of Samuel Alito, his continuing refusal to give clear answers to direct questions about his record on core issues of privacy and personal liberty is wearing thin, said People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas.
“Samuel Alito just won’t give a straight answer,” said Neas. “And senators’ questions are helping explain why: Judge Alito doesn’t want Americans to understand that his record reflects a consistent pattern of ruling against average people and their personal privacy – and ruling in favor of corporations and government power.”
Neas noted that Alito told Senator Dick Durbin that his 1985 statement that the Constitution does not protect a woman’s right to choose accurately reflected his view at the time, but he repeatedly refused to say whether that is still his view, and refused to say whether Roe v. Wade is settled law. (Even John Roberts was willing to testify that Roe was settled law.) Alito similarly refused to give a clear answer on choice under intense questioning from Sen. Schumer at the end of the first day of testimony and from Sen. Feinstein today.
Alito also tried to dismiss as a “technical issue of interpretation” a case in which he dissented from a ruling by two Reagan-appointed judges that a coal processing facility and its workers were covered under federal mine safety regulations. Alito would have ruled that the coal processing facility wasn’t a mine, and therefore it was not covered under the federal Mine Safety & Health Act, leaving its workers uncovered by the law’s protections. Sen. Durbin cited the case as part of a pattern of decisions by Judge Alito that suggested average people would be left to the “crushing hand of fate” if Alito were on the Supreme Court.
Senator Tom Coburn tried to help Alito out by announcing that he was placing into the record a list of cases in which he said Alito ruled for “the little guy” – and announced that the list had a mere nine cases. Senator Hatch also tried to blunt the impact of Alito’s record by cherry-picking a few cases that he said showed Judge Alito defended the interests of individuals. By contrast, independent studies of hundreds of Alito opinions have found that Judge Alito overwhelmingly rules against individuals. University of Chicago Law Professor Cass Sunstein has written that when there is a conflict between institutions and individual rights, Judge Alito’s dissenting opinions argue against individual rights 84 percent of the time. George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley has said Alito’s record reflects a “raw form of judicial bias.”
Senator Coburn also placed into the record a letter of support for Alito from a woman who is the president-elect of the National Association of Women Lawyers. But Senator Coburn didn’t mention that the woman was dropped from the Republican witness list after the organization she has been elected to lead concluded that Alito’s record is so bad for women’s rights and interests that he was not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. Neas also noted that a Republican organization, Republican Majority for Choice, announced its opposition to Alito’s confirmation today.
Senator Ted Kennedy grilled Alito on his membership in the reactionary Concerned Alumni of Princeton and on Alito’s attempts to distance himself from the group’s reprehensible record and rhetoric on women, racial minorities, and gay and lesbian students. Alito has repeatedly said he does not remember why he joined the organization, though he asserted today that his membership would have had nothing to do with these issues for which CAP was most notorious. Yesterday, he said he was not aware of controversies surrounding the organization. Neas called Alito’s testimony on CAP “disingenuous and difficult to take seriously.”
“Americans want a Supreme Court justice who understands how the law affects ordinary Americans,” said Neas. “The evidence is increasingly clear that Samuel Alito is the wrong choice for the job.”
Midway through the second day of testimony in the confirmation hearing of Samuel Alito, his continuing refusal to give clear answers to direct questions about his record on core issues of privacy and personal liberty is wearing thin, said People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas.
“Samuel Alito just won’t give a straight answer,” said Neas. “And senators’ questions are helping explain why: Judge Alito doesn’t want Americans to understand that his record reflects a consistent pattern of ruling against average people and their personal privacy – and ruling in favor of corporations and government power.”
Neas noted that Alito told Senator Dick Durbin that his 1985 statement that the Constitution does not protect a woman’s right to choose accurately reflected his view at the time, but he repeatedly refused to say whether that is still his view, and refused to say whether Roe v. Wade is settled law. (Even John Roberts was willing to testify that Roe was settled law.) Alito similarly refused to give a clear answer on choice under intense questioning from Sen. Schumer at the end of the first day of testimony and from Sen. Feinstein today.
Alito also tried to dismiss as a “technical issue of interpretation” a case in which he dissented from a ruling by two Reagan-appointed judges that a coal processing facility and its workers were covered under federal mine safety regulations. Alito would have ruled that the coal processing facility wasn’t a mine, and therefore it was not covered under the federal Mine Safety & Health Act, leaving its workers uncovered by the law’s protections. Sen. Durbin cited the case as part of a pattern of decisions by Judge Alito that suggested average people would be left to the “crushing hand of fate” if Alito were on the Supreme Court.
Senator Tom Coburn tried to help Alito out by announcing that he was placing into the record a list of cases in which he said Alito ruled for “the little guy” – and announced that the list had a mere nine cases. Senator Hatch also tried to blunt the impact of Alito’s record by cherry-picking a few cases that he said showed Judge Alito defended the interests of individuals. By contrast, independent studies of hundreds of Alito opinions have found that Judge Alito overwhelmingly rules against individuals. University of Chicago Law Professor Cass Sunstein has written that when there is a conflict between institutions and individual rights, Judge Alito’s dissenting opinions argue against individual rights 84 percent of the time. George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley has said Alito’s record reflects a “raw form of judicial bias.”
