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Remember how all the "progressive" activists told us about 20 minutes ago that Samuel Alito would be the downfall of Western civilization? Well, it took the newest justice approximately one day on the court to get them to start changing their tune.
So maybe he's, you know, not so bad after all.
Writing on DailyKos.com, or what James Taranto brilliantly describes as "the Mos Eisley of the Angry Left," John Kerry said:
"Do I support a filibuster? The answer is yes. Yesterday Senator Kennedy and I spoke with our colleagues about it. I don't have a shred of doubt in my opposition to Sam Alto's nomination."
Who is this "Sam Alto," and is he somehow related to Tony Soprano?
"Rarely is the question asked, 'Is our children learning'?"
— George W. Bush, March 29, 2001
"Everyone knows there is not enough votes to support a filibuster."
— Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Jan. 27, 2006
Yes, Ted Kennedy is all wet. (Ahem)
But politics ain't beanbag. Grow up!
"Saturday Night Live" alum Al Franken learned what it truly means to be "not ready for primetime" after getting totally housed by Antonin Scalia. (Or the link active here for only seven days starting Nov. 24.)
At an interview of the Supreme Court Justice by outgoing Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine, "Franken stood up in the back row and started talking about 'judicial demeanor' and asking 'hypothetically' about whether a judge should recuse himself if he had gone duck-hunting or flown in a private jet with a party in a case before his court.":
Franken was clumsily referring to the fact that Scalia had gone hunting and flying with Dick Cheney before the 2000 election.
First, Scalia lectured Franken, "Demeanor is the wrong word. You mean ethics." Then he explained, "Ethics is governed by tradition. It has never been the case where you recuse because of friendship."
"Demeanor," of course, relates not to conflicts of interest, but to how a judge comports himself or herself on the bench: i.e., whether he uses disparaging terms when referring to female attorneys, for instance.
Clearly, "demeanor" is a concept that someone who pompously interjects himself into someone else's interview would know nothing about.
In 2000, a young man named Matthew Limon should have run afoul the Kansas version of a "Romeo and Juliet" statute. These statutes had been designed by state legislatures to mitigate ridiculous sentencing mandates that severely punished consensual sexual partners of reasonably similar age for technically violating statutory rape law. Under the Kansas R&J statute, Limon should have served no more than 15 months in a correctional facility for performing oral sex on a fourteen year old a week after his eighteenth birthday.
Unfortunately, Kansas law posited that underage homosexual sex was especially bad and deserving of punishment. Rather than be charged and sentenced under the R&J statute as a heterosexual offender might, Matthew was instead charged with criminal sodomy and sentenced to seventeen years in prison.
Recently, the Kansas Supreme Court overturned this grave injustice after the U.S. Supreme Court directed them to reconsider the matter in light of Lawrence v. Texas. While gay rights groups rightly celebrate this advance of equality in criminal law, they fail to learn any lessons from it and continue to misunderstand the constitutional principles at work.
Gay rights organizations continue to push hate crimes law. They cheerfully embrace the reasoning and constitutional obscenities that allowed Matthew Limon to languish in prison in the first place.
The Boston Globe reports on some possibly gay-friendly impulses from Samuel Alito's past:
As a senior at Princeton University, Samuel A. Alito Jr. chaired an undergraduate task force that recommended the decriminalization of sodomy, accused the CIA and the FBI of invading the privacy of citizens, and said discrimination against gays in hiring ''should be forbidden."
And one cheer to HRC's Joe Solomonese for not immediately trying to find the cloud lurking behind this silver lining:
"This is a hopeful sign that may provide insight into his philosophy,” said Solmonese. “There were very few people standing up for gay Americans 34 years ago and most who did have evolved even more since.”
That, of course, was Joe Solomonese 2.0, a far cry from the ready-fire-aim guy who said on Monday that Alito was "the far right's choice."
Let's just hope that, as in Harriet Miers' case, this revelation isn't followed by recriminations from the religious right and subsequent newspaper profiles about being "born again."
