Samuel Alito is being presented to the nation as a mainstream conservative little different than Sandra Day O'Connor. Don't buy it. Alito is firmly in the reaches of the radical right that controls the Republican Party. I haven't always agreed with The Nation, but their editorial opposing Alito's confirmation is right on the money. Key graph:
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. [Emphasis added]
He is also committed to eliminating virtually regulation on business and stripping every protection for working people. He can--and must be--defeated.
Filibuster? If not for use against the extraordinarily atrocious Alito, then for whom? Fire it up, Harry!
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