Category Archive 'Alito Nomination'

28 Jan 2006

Why the Democrat Party is Doomed

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Even the Washington Post can see the Democrat Party’s leftwing activist base functions as an albatross around its neck, assuring that it will never get back into power. Fighting the Alito nomination is futile, but the looney-tune left is spoiling for a fight anyway, and the war-drums of the leftwing blogosphere are beating loudly as the vote approaches:

Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience.

These activists — spearheaded by battle-ready bloggers and making their influence felt through relentless e-mail campaigns — have denounced what they regard as a flaccid Democratic response to the Supreme Court fight, President Bush’s upcoming State of the Union address and the Iraq war. In every case, they have portrayed party leaders as gutless sellouts…

“The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. “The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left.”

For a fine example of moonbat reasoning, written by an author who would never dream of imagining that her political opponents have a point of view representing anything beyond insensate malice, incapable of understanding or respecting any form of process, try Angelica’s If not now, then when? rant.

28 Jan 2006

Ted Kennedy Reviewed

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John Lofton notes some of the ironies of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts sitting in judgement on Samuel Alito’s ethics and integrity:

Kennedy among other things:

— Was suspended from Harvard because of cheating when he was caught getting another student to take a Spanish test for him.

— Had his father get his Army duty changed to two years from the four years he signed up for. He ended up a guard at NATO headquarters in Paris rather than in Korea where a war was going on.

— Was turned down by Harvard Law School because of poor grades.

— Was arrested four times, while a student at the University of Virginia, for reckless driving, racing with a cop to avoid arrest and for operating a vehicle without a license.

MARY JO KOPECHNE might have been saved if help summoned immediately, according to underwater diver who retrieved her body— Killed a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, by driving her off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969. Following this “accident,” which was, arguably, negligent homicide, Kennedy made 17 credit card phone calls. But it was not until the 18th phone call, nine hours after his car ran off this bridge, that Kennedy reported this “accident.” The frogman who retrieved the dead girl’s body said that he believed she might have been saved if help had been summoned immediately. Kennedy received a two-month suspended sentence, serving no time in jail.

11 Jan 2006

Joe Biden on Princeton

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Radio Blogger reveals that Joe Biden is more than a little conflicted about Princeton.

The pro-Princeton statements: It’s an honor to be here. It would have even been a greater honor to have gone here. &c. were from February 23, 2004.

The anti-Princeton statements: I didn’t even like Princeton…No, I mean I really didn’t like Princeton. &c. are from yesterday’s Alito hearing.

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Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

10 Jan 2006

NY Post Comment on the Alito Hearings

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From letters to the Post:

Sen. Ted Kennedy is attacking Alito on the grounds that his views on women are out of the mainstream.

When Kennedy drove off the bridge at Chappaquiddick and killed Mary Jo Kopeckne, did he land in the mainstream?

Bob Tufts
Forest Hills

04 Dec 2005

Orthodoxy at Yale Law

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The third-year students at Yale Law find the dominium of orthodoxy at their elite school troubling.

Yale Law School’s almost universal disapproval of the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear, yet again, the stark lack of ideological diversity here in New Haven… Notably lacking among Yale’s professors has been any vigorous defense of Judge Alito or of the conservative judicial philosophy he’s believed to hold. No one has stepped forward to defend or even suggest that the country would be better off with another Roe vs. Wade skeptic on the court who is also an “originalist” (believes the Constitution should be interpreted as it was originally written) and a federalist (believing in strict separation of federal and state powers). Such ideas supposedly belong to conservative extremists, who are considered beyond the pale at Yale Law School… We don’t say this to whine about being underrepresented as conservatives at Yale Law School. But the school’s lack of diversity increasingly represents a scholarly and pedagogical problem for Yale. For example, the Rehnquist court was a revolution in the country’s jurisprudence. Except as fuel for denunciations of the court’s conservative majority, these developments have gone largely unnoticed in the scholarship of Yale Law’s professors…. There is something odd when a major strain of American jurisprudence can’t find a single defender at the country’s top law school.

The Yale branch of the Federalist Society constitutes the solitary voice of heresy able to be heard within the Gothic corridors of the nation’s highest rated institution of legal education.

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Juan Non-Volokh links an article by Yale Law Professor Peter Schuck in the American Lawyer on the lack of viewpoint diversity at elite law schools. Professor Schuck observes:

… a teaching institution that constructs an ideologically one-sided faculty, whether liberal or conservative, seriously abdicates its pedagogical responsibilities. Professors have a sacred duty to their students and to each other to affirm-and also to exemplify-core academic and intellectual values. We should convey to our students an abiding respect, even awe, for the complexity of law in society, and we should exhibit the ideological humility that this complexity implies. Any professors worthy of the title have strong views, of course, but they should also have a keen sense that those views may be wrong, or based on incomplete evidence, or highly reductive. Even if we are utterly convinced of the correctness of our positions, we should teach as if we aren’t-as if there are serious counterpositions to be entertained and explored, as if even the truth cannot be fully apprehended until it is challenged by the best arguments that can be marshaled against it. And although scrupulous teachers can sometimes challenge their own deepest convictions in class, most of us need competing points of view-on our own faculties, debated before our own students-to keep us intellectually honest and to enrich learning.

02 Nov 2005

Bush astonishes a critic with Alito appointment

“I confess surprise that a man so dreadfully intellectually and morally challenged as George W. Bush would want a person as intellectually gifted, independent and morally principled as Sam Alito on the bench.”

— Princeton professor emeritus Walter Murphy, who taught Alito in college, quoted from the Washington Post by Political Wire.


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