Either way, it is sure to stoke the fires of the multi-headed snark-beast known as Wonkette.
Not since White House reporter Cyrus Merganthaler asked if William Howard Taft was able to wash his scrotum on his own has there been such insolence among the White House press corps.
John Roberts (the CBS anchor helmet, not the CJOTUS) today asked WH Press Secretary Scott McClellan if the Samuel Alito nomination, in the wake of the failed Miers bid, amounted to a term that is synonymous with ... ummm ... having sex with someone who was just sex-had-with:
John Roberts: “So, Scott, you said that -- or the President said, repeatedly, that Harriet Miers was the best person for the job. So does that mean that Alito is sloppy seconds, or what?”
McClellan's response mysteriously didn't involve a Ninja throwing star.
UPDATE: Roberts culps mea, tone was "too casual."
It happened to John Roberts. It happened to Harriet Miers.
And with the left spittle-flecked with rage about Judge Alito, how many nanoseconds before it happens to him (or his family)?
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Answer: Zero, or less than zero. (Links to "AmericaBlog.")
UPDATE: Looks like the left's oppo-research turbines are whirling away. Five of The Malcontent's top-20 referrals (the pages via which someone comes to this site) currently involve searches for the terms "gay" and "Alito." You won't find it here, brainiacs.
UPDATE deux: Wonkette, the semi-respectable mouthpiece of leftist wackadoos, joins the fray. Sort of.
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(Alito: Old news to us ...)
ConfirmThem says the new SCOTUS nominee will be Samuel Alito of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Linked here is a bio of the man billed as a "mild-mannered Scalia."
An early review of his decisions shows him, indeed, as very much in the Scalia mold. At the appellate level, he was the only dissenter in Planned Parenthood v Casey, which will no doubt send the pro-abortion crowd around the bend. (Chief Justice Rehnquist actually quoted Alito in his own dissent in that case.)
I haven't found much about where Alito stands on gay issues, but he did side with the majority in a decision holding that a school district failed to provide a student with a free and appropriate public education "based on his lack of athleticism and his perceived sexual orientation."
Just reading some tea leaves ...
[HT: Hewitt]
If George W. Bush is anything, he is a man who reads the papers.
Or at least he reads Krauthammer, because the WaPo columnist last Friday laid out the precise scenario of retreat on the Miers nomination that the President followed today: a concocted impasse over executive privilege. (Indeed, some are suggesting the Krauthammer column was a trial balloon floated by the White House itself.)
So what was initially viewed as the ace up Miers' sleeve – lack of a paper trail – is now being presented as her undoing. But if you're going to put forward a nominee because they don't have numerous controversial opinions in writing, make sure that they don't, you know, have numerous controversial opinions in writing.
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Continuing the meme of indivisibility between gay-rights groups and Democrats, the activists go looking for fire, but still can't even find much smoke on Harriet Miers.
Despite growing acceptance of gays among youth, there is still a long way to go.
NYC is the top U.S. city for lesbians. Must be all the leftover Fashion Week flannel. [HT: Queerty]
Talk about self-loathing. [HT: Andy]
From the Kansas City Star (reg. req.):
U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas and a conservative weathervane on Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court, did little to disguise his disappointment Thursday after their hourlong meeting. [...]
He said he and Miers discussed Roe v. Wade, which granted women the right to an abortion, but in the context of the Griswold v. Connecticut case. That was an earlier ruling in which the court said the Constitution essentially contains a right to privacy. Conservatives disagree.
“She did not take a position on it,” Brownback said, referring to the Griswold case, “nor did she say she would take a position on it, nor did she think it appropriate to have a position on it.”
And this differs from virtually any other Supreme Court nominee in the past two decades ... how?
The petty, unfunny remark of the day comes via the eternally classless Tom Harkin, from the same news story:
As he walked by reporters and was told that Brownback and Miers were meeting in private, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, said with a chuckle, “That’s a come-to-Jesus meeting.”
