Democrats Don't Let Truth Obstruct Alito Criticism

I'm writing to you, Burton, and others who are finally realizing the true extent of democrat’s moral depravity.

Samuel Alito was nominated to the Supreme Court on October 31. The hearings are going on this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, with direct questions to the nominee and testimony from dozens of witnesses.

It’s very important to get a sense of a nominee’s reasoning capacity and their judicial temperance. Although it hasn’t ever been a custom before this summer, democratic senators have even worked hard to get Judge Alito to analyze Supreme Court holdings currently being debated before the Supreme Court. This is more than a little disturbing and sets a bad precedent for future nominations, but can be forgiven because liberals generally have the reasoning ability of primitive animals.

The saddest development of the hearings has to the Democrat’s focus on two highly irrelevant topics to the nomination; apparently the only justification is to smear the character of a decent and honorable man. Countless objective authorities have publicly stated these arguments have no merit, but they are mentioned over and over again by the unprincipled swine on the left side of the aisle. I hope transcripts from this week are given to Social Studies classes in the future as an example of how corrupted our political bodies had become.

Ted Kennedy in principal is the guilty culprit, but almost all of the democrats have perpetuated a myth that Alito is not credible on the basis of two irrelevant events:

1) He didn't recuse himself in a case involving Vanguard, a financial services company through which he held stock.

Here are the facts: Judge Alito owned mutual funds through Vanguard. Mutual funds, because owners have no say over the allocation of stock ownership, are especially important for judges and elected officials to not have conflicts of interest when making decisions that will affect individual companies. Judge Alito owned mutual funds managed by Vanguard, but (I guess liberals really don't understand finance at all) **had no stake in Vanguard itself.** It can't be any more clear.

A widow sued Vanguard to get ahold of her late husband's assets, even though he owed money to creditors. Whichever side eventually won--the creditors or the widow--Vanguard the company would not be affected. Courts were simply deciding which side Vanguard should give the assets to.

Because there was no stake for Vanguard and further because Alito had no actual stake in Vanguard, the computer system that checks for conflicts of interest did not signal that Alito should not participate. Alito didn't think he was required to recuse himself. Legal ethicists agree.

Judge Alito was part of a unanimous ruling against the widow: indeed, if a person dies, their estate is used to pay their debts before inheritance is distributed to heirs. This wasn't a controversial ruling.

But the widow's lawyer saw a possible appeal: research showed that Judge Alito owned mutual funds managed by Vanguard, the same company through which the deceased husband had invested. They appealed the ruling, and, although ethicists are very clear that Judge Alito did not have to, he acted with extreme caution and agreed to a new hearing and recused himself. Again, the court unanimously ruled against the widow. There was no, zero, benefit for Vanguard and no, absolutely zero, way that it could have benefited Judge Alito. According to any standard: federal law, the American Bar Association Model Code for Judges, ....(Grasley text)..., Judge Alito was overly cautious and had no reason to recuse himself form this case.

I want to be clear: this isn't a straw man argument by me. I'm not picking the weakest argument or fabricating what democrats are saying. Senator Kennedy spent a large portion of his questioning time on **this exact case.** Ina letter to the Washington Post before the first hearings on Monday, Senator Kennedy states that Judge Alito has a "credibility problem," and offered this case as proof. You can't make this crap up. Ted "the Swimmer/Waitress Sandwich" Kennedy has no business lecturing others on ethics in the first place, much less on totally fabricated charges. It should shame anyone who votes.

2) Involvement in Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP).

CAP was founded to protest the move from an all-male school to to a coeducational institution. It later protested affirmative action policies and other changes.

Samuel Alito was involved in the ROTC program at Princeton as an undergraduate. During the Vietnam War, the university kicked the group off campus to indicate their disapproval of our country's involvement in Vitenam.

Alito graduated and moved on. At some point, he paid dues to join CAP. It may have been after an Army general and Princeton alumnus called on other alums to put pressure on the university administration to reinstate ROTC. Nobody actually knows; the events happened 30 years ago and there is no record that Mr. Alito contributed to the group at all. In a 1985 job application to the Reagan White House, this organization was listed alongside the Federalist Society as groups in which Mr. Alito was involved; the biggest potential criticism is that Mr. Alito was fluffing his resume (like a deadbeat out-of-houser lisitng a great fraternity).

It turns out that the CAP magazine, which Sam Alito never paid for and probably never received, printed letters to the editor saying that Princton should not give admission advantages to women and minorities. The stupifying conclusion from Senator Kennedy was to read letters to the editor printed in the CAP magazine to Juge Alito and imply they represented his views. Kennedy then quarreled with Judiciary Committee Chairman Secter about immediately going into a priate session to ask for a subpeona for all CAP records.