Senator Coburn also placed into the record a letter of support for Alito from a woman who is the president-elect of the National Association of Women Lawyers. But Senator Coburn didn’t mention that the woman was dropped from the Republican witness list after the organization she has been elected to lead concluded that Alito’s record is so bad for women’s rights and interests that he was not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. Neas also noted that a Republican organization, Republican Majority for Choice, announced its opposition to Alito’s confirmation today.
Senator Ted Kennedy grilled Alito on his membership in the reactionary Concerned Alumni of Princeton and on Alito’s attempts to distance himself from the group’s reprehensible record and rhetoric on women, racial minorities, and gay and lesbian students. Alito has repeatedly said he does not remember why he joined the organization, though he asserted today that his membership would have had nothing to do with these issues for which CAP was most notorious. Yesterday, he said he was not aware of controversies surrounding the organization. Neas called Alito’s testimony on CAP “disingenuous and difficult to take seriously.”
“Americans want a Supreme Court justice who understands how the law affects ordinary Americans,” said Neas. “The evidence is increasingly clear that Samuel Alito is the wrong choice for the job.”
Alito hearings
by Tim Grieve
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
Alito hearings
by Tim Grieve
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
Alito hearings
by Tim Grieve
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
Alito hearings
by Tim Grieve
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
NSA Whistleblower Alleges Illegal Spying
Former Employee Admits to Being a Source for The New York Times
By BRIAN ROSS
Jan 10, 2006 — - Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.
For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people's conversations around the world.
"I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations."
But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.
"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them," he said.
Tracking Calls
Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.
"If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing."
According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or even thousands more.
Tice Admits Being a Source for The New York Times
President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.
But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.
The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.
"As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed."
The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."
By BRIAN ROSS
Jan 10, 2006 — - Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.
For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people's conversations around the world.
"I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations."
But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.
"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them," he said.
Tracking Calls
Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.
"If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing."
According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or even thousands more.
Tice Admits Being a Source for The New York Times
President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.
But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.
The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.
"As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed."
The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Personal: EPIC vs MedicareRX
EPIC is a New York State program which provides drugs at discounted costs to
senior citizens whose annual income is $35,000 or less. The drugs range in
price from $5 to $20. Seniors pay a deductable which depends on their
income. The law which governs Medicare Part D (the Medicare RX program
administered by various private insurance companies, does not allow the
Social Ssecurity Administration to bargain with pharmaceutical companites in
order to gain the lowes possible prices on drugs.
Yesterday, I encountered a result of this policy. The pharmeceutical
company which manufactures an eye crop which I use and which is very
effective in controlling Glacauma, has announced that it will no longer be
part of the EPIC program. After all, why should this company give New York
State discounts for its seniors when it can charge anything it chooses to
Medicare? I'm sure that other companies will follow and EPIC will die as a
result.
EPIC is an easy program to use and it is very helplful financially to
senirs. But our Republican Admninistration and the drug companies are
killing it.
Posted by Miriam V.
From Alito, a dodge on the details
by Tim Grieve
Sam Alito had a moment of eloquence in today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In response to a question in which Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley dismissed the notion that courts should take the lead in helping to create "a more just society," Alito pushed back gently: "Well, I think that if the courts do the job that they're supposed to do, they will -- we will -- produce a more just society," Alito said. "I think if you take the position as a federal judge, you have to have faith that if you do your job then you will be helping to create a more just society. The Constitution and the constitutional system that we have is designed to produce a just society."
Alito then segued into a metaphor that's a little more apt than the baseball stories folks keep trying to inject into Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Arguing that judges have a limited role to play in our government, Alito said that the Constitution "gives different responsibilities to different people. You could think of a football team or you could think of an orchestra where everybody has a different part to play, and the whole system won't work if people start playing ... the role of someone else."
It all sounded so reasonable. But as always, the devil is in the details, and Alito has been careful today to steer clear of them. John G. Roberts repeatedly declined to answer questions put to him by senators on the Judiciary Committee. Alito hasn't done that, exactly. He's responding to virtually all the questions senators are putting to him. He's just not really answering all that many of them.
Consider this exchange between Alito and Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter. Specter asked Alito this morning if he accepted "the legal principles articulated in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the liberty clause in the Constitution carries with it the right to privacy." Alito responded by saying, "I do believe that the Constitution protects a right to privacy," then cited the ways in which the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures -- an issue not particularly germane to Specter's question or Griswold's holding that married people have a right to buy contraceptives.
Specter pressed on: "Well, Griswold dealt with the right to privacy on contraception for married women. You agree with that." Alito responded: "I agree that Griswold is now, I think, understood by the Supreme Court as based on liberty clauses of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and 14th Amendment." Specter tried it another way, asking Alito if he agreed with Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that extended the holding in Griswold to single people. Alito said he agreed with "the result" in Eisenstadt.
Three questions, three responses, and still no answer to the query underlying them all: Does Alito believe in "the legal principles articulated in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the liberty clause in the Constitution carries with it the right to privacy"?
A few minutes ago, Alito had an equally unilluminating exchange with Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl. Kohl asked Alito to opine on Bush v. Gore -- and, in particular, to say how the Supreme Court's decision in that case comported with Alito's views about "judicial restraint, not legislating from the bench and respecting the rights of states." For once, Alito declined to answer, saying he really didn't know what he thought about the case that handed the White House to George W. Bush. "I haven't studied it in the way I would study a case that comes before me as a judge," the nominee said.
