[Mb-civic] Judge Alito, in His Own Words + Compromised and Corrupted

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Everyone says it's unlikely the Democrats will stop Alito.  Here is one more 
look at his confirmation process....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/opinion/12thur1.html?th&emc=th

Judge Alito, in His Own Words
NY Times Lead Editorial: January 12, 2006

Some commentators are complaining that Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s
confirmation hearings have not been exciting, but they must not have been
paying attention. We learned that Judge Alito had once declared that Judge
Robert Bork - whose Supreme Court nomination was defeated because of his
legal extremism - "was one of the most outstanding nominees" of the 20th
century. We heard Judge Alito refuse to call Roe v. Wade "settled law," as
Chief Justice John Roberts did at his confirmation hearings. And we
learned that Judge Alito subscribes to troubling views about presidential
power.

Those are just a few of the quiet bombshells that have dropped. In his
deadpan bureaucrat's voice, Judge Alito has said some truly disturbing
things about his view of the law. In three days of testimony, he has given
the American people reasons to be worried - and senators reasons to oppose
his nomination. Among those reasons are the following:

EVIDENCE OF EXTREMISM Judge Alito's extraordinary praise of Judge 
Bork is
unsettling, given that Judge Bork's radical legal views included rejecting
the Supreme Court's entire line of privacy cases, even its 1965 ruling
striking down a state law banning sales of contraceptives. Judge Alito's
membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton - a group whose offensive
views about women, minorities and AIDS victims were discussed in greater
detail at yesterday's hearing - is also deeply troubling, as is his
unconvincing claim not to remember joining it.

OPPOSITION TO ROE V. WADE In 1985, Judge Alito made it clear that he
believed the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He had many
chances this week to say he had changed his mind, but he refused. When
offered the chance to say that Roe is a "super-precedent," entitled to
special deference because it has been upheld so often, he refused that,
too. As Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, noted in particularly
pointed questioning, since Judge Alito was willing to say that other
doctrines, like one person one vote, are settled law, his unwillingness to
say the same about Roe strongly suggests that he still believes what he
believed in 1985.

SUPPORT FOR AN IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY Judge Alito has backed a 
controversial
theory known as the "unitary executive," and argued that the attorney
general should be immune from lawsuits when he installs illegal wiretaps.
Judge Alito backed away from one of his most extreme statements in this
area - his assertion, in a 1985 job application, that he believed "very
strongly" in "the supremacy of the elected branches of government." But he
left a disturbing impression that as a justice, he would undermine the
Supreme Court's critical role in putting a check on presidential excesses.

INSENSITIVITY TO ORDINARY AMERICANS' RIGHTS Time and again, 
as a lawyer
and a judge, the nominee has taken the side of big corporations against
the "little guy," supported employers against employees, and routinely
rejected the claims of women, racial minorities and the disabled. The
hearing shed new light on his especially troubling dissent from a ruling
by two Reagan-appointed judges, who said that workers at a coal-processing
site were covered by Mine Safety and Health Act protections.

DOUBTS ABOUT THE NOMINEE'S HONESTY Judge Alito's explanation 
of his
involvement with Concerned Alumni of Princeton is hard to believe. In a
1985 job application, he proudly pointed to his membership in the
organization. Now he says he remembers nothing of it - except why he
joined, which he insists had nothing to do with the group's core concerns.
His explanation for why he broke his promise to Congress to recuse himself
in any case involving Vanguard companies is also unpersuasive. As for his
repeated claims that his past statements on subjects like abortion and
Judge Bork never represented his personal views or were intended to
impress prospective employers - all that did was make us wonder why we
should give any credence to what he says now.

.
The debate over Judge Alito is generally presented as one between
Republicans and Democrats. But his testimony should trouble moderate
Republicans, especially those who favor abortion rights or are concerned
about presidential excesses. The hearings may be short on fireworks, but
they have produced, through Judge Alito's words, an array of reasons to be
concerned about this nomination.

***


This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/shapiro2
Compromised and Corrupted

by BRUCE SHAPIRO

[posted online on January 13, 2006]

Something interesting happened during the final round of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee's questions for Samuel Alito Thursday.

