[Mb-civic] Judge Alito

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Here is a NY Times editorial on Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee, 
followed by a couple of other opposition reports (all courtesy of Ed Pearl).  
The greatest danger of Alito's confirmation may not be the end to legal 
abortion, but the granting to the President of unprecedented and semi-
dictatorial powers over all Americans, which he seeks to exercise and which 
Judge Alito seems to condone.  After reading below, if you have some feeling 
about this, pick up the phone and call your Senators and tell them what you 
think!  (all phone #'s are at www.congress.org).   --Mha Atma




http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/opinion/08sun1.html?th&emc=th

Judging Samuel Alito
NY Times Lead Editorial:
Sunday, January 8, 2006

Judicial nominations are not always motivated by ideology, but the
nomination of Judge Samuel Alito certainly was. President Bush's previous
choice to fill Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court,
Harriet Miers, was hounded into withdrawing by the far right, primarily
because she appeared to hold moderate views on a variety of legal issues.
President Bush placated Ms. Miers's conservative critics by nominating
Judge Alito, who has long been one of their favorites.

Judge Alito's confirmation hearings begin tomorrow. He may be able to use
them to reassure the Senate that he will be respectful of rights that
Americans cherish, but he has a lengthy and often troubling record he will
have to explain away. As a government lawyer, he worked to overturn Roe v.
Wade. He has disturbing beliefs on presidential power - a critical issue
for the country right now. He has worked to sharply curtail Congress's
power to pass laws and protect Americans. He may not even believe in "one
person one vote."

The White House has tried to create an air of inevitability around Judge
Alito's confirmation. But the public is skeptical. In a new Harris poll,
just 34 percent of those surveyed said they thought he should be
confirmed, while 31 percent said he should not, and 34 percent were
unsure. Nearly 70 percent said they would oppose Judge Alito's nomination
if they thought he would vote to make abortion illegal - which it appears
he might well do.

If President Bush had chosen a pragmatic, mainstream conservative like
Justice O'Connor to fill the seat, these confirmation hearings would be a
breeze. But now, the Senate has a duty to delve into the many areas in
which Judge Alito's record suggests he is an extremist, including:

ABORTION Judge Alito has not only opposed Roe v. Wade, he has also 
worked
to overturn it. When he applied for a promotion in the Reagan
administration in 1985, he wrote that he was "particularly proud" of his
legal arguments "that the Constitution does not protect a right to an
abortion." In meetings with senators, Judge Alito has talked about his
respect for Roe, but he has said nothing to discourage his supporters on
the religious right who back him because they believe he will vote to
overturn it. The American people have a right to know, unambiguously,
where Judge Alito stands on Roe.

PRESIDENTIAL POWER The continuing domestic wiretapping scandal 
shows that
the Bush administration has a dangerous view of its own powers, and the
Supreme Court is the most important check on such excesses. But Judge
Alito has some disturbing views about handing the president even more
power. He has argued that courts interpreting statutes should consider the
president's intent when he signed the law to be just as important as
Congress's intent in writing and passing the law. It is a radical
suggestion that indicates he has an imperial view of presidential power.

CONGRESSIONAL POWER While Judge Alito seems intent on expanding 
the
president's power, he has called for sharply reducing the power of
Congress. In United States v. Rybar, he wrote a now-infamous dissent
arguing that Congress exceeded its power in passing a law that banned
machine guns. As a Reagan administration lawyer, he argued that Congress
did not have the power to pass the Truth in Mileage Act to protect
consumers from odometer fraud.

ONE PERSON ONE VOTE Judge Alito said in his 1985 application that he 
had
become interested in constitutional law as a student partly because of his
opposition to the Warren court's reapportionment rulings, which created
the "one person one vote" standard. He seems to still have believed as a
35-year-old lawyer that these cases, which made legislative districts much
more fair, came out the wrong way.


There are other areas - including civil rights, sex discrimination, the
environment and criminal law - where Judge Alito's record appears extreme.
The Senate should question him closely on all of them.

The Senate should also explore Judge Alito's honesty. According to a
senator he met with, he tried to dismiss his statement about the
Constitution's not protecting abortion as merely part of a job
application, which suggests he will bend the truth when it suits his
purposes. Judge Alito has said he does not recall being in an
ultraconservative group called Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which
opposed co-education and affirmative action. That is odd, since he boasted
of his membership in that same 1985 job application. The tortuous history
of his promise to Congress to recuse himself in cases involving the
Vanguard companies, which he ultimately failed to do, should also be
explored.

Judge Alito's nomination is often presented as an abortion rights
showdown, but it is much more than that. Those who care about the broad
range of rights and liberties that Americans now have, and about honesty
in government, should tune into the hearings starting tomorrow - and call
their senators with their reactions to what they hear.

***

 New Alito Opposition Efforts Launched
Civil Rights organizations, and Women's Groups

* New Alito Opposition Efforts Launched
By civilrights.org staff
civilrights.org
January 4, 2006

http://www.civilrights.org/issues/nominations/details.cfm?id=39149

With Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings scheduled to
begin next week, groups opposed to President Bush's
nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme
Court are stepping up their efforts to inform the
public about Alito's record.