It turns out that a subpeona was never needed, the CAP founder gladly provided everything Kennedy wanted. Furthermore, a reporter formt he Washington Post had looked through all the records before the hearings even began and knew what the Judiciary Committee aides would find:

SPECTER: The committee staff, accompanied by representatives of Senator Kennedy, went through the Rusher files yesterday, finishing up their work, I'm advised, at about 2 a.m. this morning, and provided me with a memorandum that the committee staff reviewed more than four boxes of documents from the personal files of William Rusher concerning CAP.

Judge Alito's name never appeared in any document. His name was not mentioned in any of the letters to or from the founder, William Rusher. His name was not mentioned in any of the letters to or from CAP's long-term executive director, T. Harding Jones. His name does not appear anywhere in the dozens of letters to CAP or from CAP.

The files contain canceled checks for subscriptions to CAP's magazine, Prospect, but none from Judge Alito.

The files contain dozens of articles, including investigative exposes written at the height of the organization's prominence, but Samuel Alito's name is nowhere to be found in any of them.

The Rusher files contain lists of the board of directors, the advisory board and the contributors to both CAP and Prospect magazine. But none of the lists contains Samuel Alito's name.

The files contain minutes and attendance records from CAP meetings in 1983 and 1984, just before Samuel Alito listed the organization on his job application, but Samuel Alito did not attend any of those meetings, at least according to those records. He's not even mentioned in the minutes.

The files contain dozens of issues of CAP's magazines, but nones of the articles was written by, quoted or mentioned Samuel Alito.

SPECTER: CAP founder William Rusher said, quote, "I have no recollection of Samuel Alito at all. He certainly was not very heavily involved in CAP, if at all."

As it turns out, not only was Sam Alito not involved in CAP, he wasn't even involved in any sort of exclusive organizations that CAP was founded to protect (ROTC was a cursory priority for the group). And there is absolutely no evidence at all to suggest that he opposes equal rights (equal rights are not special rights). Kennedy is simply smearing him with a 'guilt by association' argument that is highly ironic, **because Kennedy was in a fucking eating club.** And don't forget, Senator Kennedy has real, actual, ethical lapses; where you need several degrees of separation to smear Judge Alito, Kennedy himself killed a young woman and perpetuated rel sexual harrassment. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

If you weren’t sure before, this proves ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that degenerates like Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Pat Leahy and activist groups (like the NY Times op-ed page) have no rightful place in our political system. This smear on Judge Alito borders on insanity. Nobody could logically justify this criticism.

Aides who have worked for Judge Alito, of all political stripes, have resoundingly praised his integrity and character. Judges who sit beside him call him 'possibly the best in the country'. The liberal American Bar Association gave him their highest marks for integrity and judicial temperance. It is simply remarkable that senators could use these slurs against him, much less use these flimsiest condemnations as a justification for voting against him.

Think about it...is there any witness that Judiciary Committee Democrats will call to oppose the nomination that actually worked or knows with Judge Alito (or John Roberts for that matter)? Absolutely not! I would think that you would find the most prestigious and most accomplished scholars/judges possible when you call witnesses to oppose a nominee for the Supreme Court.

It should say something to our readers that the only witnesses they could find to oppose the Alito nomination also write letters to newspapers equating eating steak with the Holocaust (UPDATE: Leahy pulled the witness after a press shitstorm about his nut-job bona fides). In contrast the majority of witnesses that Judiciary Committee Republicans call will be Democrats, because there is no shortage of people from the opposing party willing to advocate for the confirmation of such an excellent jurist.

There are reasons to oppose this nominee. If you hold that Supreme Court justices should decide cases with the outcomes that you would favor, Kennedy, Schumer and Leahy should vote 'no' on Alito. But it is highly unethical for them to use such blatant falsehoods as their reasoning. Liberals are truly scum.

UPDATE by radar:

Slowpitch forgot the most important problem with Judge Alito. Judge Alito agreed with the strip search of a 10 year old girl! A 10 year old girl! Can you believe it! This 10 year old girl will be scarred for life! Did I mention it was a 10 year old girl?!

Actually, the warrant in the drug search case included a stipulation to allow the orders that were in the police affidavit. The police wanted to search all the people on the premises, and that stipulation was in the affidavit. The 10 year old girl was searched by a female officer in the presence of her mother, who was also searched. The officers were of course sued, with their lawyer arguing that the search was illegal, even though the affidavit requiring the searches of persons was included in the warrant.

It's really a non-issue, but the Democrats on the committee tried to say 10 year old girl and strip-search as many times as possible hoping that someone who has had their head in the sand for a week would click past C-SPAN, catch a glimpse, and think it's true.