Right at that moment, it was hard not to remember Clarence Thomas, who insisted during his confirmation hearing that he'd never discussed the merits of Roe v. Wade before and hadn't formed an opinion on it. We don't know if Kohl was thinking about Thomas as he pressed Alito to answer his question today, but he sure wasn't buying whatever it was that Alito was selling. "Bush v. Gore was "a huge case," Kohl said, "and I'd like to hope and like to bet that you thought about it an awful lot." Alito didn't disagree, but he didn't answer the question, either.
Sam Alito had a moment of eloquence in today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. In response to a question in which Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley dismissed the notion that courts should take the lead in helping to create "a more just society," Alito pushed back gently: "Well, I think that if the courts do the job that they're supposed to do, they will -- we will -- produce a more just society," Alito said. "I think if you take the position as a federal judge, you have to have faith that if you do your job then you will be helping to create a more just society. The Constitution and the constitutional system that we have is designed to produce a just society."
Alito then segued into a metaphor that's a little more apt than the baseball stories folks keep trying to inject into Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Arguing that judges have a limited role to play in our government, Alito said that the Constitution "gives different responsibilities to different people. You could think of a football team or you could think of an orchestra where everybody has a different part to play, and the whole system won't work if people start playing ... the role of someone else."
It all sounded so reasonable. But as always, the devil is in the details, and Alito has been careful today to steer clear of them. John G. Roberts repeatedly declined to answer questions put to him by senators on the Judiciary Committee. Alito hasn't done that, exactly. He's responding to virtually all the questions senators are putting to him. He's just not really answering all that many of them.
Consider this exchange between Alito and Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter. Specter asked Alito this morning if he accepted "the legal principles articulated in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the liberty clause in the Constitution carries with it the right to privacy." Alito responded by saying, "I do believe that the Constitution protects a right to privacy," then cited the ways in which the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures -- an issue not particularly germane to Specter's question or Griswold's holding that married people have a right to buy contraceptives.
Specter pressed on: "Well, Griswold dealt with the right to privacy on contraception for married women. You agree with that." Alito responded: "I agree that Griswold is now, I think, understood by the Supreme Court as based on liberty clauses of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and 14th Amendment." Specter tried it another way, asking Alito if he agreed with Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that extended the holding in Griswold to single people. Alito said he agreed with "the result" in Eisenstadt.
Three questions, three responses, and still no answer to the query underlying them all: Does Alito believe in "the legal principles articulated in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the liberty clause in the Constitution carries with it the right to privacy"?
A few minutes ago, Alito had an equally unilluminating exchange with Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl. Kohl asked Alito to opine on Bush v. Gore -- and, in particular, to say how the Supreme Court's decision in that case comported with Alito's views about "judicial restraint, not legislating from the bench and respecting the rights of states." For once, Alito declined to answer, saying he really didn't know what he thought about the case that handed the White House to George W. Bush. "I haven't studied it in the way I would study a case that comes before me as a judge," the nominee said.
Right at that moment, it was hard not to remember Clarence Thomas, who insisted during his confirmation hearing that he'd never discussed the merits of Roe v. Wade before and hadn't formed an opinion on it. We don't know if Kohl was thinking about Thomas as he pressed Alito to answer his question today, but he sure wasn't buying whatever it was that Alito was selling. "Bush v. Gore was "a huge case," Kohl said, "and I'd like to hope and like to bet that you thought about it an awful lot." Alito didn't disagree, but he didn't answer the question, either.
Cost of Iraq war could top $2 trillion - study
Reuters
Mon Jan 9, 2006 8:05 PM ET
By Jason Szep
BOSTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion, far above the White House's pre-war projections, when long-term costs such as lifetime health care for thousands of wounded U.S. soldiers are included, a study said on Monday.
Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes included in their study disability payments for the 16,000 wounded U.S. soldiers, about 20 percent of whom suffer serious brain or spinal injuries.
They said U.S. taxpayers will be burdened with costs that linger long after U.S. troops withdraw.
"Even taking a conservative approach, we have been surprised at how large they are," said the study, referring to total war costs. "We can state, with some degree of confidence, that they exceed a trillion dollars."
Before the invasion, then-White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavor" and rejected an estimate by then-White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey of total Iraq war costs at $100 billion to $200 billion as "very, very high."
Unforeseen costs include recruiting to replenish a military drained by multiple tours of duty, slower long-term U.S. economic growth and health-care bills for treating long-term mental illness suffered by war veterans.
They said about 30 percent of U.S. troops had developed mental-health problems within three to four months of returning from Iraq as of July 2005, citing Army statistics.
Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 and has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and Bilmes based their projections partly on past wars and included the economic cost of higher oil prices, a bigger U.S. budget deficit and greater global insecurity caused by the Iraq war.
They said a portion of the rise in oil prices -- about 20 percent of the $25 a barrel gain in oil prices since the war began -- could be attributed directly to the conflict and that this had already cost the United States about $25 billion.
"Americans are, in a sense, poorer by that amount," they said, describing that estimate as conservative.
The projection of a total cost of $2 trillion assumes U.S. troops stay in Iraq until 2010 but with steadily declining numbers each year. They projected the number of troops there in 2006 at about 136,000. Currently, the United States has 153,000 troops in Iraq.
HIGHER COSTS
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Roseann Lynch, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said on Monday that the Iraq war was costing the United States $4.5 billion monthly in military "operating costs" not including procurement of new weapons and equipment.
Lynch said the war in Iraq had cost $173 billion to date.
