The Alito vote / Americans will regret his confirmation

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It is almost certain that Judge Samuel Alito Jr. will fill the position vacated by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his hearing last week, in which he answered a welter of questions and revealed little other than his intelligence, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote Tuesday. The nomination probably won't be filibustered in the full Senate because a sense of inevitability accompanies it.

President Bush won the election and to the victor go these spoils. Judge Alito is a thoroughly conservative judge, but he didn't say anything that would categorize him as being out of the mainstream. Sadly, in the time of Mr. Bush, he is the mainstream.

Members of the Christian right are euphoric that Judge Alito's nomination is doing so well. They know exactly what they are getting with this nominee -- and they are correct. So are his Democratic opponents.

Judge Alito comes as advertised. Last week, he did little to confirm or deny what everybody knows about him. He kept his mask firmly in place as the posturing and hypocrisy swirled about him. Once on the court, freed of the need to parry questions, he will revert to type -- and that type will vex the American people, whether they know it or not, for years.

To be sure, it's not a matter of Judge Alito being unqualified -- he has the experience, temperament and legal knowledge to sit on the Supreme Court. Nor is it that he lacks integrity. He has support of many in the legal profession -- many of them Democrats -- who know him personally.

Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts tried in vain to pin him down for his past membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a reactionary group that once opposed minorities and women at the school. It appears, though, that Mr. Alito had a very limited role in it. The real lesson here may be not that the judge is prejudiced as such, but that he identifies with conservative attitudes and inclinations so much that he would later use this dubious group as a recommendation of why he should be hired by the Reagan administration.

In other words, Judge Alito's vaunted "open mind" will be informed by his very conservative nature. For all his sincere statements about it not being proper for judges to be influenced by their own views, judges are not robots. In fact, Judge Alito briefly broke cover on this point. Asked where his heart was, he repeated the part in his opening statement about being a son of poor immigrant parents.

He went on ... "and so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result. But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, you know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. ... When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me."

Of course, it did not stop him from thinking that police could not be sued for damages after the strip-search of a 10-year-old, because his inherent conservatism trumped other considerations. That is his real heart. If only Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter could see the truth and change his mind about this nominee.

An Associate Justice Alito will be meticulous, but he will read the law narrowly to favor authority -- presidential, police or otherwise -- and he will line up with those who wish to deprive women of the right to have an abortion. He will do it because it is his nature to do it -- as his most fervent supporters well understand -- and that is why he should be opposed.

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