but that all goes away now:
The Senate confirmed Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court on Tuesday by a vote of 58-42, a day after an attempt by some Democratic senators to block his nomination fizzled. Alito, who will be the court’s 110th justice, will be sworn into office across the street from the Capitol at the Supreme Court, just hours before President Bush’s State of the Union address.
So now there’s two Bush Jr picks on the Supreme Court. One an authority-freak in a crunchy nerd exterior, the other the type of person who’s shockingly comfortable with lying to be accepted — in all likelihood, an indication he’ll be worse than anyone thought. We can count these two as automatic votes against Padilla when his case comes up, bet money on that.
On that, this Senate gets an F.
Where was the grilling on constitutional interpretation? How come only one person asked how far the power of the executive goes? If there are going to even be confirmation hearings, then the entire process should be taken advantage of as a rare opportunity to get the public thinking about the Constitution. It should be an ongoing conversation between us & our Senators & the nominee, not yet another shallow media circus with a blatantly obvious partisan outcome.
The Republicans — w/ Chafee the lone exception — gave every indication that they were going to support Alito no matter what, simply because he was the pick of their boy. The Democrats that opposed him had an opportunity to give a concrete, constitutional, non-partisan reason that could’ve swayed people to urge their Senators to side with them, and they didn’t. Sad day for representative government…
tags: Alito, Samuel+Alito, US+Constitution, Supreme+Court, US+Senate, Democratic+Party, Republican+Party]]>
