Has anyone followed the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Alito?
How do you think they went?
Does this process just seem like mere grandstanding and posturing by the Senators than an effective way to pick A Supreme Court Justice?
A Supreme Court Justice will affect public policy for 30 years, long after the President that appointed him or her is out of office. So it is extremely important.
What positions would be important for you to know about, were you to have a say in the High Court's roster?
I think the hearings are lame. Waste of Congress' time, but then they are good at that. I think under that line of questioning, people can always say what they think people want to hear. They should review his previous work and go from there. It might even be better for each side (Dems/Reps) to pick a few candidates that they all agree on and then let the President pick one!
I also wonder why the confirmation for the Roberts did not seem to go on as long and he was picked to be the Chief?
The Democrats decided to not put up a fight on Roberts for any number of reasons, mostly centered around the fact that he would be hard to smear. The guy is basically squeeky clean and didn't have an attackable judicial record. They decided it would be better strategy to let this guy cruise by as his decisions could go either way, and therefore conserve resources for the next person to be nominated.
I'm not quite sure what to think of Alito. I haven't had much time to pay attention to all of it, but I did watch some of the news coverage of his opening statements. It was sort of amusing watching him take his freaking time before he started speaking... kind of struck me as thumbing his nose at those about to interrogate him.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
I like ANY opportunity to watch Teddy Kennedy huff and puff and blow out his rhetoric.
It's always fun to hear him misprounounce names (ALI-O-TO? Sammy Sue-Sir? MIKE McGuire?) and site facts that don't exist.
To me Kennedy seems more like a giant Macy's Day Parade balloon than a Senatar. He just kind of floats around, full of hot air, never really making an impact on anything.
As far as ALITO goes, I think he's very similar to Roberts and will be confirmed soon.
There is a commercial here(I dont know if it is National or not) about Aleto Voting to uphold the strip search of a 10 year old girl(in my opinnion, thats pretty darn close to molestaion, no one has any business forcing a 10 year old girl to strip, US government or not) as well as his constant battle against the judgement in Roe V. Wade. let him get raped and get pregnant and be foreced to keep the baby..... i dont like him- i dont agree with him.
You always have to be leary of any commercial though.
Everything you need to know is in the last 3 seconds when it says "Brought to you by the coalition to blah blah blah".
I hadn't heard about the 10 year old girl, so I don't know the details. In an ad they're obviously only using the angle that is beneficial to them. I mean, for example, if some 15 year old broke into Alito's house and was carrying a gun, and Alito shot him dead in the act of protecting himself and his family, the opposition ad would say "DO WE WANT A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE THAT MERCILESSLY GUNNED DOWN A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD BOY!" And that's NOT an exageration.
But I'm gonna check into this story now, because it has peaked my curiosity.
Hey riggs- i did the research for you. these are court cases that aleto has sat on. go to this site- click on "judge alitos published opinions on-line" and type Doe V Groody in the search bar at the top of the page.
I'll have to print that out and read it, but so far it doesn't seem too concerning.
It appears the real issue they were trying to decide was if the police overstepped the bounderies of the warrant, which they very well may have done, since the warrant only named the male in the house.
It also makes it sound like there is some wiggle room for this based on an affadavit they used to get the warrant that simply didn't have the wording completely transferred to the warrant.
Furthermore, the mother and child were removed to a bathroom in the family home and patted down and searched by a female officer. This would seem to me to be typical police procedure. It's not unusual that a drug dealing father would use his children to hide his crimes if he could. I was worried at first that some male cop was feeling up a ten year old girl.
In the end, the only thing Alito was asked to decide however was if the police had gone beyond the legal scope of the search warrant they had.
Not knowing the full details, my first instinct is that they in fact DID go beyond it, but this certainly isn't a case that would color my opinion of him one way or another.
Again, I think if you don't want him elected (and by you I mean people in general, not YOU specifically), it's probably based on the pro-choice position. And the best way to shake people up is to try to suggest the guy wants to take away all your civil rights.
This seems like just another partisan advertisment.
The people that want him elected would probably spin it as a positive showing that he's hard on drugs and crime.
Thank you for pointing out this site though! I'm like a kid in a candy store now! This is GREAT. I've got my reading for the next 50 years!
Cus Riggs logged in on the computer in the living room where his buddy Eagle Hunter usually logs in
Gotta rememeber to check the name before posting.
Anyway. I'm glad the voting is over. It was interesting how many prominent democrats couldn't seem to make it to the chambers in time for the first vote. Kerry, Clinton, Biden, all decided to mosey in for the second round of voting.
They're like little children I tell you!
Oh well, I got laundry to finish and some errands to run.