Another unforeseen cost, the study said, is the loss to the U.S. economy from injured veterans who cannot contribute as productively as they otherwise would and costs related to American civilian contractors and journalists killed in Iraq.
Death benefits to military families and bonuses paid to soldiers to re-enlist and to sign up new recruits are additional long-term costs, it said.
Stiglitz was an adviser to U.S. President Bill Clinton and also served as chief economist at the World Bank. (Additional reporting by Charles Aldinger in Washington)
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.
Mon Jan 9, 2006 8:05 PM ET
By Jason Szep
BOSTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion, far above the White House's pre-war projections, when long-term costs such as lifetime health care for thousands of wounded U.S. soldiers are included, a study said on Monday.
Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes included in their study disability payments for the 16,000 wounded U.S. soldiers, about 20 percent of whom suffer serious brain or spinal injuries.
They said U.S. taxpayers will be burdened with costs that linger long after U.S. troops withdraw.
"Even taking a conservative approach, we have been surprised at how large they are," said the study, referring to total war costs. "We can state, with some degree of confidence, that they exceed a trillion dollars."
Before the invasion, then-White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavor" and rejected an estimate by then-White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey of total Iraq war costs at $100 billion to $200 billion as "very, very high."
Unforeseen costs include recruiting to replenish a military drained by multiple tours of duty, slower long-term U.S. economic growth and health-care bills for treating long-term mental illness suffered by war veterans.
They said about 30 percent of U.S. troops had developed mental-health problems within three to four months of returning from Iraq as of July 2005, citing Army statistics.
Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 and has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and Bilmes based their projections partly on past wars and included the economic cost of higher oil prices, a bigger U.S. budget deficit and greater global insecurity caused by the Iraq war.
They said a portion of the rise in oil prices -- about 20 percent of the $25 a barrel gain in oil prices since the war began -- could be attributed directly to the conflict and that this had already cost the United States about $25 billion.
"Americans are, in a sense, poorer by that amount," they said, describing that estimate as conservative.
The projection of a total cost of $2 trillion assumes U.S. troops stay in Iraq until 2010 but with steadily declining numbers each year. They projected the number of troops there in 2006 at about 136,000. Currently, the United States has 153,000 troops in Iraq.
HIGHER COSTS
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Roseann Lynch, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said on Monday that the Iraq war was costing the United States $4.5 billion monthly in military "operating costs" not including procurement of new weapons and equipment.
Lynch said the war in Iraq had cost $173 billion to date.
Another unforeseen cost, the study said, is the loss to the U.S. economy from injured veterans who cannot contribute as productively as they otherwise would and costs related to American civilian contractors and journalists killed in Iraq.
Death benefits to military families and bonuses paid to soldiers to re-enlist and to sign up new recruits are additional long-term costs, it said.
Stiglitz was an adviser to U.S. President Bill Clinton and also served as chief economist at the World Bank. (Additional reporting by Charles Aldinger in Washington)
© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Dean / Blitzer on Late Edition
BLITZER: And welcome back to our special "Late Edition." We're reporting live from Jerusalem. It's been a week of dramatic developments, not only here in Israel, but in Washington as well, with one of the city's most powerful lobbyists pleading guilty in a bribery investigation and a potentially major shakeup among the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. Joining us now to talk about all this and more is the chairman of the Democratic party in the United States, Governor Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont. Governor, thanks very much for joining us. On the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings which begin in Washington tomorrow, do you think Democrats should realistically go ahead and filibuster if necessary to prevent his confirmation?
HOWARD DEAN, DNC CHAIRMAN: There are a couple of problems with Judge Alito. First of all, he appears to be outside the mainstream of where most Americans are on privacy for individuals, not just women's issues, but strip searching, OK'ing a strip search of a 10-year-old, these kinds of things. The other thing which is also troubling is the conflict of interest case where he owned $400,000 worth of mutual funds and was willing to sit on a case involving the company. His order was later vacated. Now, he promised the American people when he was confirmed that he would recuse himself. So, the question that I have is, when he's answering the questions from Senator Leahy and Senator Specter or others, how are they going to know he's going to tell the truth, because he did not tell the truth when he said to the Senate Judiciary Committee 15 years ago that he would recuse himself from cases in which he had a financial interest.
BLITZER: Well, he later explained, though, that that was really a technical slip-up for which he apologized. That's not a good enough explanation for you?
DEAN: Well, the chief judge disagreed with him. The chief judge removed him from the case and ordered a new judge to hear it. So, you know, this is an ethically charged climate in Washington. There's enormous corruption scandals in both the White House, involving the chief procurement officer and Karl Rove and the vice president's office and the Senate and the House. I don't think we want scandal to begin to touch the Supreme Court. So, I think we're going to watch very, very carefully to what the answers are to the Judiciary Committee. I think there's some very disturbing questions around Judge Alito and I think we'll be looking forward to seeing what the answers to those questions are next week.
BLITZER: So, on the issue of a filibuster, where do you stand?
DEAN: Well, I don't have a vote on that one. That's going to be decided by Senator Leahy and Senator Reid and others. They'll decide, after they hear the answers, whether Judge Alito belongs on the bench or not. And that's what their prerogative is in the Senate.
BLITZER: Let's talk a little bit about Iraq. The president sought to reach out to some of his critics earlier in the week, bringing in some former secretaries of state, including Madeleine Albright, among others -- William Cohen, the former defense secretary during the Clinton administration. Are you satisfied right now that the president's getting enough information from a variety of sources to better move forward as far as the situation in Iraq is concerned?