IndependentCourt.org, a coalition of public interest
organizations, launched a new 30-second television spot
Wednesday focusing on the fact that as a federal judge,
Alito has more than once broken promises he made to the
Senate Judiciary Committee during his first
confirmation process, giving several different excuses
for his conduct once the broken pledge was revealed.

When nominated to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit, Alito said that he would not
rule in cases involving two companies that handled his
investments or in cases involving his sister's law
firm. The ad points out, however, that court records
show Alito's participation in such cases, despite his
pledge to recuse himself.

The ad, which will run initially on cable news programs
nationally and in Maine and Arkansas, asks: "Shouldn't
we be able to trust Supreme Court nominees to keep
their word?

In addition to the television ad buy,
IndependentCourt.org will also begin running radio
advertisements in Arkansas and Louisiana highlighting
Alito's troubling record on civil rights. The radio ads
will be unveiled at a press conference in Arkansas
Wednesday.

"We need the Supreme Court to reject employment
discrimination, to stand up against government and big
business intrusions on our rights and privacy, to
uphold the democratic principle of one person - one
vote," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "Americans need
to understand why so many people are asking whether
Alito can be counted on to stand up for us."

IndependentCourt.org also announced Wednesday that it
will kick-off two weeks of nationwide grassroots
activity by delivering approximately one million anti-
Alito petitions to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair
Arlen Specter's Philadelphia office on Thursday,
January 5. Pennsylvanians for a Fair and Independent
Court will be joined at the Philadelphia event by
Julian Bond, NAACP chairman of the board and Karen
Pearl, interim president, Planned Parenthood Federation
of America.

Coalition affiliate networks in Arkansas, Connecticut,
Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, New York,
Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, and Wisconsin will
be hosting their own petition delivery events to urge
their senators to oppose Samuel Alito's nomination.

==========

* Women's Groups Launch Campaign Against Alito
Nomination
by Haider Rizvi
OneWorld US - Jan. 5, 2006

http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/125126/1/

NEW YORK, Jan 4 (OneWorld) - Leading women's rights
groups in the United States are starting a nationwide
campaign this week to block the Supreme Court
nomination of a conservative judge who is known for his
extremist views on women's reproductive rights.

Samuel Alito, 56, was nominated by President George W.
Bush after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired last
year in July. His confirmation hearing in the U.S.
Senate is expected this month.

"Make no mistake about it. Alito is no Sandra Day
O'Connor," says Eleanor Smeal, president of the
Washington, D.C.-based Feminist Majority Foundation,
which has organized the campaign in collaboration with
the National Organization for Women (NOW) and National
Congress of Black Women (NCBW).

As the first-ever female to sit on the Supreme Court,
O'Connor cast the decisive fifth vote on the nine-
member panel to preserve affirmative action and the
right to abortion.

Smeal and others fear that replacing O'Connor with
Alito could tip the court's balance on many issues
concerning women's human rights, including the right to
abortion.

"It will take us back to the days when sexual
harassment and discrimination was all in a day's work
for women," says NOW's Lisa Bennet. "It will take us
back when illegal, unsafe abortions were the norm."

In addition to sending letters to their representatives
in the U.S. Senate, thousands of volunteers are
preparing to join others in Washington to protest
Alito's nomination, according to organizers.

"When women know what is at stake, they are appalled,"
says Bennet. "They are not willing to give up the
advances of the past 40 years."

The three organizations are also enlisting students
from around the country to take part in the rallies and
meetings due to be held in Washington in the coming
days.

"Young people are coming to Washington, D.C. from
colleges and universities in 35 states, giving up their
winter vacations because they don't want to lose rights
necessary for modern life."

Judge Alito, who has written some 700 opinions, ruled
in the 1991 case of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey that a
Pennsylvania state law could require married women
seeking an abortion to inform their husbands.

But the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that verdict by a
majority vote.

Last month, the Associated Press uncovered a 1995 memo
written by Alito arguing that the 1973 Supreme Court
decision on Roe vs. Wade should be overturned.

Roe vs. Wade was a landmark case establishing that laws
against abortion violate the constitutional right to
privacy. The decision outlawed all state laws banning
or restricting abortion.

Unhappy with the ruling, many right-wing religious
groups have since tried hard to see it reversed.

Many conservatives now seem more than pleased with
Bush's decision to choose Alito for O'Connor's
position.

"No one can argue that Judge Alito is anything but
extremely well qualified for the court and his
unanimous confirmation to the Third Circuit Court of
Appeals will undermine any attempt by liberals to argue
that he is an ideologue," says Progress for America, a
conservative group supporting Alito's nomination.

As the controversy surrounding Alito's nomination
begins to flare up the nationwide debate, some
politicians on Capitol Hill are calling for calm.

"I would hope that people on both sides hold their
fire," said senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) recently,
"allow the Judiciary Committee to do its work, and not
take a position until that work is completed."

Feinstein voted against John Roberts, another
conservative judge, when he was nominated by Bush as
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

As Feinstein and other lawmakers discuss Alito's
nomination inside the U.S. Capitol, outside, activists
like Bennet say they are determined not to turn back
the clock.

"Bush has given in to the extremists' demands," she
says, "but the Senate doesn't have to go along."

"That's the message from women, especially young
women," she adds. "This is a fight for our future and
we are ready."

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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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