What More do we Know About Alito?

I'd be one of the first people to stand up and say we need to scrap the current confirmation process for Federal appointees. The process is broken and useless.

The hearings concerning Judge Samuel Alito for justice of the Supreme Court were an exercise in futility. The party favoring judge Alito merely threw softballs which Alito, intellectually superior to everyone in the room, batted out of the park. The Democrats were unable to mount any kind of resistance. Indeed, one of the only moments of interest was Ted Kennedy's sparring match with Arlen Specter. Otherwise Alito did exactly what nominees have done since Bork was canned for voicing his opinions. He punted. Meanwhile, there was real news going on elsewhere in the world that deserved our attention. The nomination hearings did not.

What is Judge Alito? He's a right-wing ideologue. That's what his writings say, that's what his associations say, that's what he seems to be. Is that necessarily a bad thing? No. If he can put it aside when he's on the bench he can be whatever he'd like and donate to whomever he wants when he's off-duty. Do we know any of this from the hearings? No. We know more about what a group of bloviating Senators believe - they took up sixty percent of the time with their own bombast. Of course, all this was news, primarily because it was contained in one room and cost very little to cover.

So why bother? Just put all the evidence out there and let the Senators vote. There was no chance that anyone in that room was going to change their mind about Alito. Save us and the Senate the indignity of being batted about by their intellectual superiors and just cut to the chase. The only thing I came away from the Alito hearings were that, although I don't like him and do wish the Democrats would grow balls and demand that Frist try the nucular option, I respect him far more than the gasbags interviewing him. And by gasbags, I mean the distinguished gentlemen from both parties.