After Senator Ted Kennedy hammered Judge Alito yet again over 
participating in a case involving the Vanguard Mutual Fund--in which the 
judge was an acknowleged investor--Senator Orrin Hatch threw back at 
Kennedy the name of Justice Stephen Breyer.

Hatch remembered something Democrats on the Judiciary Committee seemed 
to have forgotten: When Breyer was nominated by President Clinton to the 
Supreme Court in 1994, he, too, faced conflict-of-interest charges over 
investments. Questions, Hatch recalled, "were raised about the propriety of 
him hearing a case in which some argued--falsely, I think--that he had a 
financial interest."

I listened with some bemusement to Hatch's attempt to defuse Alito's 
Vanguard troubles. It was in part my reporting which in 1993 raised the 
question of then-nominee Breyer's investments. Going over his financial 
disclosure forms, I found he seemed to have concentrated his considerable 
wealth in industries with a stake in the cleanup of Superfund toxic-waste sites. 
To an invesigative reporter this was intriguing, because as a federal judge 
Breyer sat on at least five Superfund cases while maintaining these 
investments.

Hatch's argument Thursday was that such conflicts of interest were small 
potatoes for Breyer then and small potatoes for Alito now. (He also was 
taking a subliminal swipe at Ted Kennedy; Justice Breyer was once Kennedy's 
counsel.) In fact, Hatch pointed out, the same judicial ethics expert--Professor 
Geoffrey Hazard of the University of Pennsylvania--cleared both nominees.

Hatch neglected to mention that back in 1994, one revered Senate Judiciary 
Committee member, Ohio Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum, thought 
that such a conflict of interest was far from small potatoes, and asked tough 
questions during Breyer's confirmation. (It would be refreshing if even one 
Republican senator showed the independence of Metzenbaum sweating a 
nominee of his own party.) And once Justice Breyer was confirmed, he 
promptly sold off the offending stocks.

Hatch also neglected to mention that back in 1994, one of the country's most 
respected ethics scholars--Professor Monroe Freedman of the Hofstra law 
school, author of the standard judicial ethics text--wrote a passionate, ten-
page letter to the Judiciary Committee opposing Breyer's confirmation.

It's salutory, in trying to sort out the signficance of Alito's Vanguard mess, to 
go back over Monroe Freedman's letter about then-Judge Breyer. Freedman 
pointed out that the basic purpose of recusal laws is to ensure public 
confidence in the judiciary and avoid even the appearance of conflict of 
interest. By neglecting to recuse himself from cases connected to his 
investments, Freedman wrote, the judge "caused the very 'suspicions and 
doubts' about the integrity of judges that the Statute was enacted to avoid."

And--hear this, Senator Hatch and Judge Alito--Breyer's Alito-like refusal to 
recognize any problem greater than "imprudence" only "reinforces these 
doubts."

If the Breyer recusal controversy never got far in 1994, it is perhaps because 
whatever his strengths and flaws, Breyer's confirmation was otherwise 
untouched by ethical controversy.

By contrast, both Alito and his handlers have crafted a confirmation campaign 
that reeks of disingenuousness and ethical compromise. Thursday brought an 
unprecented parade of judges, violating specific ethics canon to line up as 
character witnesses for a judge who may soon be judging their own cases. 
There's Senator Lindsey Graham, who, it turns out, secretly offered his 
services as Alito's coach. Senator, what were you possibly thinking, and who 
was bending your arm?

There's Alito himself, straining credulity by claiming ignorance of why he 
boasted of membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton at the height of the 
group's notoriety for misogynist and racist rants; there are his endless shifting 
excuses for each of his many extreme and controversial statements. Against 
Roe? Just angling for a job. Fulsome praise for Robert Bork? I was just an 
Administration lawyer praising the Administration's nominee.

Most of all there's the systematic misrepresentation of Alito's jurisprudential 
zealotry, his attempt to paper over a disdain for precedent so profound that 
he's routinely slapped by other judges.

You've got to ask what about a nominee would so persuade the White House 
and its allies to bend rules and truth--and what would persuade Republican 
senators to accept it. Alito's failure to recuse himself over Vanguard Mutual 
Fund may well have been, as the judge insists, an oversight. The corruption of 
the confirmation process by Alito and his handlers isn't. Alito may sail 
through as securely as Breyer did in 1994. But when it comes to ethics, this 
confirmation stinks.

---------
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 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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