Jan 31 2006
Alito Confirmed, Prepare for the Worst
Ultra conservative Samuel Alito was confirmed today to be the newest Supreme Court justice. The Democrats put up a bit of a fight on this, but in the end it was too little too late and he was confirmed by a vote of 58-42 this morning.
With his appointment the Supreme Court swings even farther to the right and I have no doubt that we’re in for a tough 20-30 years as far as SCOTUS rulings go.
Women everywhere should get ready to lose the right to choose the best decision for themselves when it comes to reproductive rights. Average law abiding citizens should prepare for unwarrented and random strip searches and wire taps. Congress, get ready for a full out attack on your role in the system of governmental checks and balances as even more power shifts to the executive branch.
All in all, it’s a sad day for the average hard working American, and this is yet another example of why having a Democratic majority in Congress matters. With a Democratic majority, the President wouldn’t have been able to nominate such an obvious proponent of the views from the extreme right wing of the Republican party. With a Democratic majority, the nominee couldn’t have gotten away dodging the questions posed to him by the Judicial Committee, passage would have required real answers and not over-generalizations or “I don’t recall” answers.
Finally, this is another great example that shows there are major differences between Democrats and Republicans, despite the attempts by some to label the Democrats as ‘Republican lite’.
True conservatives aren’t going to be favoring strip searches.
It would be nice if the average person was against these. If people had refused to fly after they started semi-randomly feeling up people trying to board planes in order to make it look like the government was doing something, that sillyness would have stopped.
The Democrats aren’t all that much better than the average Republican.
Only one Senator voted against the PATRIOT Act.
The main problem with Alioto seems to be that he backs the executive branch being able to due whatever it wants because the the executive branch claims the country is at war. Whether or not the country is really at war is debatable (certainly we aren’t running a war time economy), but for sure constitutional protections are to apply especially in times of war.
You are right it is nice to have a democratic majority in congress, when the president is a republican and vise versa. The less laws that get passed the better.
What would really be nice is if politicians voted their concience instead of just following the party line or making deals trading pork or campaign contributions for their votes.
There are a few good people on both sides of the aisle and we would all be better off if people voted for the candidates based on their individual qualities and not based strictly on their party affiliation.
The above comment was by me (as if you couldn’t tell). I just forgot to fill in the name information when posting it.
At least Bush didn’t try to make Gonzales a Supreme. Gonzales wouldn’t know the constitution if it hit him in the face.