Knowing Tom Harkin, it was less joke than it was a bias revealed.
Log Cabin can stop its equivocating and hesitating. The views of Harriet Miers on gay issues are starting to come out, and they should give the GLBT community no reason for pause whatsoever. Especially the views of someone running for office in Texas 16 years ago. (Robbie touched on this last night.)
In 1989, while running for Dallas City Council, Miers filled out a questionnaire from the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas, which I have reprinted:
1. Do you believe that gay men and lesbians should have the same civil rights as non-gay men and women?
Yes.
2a. Do you, as an individual citizen, support repeal of Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code which criminalizes the private sexual behavior of consenting adult lesbians and gay men?
No.
2b. Do you support the inclusion of the repeal of Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code as a part of the City of Dallas's legislative agenda?
No.
3a. Do you believe that the City of Dallas has a responsibility to fund AIDS education and patient support services?
Yes.
3b. Would you support increasing the level of city funding for the above services (currently $550,000 per year)?
Yes, assuming need and resources. I do consider the AIDS illness as a serious and total community problem. [emphasis hers]
4a. Do you support a city ordinance that prohibits discrimination in housing and public accommodations based on AIDS/HIV status?
I prefer a legislative solution to the issues raised by these questions a and b. I do not have all the facts on the significance of these ordinances; however, I am willing to discuss the need and make an appropriate decision when fully advised.
4b. Would you support passage of a city ordinance prohibiting discrimination in employment based on race, religion, age, sex, national origin, AIDS/HIV status, or handicapped condition? (Currently, Dallas has no city ordinance dealing with employment discrimination.)
(see a)
5. Do you believe that qualified gays or lesbians should be denied employment (including employment by the police or fire departments) by the City of Dallas solely because of sexual orientation?
I believe that employers should be able to pick the best qualified person for any position to be filled considering all relevant factors.
The pinkist ideologues will have a hey-day with answer 2, but the fact is that in 1989, the ink was barely dry on Bowers v Hardwick. It would have been nice for a local Texas official to strike out against the unequivocal (and mean-spirited) Supreme Court ruling of just three years prior, but it also would not have been very realistic.
Over to you, HRC, NGLTF, et al. That is, if you are still gay-rights organizations and not fronts for abortion rights.
Hugh Hewitt provides a welcome counterpoint to conservatives who are howling mad about Harriet Miers. [Hat tip: GPW]
Sometimes the Bush-haters are so willing to believe the worst that it overrides everything else, even their journalistic sobriety.
Take the always-charming Mike Rogers. A self-styled "journalist," he is so blinkered by leftist bloodlust that he sallied forth with a story about Harriet Miers that was egregiously incorrect from the headline forward, which was later retracted without comment. The screen grab at right reflects the retraction, but I saved the text here:
Bush nominee Miers steered group aimed at deprogramming gays
Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court is a former board member of EXODUS Ministries, perhaps the world's largest organization that seeks to "save" men and women from a life of same-sex relationships, RAW STORY has discovered.
"Live-in" ministries don't just focus on deprogramming gays -- they also train transvestites and transsexuals how to become "normal."
Exodus promises the "fullness of redemption found in Jesus Christ, a gift which is available to all who commit their life and their sexuality to Him."
From their website:
Exodus is a nonprofit, interdenominational Christian organization promoting the message of "Freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ."
Since 1976, Exodus has grown to include over 120 local ministries in the USA and Canada. We are also linked with other Exodus world regions outside of North America, totaling over 150 ministries in 17 countries.
Within both the Christian and secular communities, Exodus has challenged those who respond to homosexuals with ignorance and fear, and those who uphold homosexuality as a valid orientation. These extremes fail to convey the fullness of redemption found in Jesus Christ, a gift which is available to all who commit their life and their sexuality to Him.
It's OK, Mikey, your fellow Bush-bashing traveler Andrew Sullivan was just as wrong as you were.
