Tuesday, January 10, 2006

What a Joke

Watching the Alito hearings is quite funny. Very few things humor me more than watching Ted Kennedy whine and seethe and act more like a lawyer accusing a criminal than a Senator questioning a Supreme Court nominee. His prefaces were so ridiculously long and accusatory that his questions were based on nearly completely false assumptions. How a Senator can get away with behavior such as his still escapes me.

Only Senator Schumer made a bigger fool of himself than Kennedy. His most foolish statement was comparing Alito to an umpire that called 95% of pitches against one team strikes and 95% of pitches against another team balls. He claimed that such an umpire can not be considered fair.

This notion of bias in a Supreme Court justice is so foolish to bring up in a confirmation hearing because Senator Schumer would never have made this statement in a confirmation hearing for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who would call the balls and strikes the other way. The pointlessness of this statement is clearly evident, and in a few years when Republicans are on the other side of the coin I would hope that they would not make such foolish statements then either.

The final and possibly most often repeated attack on Alito is that he may "throw the court out of balance." Why a Senator can ever say this with a straight face I will never understand. When congressional elections come up I'll be sure to tell everyone not to vote for congressional Democrats to ensure the current makeup of the congress. Yes, that argument is just as stupid as when you make it for the Supreme Court.

I'm sure that the confirmation hearings will only get more ridiculous and long-winded. I am also just as sure of their inevitable result.

3 comments:

Tom;s Think Tank said...
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Tom;s Think Tank said...

Amen. You can tell by how long the questions are. Some rambled on for more that 11 minutes! This is just a forum for the Senators to pontificate how great they are.

Tom

The Big Ticket said...

I'm sorry, but Schumer's comparison reminded me of an old joke told to me by my little league baseball coach:

So Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer both like baseball. In fact, they like baseball so much that they decided to go to a game together and kiss after every single pitch. Ted kisses Chuck on the strikes, and Chuck kisses Ted...

Again, sorry, childish I know. Just keeping things light.