DEAN: Well, most of the reports that came out of that meeting, Wolf, were that the president engaged in a filibuster of his own in there. He talked at them for some time and then went in for a photo op and really didn't bother to ask most of them for their advice at all. So, I think these photo op ideas that he's going to get advice and they're really nothing more than photo ops -- I think we're in a big pickle in Iraq. The president, frankly -- I was disgusted when I read in the New York Times yesterday that 80 percent of the torso injuries and fatalities in the Marine Corps could have been prevented if the Pentagon, the secretary of defense and the president had supplied them with armor that they already had. They requested that from the field; the Pentagon refused. You know, I, two years ago, thought Secretary Rumsfeld ought to resign. He ought to resign. These people are not qualified. They haven't served themselves; they don't know what it takes. They ought to protect our troops. Our troops are doing a hell of a job and they deserve better leadership in Washington than what they're getting. I was incensed when I saw that story, 80 percent of the torso- based wounds that led to fatalities in the Marine Corps -- surely our Marines are worth something more than that.
BLITZER: About a month ago, Senator Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice presidential nominee spoke out, urging his fellow Democrats, including yourself, to restrain themselves in criticizing the president's position on Iraq. Listen to what Lieberman said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander-in-chief for three more critical years, and that, in matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: What do you think? Is that advice good advice from Senator Lieberman?
DEAN: No. This president has lacked credibility almost from the day he took office because of the way he took office. He's not reached out to other people. He's shown he's willing to abuse his power. He's not consulted others. And he's not interested in consulting any others.And I think, frankly, that Joe is absolutely wrong, that it is incumbent on every American who is patriotic and cares about their country to stand up for what's right and not go along with the president, who is leading us in a wrong direction.We're going in the wrong direction, economically, at home; we're going in the wrong direction abroad. Look at what's happening in Latin America. This president, while saying that he wants to further democracy and capitalism, is driving people in the opposite direction. We need real leadership in this country and we don't have it right now.
BLITZER: Are you blaming the president on the elections in Bolivia or on the elections in Venezuela? Is that what you're saying?
DEAN: We had an enormous opportunity, when this president took office, and he said he was going to reach out to Latin America. Instead, he has turned them off. He's been high-handed with them; he's rejected them.He's ignored the economic plight of their folks. And so, we're getting something that I think most Americans wish we didn't have, which is left-leading regimes in these places. We need a president who will work constructively and cooperatively with our allies around the world so that we really can move capitalism and democracy further into the world and not turn off people. When you turn people off, as the most powerful nation in the world, they are obviously going to do something that is not in our best interest. And that's exactly what's going on right now.
BLITZER: Getting back to the war in Iraq, you were highly quoted when you suggested -- I guess it must be about a month or so ago, that the war was really not winnable any longer. Later you clarified your remarks.But in the aftermath of the elections, which seem to have been pretty smoothly run -- lots of violence still unfolding in Iraq -- there are plenty of people that say it's still winnable if certain things take place. Where do you stand on the winnability, if there is such a word, of the war in Iraq?
DEAN: Wolf, I laid out a strategy that I thought would make the war on terror winnable. We need to win the war on terror. We have to protect ourselves. The question is, do we have the kind of leadership in Washington that's going to allow that? There is a plan put together by Lawrence Corb and a fellow by the name of Bruce Cotulis, who -- Lawrence Cord was in the Reagan administration. It's a plan that I think makes a great deal of sense. It's a moderate plan, calls for strategic redeployment of our troops. While we're removing them from Iraq, we're keeping some in the region to fight the terrorism that the president's invasion of Iraq has spawned in Iraq. That's a sensible plan for defending America. Right now we have a lot of happy talk. We have some, frankly, folks who aren't treating our troops properly, not arming them and equipping them properly. That doesn't give me confidence about the leadership in this White House.
BLITZER: Should Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, who has now pleaded guilty to bribery charges, among other charges, a Republican lobbyist in Washington, should the Democrat who took money from him give that money to charity or give it back?
DEAN: There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, not one, not one single Democrat. Every person named in this scandal is a Republican. Every person under investigation is a Republican. Every person indicted is a Republican. This is a Republican finance scandal. There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money. And we've looked through all of those FEC reports to make sure that's true.
BLITZER: But through various Abramoff-related organizations and outfits, a bunch of Democrats did take money that presumably originated with Jack Abramoff.
DEAN: That's not true either. There's no evidence for that either. There is no evidence...
BLITZER: What about Senator Byron Dorgan?
DEAN: Senator Byron Dorgan and some others took money from Indian tribes. They're not agents of Jack Abramoff. There's no evidence that I've seen that Jack Abramoff directed any contributions to Democrats. I know the Republican National Committee would like to get the Democrats involved in this. They're scared. They should be scared. They haven't told the truth. They have misled the American people. And now it appears they're stealing from Indian tribes. The Democrats are not involved in this.
BLITZER: Unfortunately Mr. Chairman, we got to leave it right there. Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party, always speaking out bluntly, candidly. Appreciate your joining us on "Late Edition."
DEAN: Thanks, Wolf. Safe flight back.
BLITZER: Thank you very much.
