Tom Paine
by Robert Parry

01/17/06

For a constitutional confrontation at least five years in the making, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee looked as prepared to confront Samuel Alito as FEMA chief Michael Brown did in responding to Hurricane Katrina. As with the hurricane that zeroed in on New Orleans days before coming ashore, there should have been no surprise about Judge Alito. He was exactly what the Republican base had long wanted in a Supreme Court nominee: a hard-line judicial ideologue with a pleasant demeanor and a soft-spoken style. Indeed, Alito has been such an unapologetic supporter of the right's beloved Imperial Presidency that Alito's one noteworthy assurance -- that George W. Bush was not 'above the law' -- was essentially meaningless because in Alito's view, Bush is the law. Yet the Democrats were incapable of making an issue out of Alito's embrace of the 'unitary executive,' a concept so radical that it effectively eliminates the checks and balances that the founding fathers devised to protect against an out-of-control president...

http://tinyurl.com/8hrwn


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp