Supreme Court Battle
Alright folks, this is it: The long awaited knock down, drag out, all out fight over the future of the Supreme Court has finally arrived. Unlike John Roberts and Harriet Miers, Samuel Alito has a long and detailed paper trail, a history of judicial decisions 15 years long – and it ain’t pretty. Unlike Miers, and even to a small degree Roberts, there are no indications that this nominee has any moderate inclinations or progressive friends to vouch for him that he might be reasonable on some issues. Unlike with the Roberts nomination, Alito is not replacing another down the line conservative. He’s replacing the swing vote on many of the biggest issues that will come before the country.
We find it revolting that President Bush would choose today, the day that civil rights leader Rosa Parks lay in repose in our nation’s capitol, to name a Supreme Court nominee with such an abysmal record on civil rights and racial discrimination. Surely that coincidence did not go unnoticed.
The hard right got one of their own this time. On “Fox News Sunday Roundtable,” William Kristol, the leader of the radical right wing of the Republican Party, said, “If he nominates someone like Alito, he will get confirmed. It will be a winning fight during that time.” Gary Bauer, president of the conservative American Values organization told CNN would be highly in favor of an Alito nomination.
So consistently conservative, Alito has been dubbed “Scalito” or “Scalia-lite” by some lawyers because his judicial philosophy invites comparisons to conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. People For the American has wasted no time on gathering research and preparing for war. Read their report at People For the American Way.
This one is for all the marbles. Get ready, because we’re going to have to get help from every activist, opinion leader, and donor in the country.
The battle is on…