HOWARD DEAN, DNC CHAIRMAN: There are a couple of problems with Judge Alito. First of all, he appears to be outside the mainstream of where most Americans are on privacy for individuals, not just women's issues, but strip searching, OK'ing a strip search of a 10-year-old, these kinds of things. The other thing which is also troubling is the conflict of interest case where he owned $400,000 worth of mutual funds and was willing to sit on a case involving the company. His order was later vacated. Now, he promised the American people when he was confirmed that he would recuse himself. So, the question that I have is, when he's answering the questions from Senator Leahy and Senator Specter or others, how are they going to know he's going to tell the truth, because he did not tell the truth when he said to the Senate Judiciary Committee 15 years ago that he would recuse himself from cases in which he had a financial interest.
BLITZER: Well, he later explained, though, that that was really a technical slip-up for which he apologized. That's not a good enough explanation for you?
DEAN: Well, the chief judge disagreed with him. The chief judge removed him from the case and ordered a new judge to hear it. So, you know, this is an ethically charged climate in Washington. There's enormous corruption scandals in both the White House, involving the chief procurement officer and Karl Rove and the vice president's office and the Senate and the House. I don't think we want scandal to begin to touch the Supreme Court. So, I think we're going to watch very, very carefully to what the answers are to the Judiciary Committee. I think there's some very disturbing questions around Judge Alito and I think we'll be looking forward to seeing what the answers to those questions are next week.
BLITZER: So, on the issue of a filibuster, where do you stand?
DEAN: Well, I don't have a vote on that one. That's going to be decided by Senator Leahy and Senator Reid and others. They'll decide, after they hear the answers, whether Judge Alito belongs on the bench or not. And that's what their prerogative is in the Senate.
BLITZER: Let's talk a little bit about Iraq. The president sought to reach out to some of his critics earlier in the week, bringing in some former secretaries of state, including Madeleine Albright, among others -- William Cohen, the former defense secretary during the Clinton administration. Are you satisfied right now that the president's getting enough information from a variety of sources to better move forward as far as the situation in Iraq is concerned?
DEAN: Well, most of the reports that came out of that meeting, Wolf, were that the president engaged in a filibuster of his own in there. He talked at them for some time and then went in for a photo op and really didn't bother to ask most of them for their advice at all. So, I think these photo op ideas that he's going to get advice and they're really nothing more than photo ops -- I think we're in a big pickle in Iraq. The president, frankly -- I was disgusted when I read in the New York Times yesterday that 80 percent of the torso injuries and fatalities in the Marine Corps could have been prevented if the Pentagon, the secretary of defense and the president had supplied them with armor that they already had. They requested that from the field; the Pentagon refused. You know, I, two years ago, thought Secretary Rumsfeld ought to resign. He ought to resign. These people are not qualified. They haven't served themselves; they don't know what it takes. They ought to protect our troops. Our troops are doing a hell of a job and they deserve better leadership in Washington than what they're getting. I was incensed when I saw that story, 80 percent of the torso- based wounds that led to fatalities in the Marine Corps -- surely our Marines are worth something more than that.
BLITZER: About a month ago, Senator Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice presidential nominee spoke out, urging his fellow Democrats, including yourself, to restrain themselves in criticizing the president's position on Iraq. Listen to what Lieberman said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander-in-chief for three more critical years, and that, in matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: What do you think? Is that advice good advice from Senator Lieberman?
DEAN: No. This president has lacked credibility almost from the day he took office because of the way he took office. He's not reached out to other people. He's shown he's willing to abuse his power. He's not consulted others. And he's not interested in consulting any others.And I think, frankly, that Joe is absolutely wrong, that it is incumbent on every American who is patriotic and cares about their country to stand up for what's right and not go along with the president, who is leading us in a wrong direction.We're going in the wrong direction, economically, at home; we're going in the wrong direction abroad. Look at what's happening in Latin America. This president, while saying that he wants to further democracy and capitalism, is driving people in the opposite direction. We need real leadership in this country and we don't have it right now.
BLITZER: Are you blaming the president on the elections in Bolivia or on the elections in Venezuela? Is that what you're saying?
DEAN: We had an enormous opportunity, when this president took office, and he said he was going to reach out to Latin America. Instead, he has turned them off. He's been high-handed with them; he's rejected them.He's ignored the economic plight of their folks. And so, we're getting something that I think most Americans wish we didn't have, which is left-leading regimes in these places. We need a president who will work constructively and cooperatively with our allies around the world so that we really can move capitalism and democracy further into the world and not turn off people. When you turn people off, as the most powerful nation in the world, they are obviously going to do something that is not in our best interest. And that's exactly what's going on right now.
BLITZER: Getting back to the war in Iraq, you were highly quoted when you suggested -- I guess it must be about a month or so ago, that the war was really not winnable any longer. Later you clarified your remarks.But in the aftermath of the elections, which seem to have been pretty smoothly run -- lots of violence still unfolding in Iraq -- there are plenty of people that say it's still winnable if certain things take place. Where do you stand on the winnability, if there is such a word, of the war in Iraq?
DEAN: Wolf, I laid out a strategy that I thought would make the war on terror winnable. We need to win the war on terror. We have to protect ourselves. The question is, do we have the kind of leadership in Washington that's going to allow that? There is a plan put together by Lawrence Corb and a fellow by the name of Bruce Cotulis, who -- Lawrence Cord was in the Reagan administration. It's a plan that I think makes a great deal of sense. It's a moderate plan, calls for strategic redeployment of our troops. While we're removing them from Iraq, we're keeping some in the region to fight the terrorism that the president's invasion of Iraq has spawned in Iraq. That's a sensible plan for defending America. Right now we have a lot of happy talk. We have some, frankly, folks who aren't treating our troops properly, not arming them and equipping them properly. That doesn't give me confidence about the leadership in this White House.
BLITZER: Should Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, who has now pleaded guilty to bribery charges, among other charges, a Republican lobbyist in Washington, should the Democrat who took money from him give that money to charity or give it back?
DEAN: There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, not one, not one single Democrat. Every person named in this scandal is a Republican. Every person under investigation is a Republican. Every person indicted is a Republican. This is a Republican finance scandal. There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money. And we've looked through all of those FEC reports to make sure that's true.
BLITZER: But through various Abramoff-related organizations and outfits, a bunch of Democrats did take money that presumably originated with Jack Abramoff.
DEAN: That's not true either. There's no evidence for that either. There is no evidence...
BLITZER: What about Senator Byron Dorgan?
DEAN: Senator Byron Dorgan and some others took money from Indian tribes. They're not agents of Jack Abramoff. There's no evidence that I've seen that Jack Abramoff directed any contributions to Democrats. I know the Republican National Committee would like to get the Democrats involved in this. They're scared. They should be scared. They haven't told the truth. They have misled the American people. And now it appears they're stealing from Indian tribes. The Democrats are not involved in this.
BLITZER: Unfortunately Mr. Chairman, we got to leave it right there. Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party, always speaking out bluntly, candidly. Appreciate your joining us on "Late Edition."
DEAN: Thanks, Wolf. Safe flight back.
BLITZER: Thank you very much.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
The Case Against Alito
The Nation
[from the January 23, 2006 issue]
With Judge Samuel Alito, the Senate Judiciary Committee faces its most consequential Supreme Court confirmation hearing in a generation. Not since Robert Bork has the Senate encountered a nominee whose long record and fully articulated views so consistently challenge decades of progress on privacy, civil rights and control of corporations. And never in memory has a single nomination so threatened to redirect the Court as Alito's, which would replace the pragmatically conservative swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor. Alito's opening statement before the Judiciary Committee is January 9, but his true testimony consists of fifteen years of rulings on issues from abortion to school prayer to immigration. That record demonstrates that Alito is at odds with the interests of ordinary Americans.
Supreme Court nominees get, and usually deserve, much benefit of the doubt. But with Alito, the doubt is all of the nominee's making, and has only grown with revelations of his Reagan-era memos. As an ambitious Reagan Administration lawyer, he boasted in a now-famous 1985 job application of his conviction that Roe v. Wade should be overturned; opposed the historic one-person, one-vote decision of the Warren Court; and waved like a badge of honor his membership in a far-right Princeton alumni network notorious for its hostility to admitting women and African-Americans. Alito's defense of Nixon-era officials implicated in illegal wiretaps makes clear--in light of today's NSA wiretap scandal--that the Bush Administration's motives in Alito's nomination extend well beyond a token nod to social conservatives.
Nothing in Alito's hundreds of federal appeals court rulings in the years since suggests any mellowing of those fundamental commitments. After a careful study, University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein described Alito's record of appeals court dissents as "stunning. Ninety-one percent of Alito's dissents take positions more conservative than his colleagues...including colleagues appointed by Presidents Bush and Reagan." A new study by the Alliance for Justice makes the case even more emphatically: In so-called split decisions--the most difficult cases, which divided the appeals court--"Alito has frequently gone to the right of even his Republican-appointed colleagues to find against individuals claiming that government officials or corporations violated the law." He has argued strenuously in favor of the strip search of a 10-year-old girl not accused of criminal wrongdoing; supported warrantless surveillance of a criminal suspect when other courts had disallowed the practice; and tried to strip his fellow judges of the power to grant habeas corpus rights to undocumented immigrants, a position pointedly repudiated by the Supreme Court.
This is big-government jurisprudence with a vengeance. The only exception to Alito's big-government activism comes with the regulation of business. There he seems to be on a one-man crusade to undo decades of regulation, most clearly displayed in a still-astounding dissent arguing that the federal ban on machine guns violates the Constitution's commerce clause--a radical position (exceeding even Chief Justice John Roberts's famously constricted view of the Endangered Species Act) that would shred not only gun-control statutes but a host of environmental laws and other Congressional action.
Democrats as well as moderate Republicans have so far played their cards close. Will the handful of Democratic progressives who voted for the confirmation of Roberts--including Russell Feingold and Patrick Leahy--see themselves as free to oppose a nominee without Roberts's discretion about his own commitments? Will the party discipline so often exercised by minority leader Harry Reid extend to what is certain to be an emotional confirmation fight? Will civil-libertarian Republicans like Arlen Specter recognize in Alito not just a threat to Roe v. Wade but to the fundamental balance of executive and legislative power? And what about the "Gang of 14," the Republican and Democratic senators like Joe Lieberman and John McCain who last year agreed to avoid judicial filibusters except in rare circumstances? They should recall that a key principle uniting them then was that the White House should consult the Senate on judicial appointments; on Alito, the White House consulted no one but the extreme right.
The White House is banking on fear that if this second nominee goes down, Bush will nominate someone even worse. This argument ignores history: When in 1969-70 President Nixon nominated and lost both Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell, the result was not "someone worse" but the pragmatic, humane Judge Harry Blackmun, who later wrote Roe v. Wade; when Bork was Borked, his replacement was Anthony Kennedy, who in 1992 joined fellow Reagan nominee O'Connor to reaffirm Roe. Alito defeatism also ignores today's political climate: As the midterm elections draw closer, as the Iraq War scandals deepen, Senate Republicans are falling over one another to distance themselves from the Administration and the far right.
Alito will undoubtedly try to backpedal from his unambiguous track record. That only makes more urgent the case against the real Alito revealed in his memos and rulings. The American people are not ready for a nominee so profoundly committed to intrusive government, whether that means right-to-lifers intruding on sexual privacy, religious fanatics intruding in the science classroom or the NSA intruding on phone calls without a warrant. Far from being a mainstream conservative, Judge Alito represents a malignant future; his entire biography suggests he will swing the Supreme Court toward a right-wing authoritarianism that's out of step with the public and the Constitution.
[from the January 23, 2006 issue]
With Judge Samuel Alito, the Senate Judiciary Committee faces its most consequential Supreme Court confirmation hearing in a generation. Not since Robert Bork has the Senate encountered a nominee whose long record and fully articulated views so consistently challenge decades of progress on privacy, civil rights and control of corporations. And never in memory has a single nomination so threatened to redirect the Court as Alito's, which would replace the pragmatically conservative swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor. Alito's opening statement before the Judiciary Committee is January 9, but his true testimony consists of fifteen years of rulings on issues from abortion to school prayer to immigration. That record demonstrates that Alito is at odds with the interests of ordinary Americans.
Supreme Court nominees get, and usually deserve, much benefit of the doubt. But with Alito, the doubt is all of the nominee's making, and has only grown with revelations of his Reagan-era memos. As an ambitious Reagan Administration lawyer, he boasted in a now-famous 1985 job application of his conviction that Roe v. Wade should be overturned; opposed the historic one-person, one-vote decision of the Warren Court; and waved like a badge of honor his membership in a far-right Princeton alumni network notorious for its hostility to admitting women and African-Americans. Alito's defense of Nixon-era officials implicated in illegal wiretaps makes clear--in light of today's NSA wiretap scandal--that the Bush Administration's motives in Alito's nomination extend well beyond a token nod to social conservatives.
Nothing in Alito's hundreds of federal appeals court rulings in the years since suggests any mellowing of those fundamental commitments. After a careful study, University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein described Alito's record of appeals court dissents as "stunning. Ninety-one percent of Alito's dissents take positions more conservative than his colleagues...including colleagues appointed by Presidents Bush and Reagan." A new study by the Alliance for Justice makes the case even more emphatically: In so-called split decisions--the most difficult cases, which divided the appeals court--"Alito has frequently gone to the right of even his Republican-appointed colleagues to find against individuals claiming that government officials or corporations violated the law." He has argued strenuously in favor of the strip search of a 10-year-old girl not accused of criminal wrongdoing; supported warrantless surveillance of a criminal suspect when other courts had disallowed the practice; and tried to strip his fellow judges of the power to grant habeas corpus rights to undocumented immigrants, a position pointedly repudiated by the Supreme Court.
This is big-government jurisprudence with a vengeance. The only exception to Alito's big-government activism comes with the regulation of business. There he seems to be on a one-man crusade to undo decades of regulation, most clearly displayed in a still-astounding dissent arguing that the federal ban on machine guns violates the Constitution's commerce clause--a radical position (exceeding even Chief Justice John Roberts's famously constricted view of the Endangered Species Act) that would shred not only gun-control statutes but a host of environmental laws and other Congressional action.
Democrats as well as moderate Republicans have so far played their cards close. Will the handful of Democratic progressives who voted for the confirmation of Roberts--including Russell Feingold and Patrick Leahy--see themselves as free to oppose a nominee without Roberts's discretion about his own commitments? Will the party discipline so often exercised by minority leader Harry Reid extend to what is certain to be an emotional confirmation fight? Will civil-libertarian Republicans like Arlen Specter recognize in Alito not just a threat to Roe v. Wade but to the fundamental balance of executive and legislative power? And what about the "Gang of 14," the Republican and Democratic senators like Joe Lieberman and John McCain who last year agreed to avoid judicial filibusters except in rare circumstances? They should recall that a key principle uniting them then was that the White House should consult the Senate on judicial appointments; on Alito, the White House consulted no one but the extreme right.
The White House is banking on fear that if this second nominee goes down, Bush will nominate someone even worse. This argument ignores history: When in 1969-70 President Nixon nominated and lost both Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell, the result was not "someone worse" but the pragmatic, humane Judge Harry Blackmun, who later wrote Roe v. Wade; when Bork was Borked, his replacement was Anthony Kennedy, who in 1992 joined fellow Reagan nominee O'Connor to reaffirm Roe. Alito defeatism also ignores today's political climate: As the midterm elections draw closer, as the Iraq War scandals deepen, Senate Republicans are falling over one another to distance themselves from the Administration and the far right.
Alito will undoubtedly try to backpedal from his unambiguous track record. That only makes more urgent the case against the real Alito revealed in his memos and rulings. The American people are not ready for a nominee so profoundly committed to intrusive government, whether that means right-to-lifers intruding on sexual privacy, religious fanatics intruding in the science classroom or the NSA intruding on phone calls without a warrant. Far from being a mainstream conservative, Judge Alito represents a malignant future; his entire biography suggests he will swing the Supreme Court toward a right-wing authoritarianism that's out of step with the public and the Constitution.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)