http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/3970/

Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news

San Francisco Chronicle
by staff

01/17/06

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. was careful to avoid being too revealing at his Senate confirmation hearings, but he did answer the overriding question. He is the wrong choice to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the nation's highest court. In some ways, Alito's taciturn approach to questions about the great constitutional issues of our time was similar to that of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. But the distinction between the history of the two judges -- and the role of the justice they were nominated to replace -- are important. Of the two, Alito had far more explaining to do about his past, and his answers fell short of satisfying concerns about his record of advocating repeal of Roe vs. Wade, highlighting his membership in a Princeton alumni group with retrograde views of women and minorities and all too frequently siding with government and businesses against individuals seeking redress." [editor's note: And it is this last item that should be of concern to liberals, conservatives, progressives, libertarians and anyone else concerned with civil liberties: Alito is a big-government corporatist apologist, and that is why he should not be on the Court! - SAT]

http://tinyurl.com/cdav9


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

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

Common Dreams
by Andrew Bard Schmookler

01/17/06

Eight years ago, a president entering his sixth year in office came under suspicion: had he conducted an adulterous affair with a young intern? For months thereafter, the media could talk of little else. It was the national topic of conversation for most of that year. The House eventually impeached the president, and the Senate tried him. Now again, a president entering his sixth year in office has come under suspicion: has he deliberately and unjustifiably violated both the Constitution and federal statutes by conducting searches without a warrant? But this suspicion is not getting anything like the kind of media attention of the Monica Lewinsky story. Why is that? ... What could be more important than to know whether the great achievement of our Founding Fathers is being dismantled? But one would hardly know anything of such vital importance was at stake from watching how our mainstream media are dealing with this possible constitutional crisis. What Master Is the Media Serving?

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0117-29.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Mother Jones
by Elizabeth de la Vega

01/18/06

"You don't have to be a constitutional scholar to know that Bush's legal justifications are weak. You merely have to consider the administration's duplicitous conduct. The Bush team has deliberately concealed this program, not only from the public and Congress, but, most damning of all, from the very agency that is responsible for executing the laws of this country: the Department of Justice (DOJ). It has been widely reported that even Bush appointees, such as former Assistant Attorney General James B. Comey, and possibly former Attorney General John Ashcroft, objected to the NSA's wide-ranging warrantless spying. ... Bush and his coterie knew that their legal arguments were weak and intellectually dishonest, if not ludicrous, so rather than making their case honestly, even to their own people, they avoided dissent by acting in secret and affirmatively misleading the entire country...

http://tinyurl.com/amz2n


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Cato Institute
by David Boaz

01/18/06

When you spread food out on a picnic table, you can expect ants. When you put $3 trillion on the table, you can expect special interests, lobbyists and pork-barrel politicians. That's the real lesson of the Abramoff scandal. Jack Abramoff may have been the sleaziest of the Washington lobbyists but he's not unique. As the federal government accumulates more money and more power, it draws more lobbyists like honey draws flies. People invest money to make money. In a free economy they invest in building homes and factories, inventing new products, finding oil, and other economic activities. That kind of investment benefits us all -- it's a positive-sum game, as economists say. People get rich by producing what other people want. But you can also invest in Washington...

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5382


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo

01/18/06

Gore's jeremiad against the neo-authoritarians is an encouraging sign that liberals are waking up to a threat they did much to make possible. I particularly admire his honesty in admitting that both parties have their share of the blame. What I find most hopeful is the very rare spectacle of a politician openly undergoing a radical shift in his beliefs. Is it possible that the Left is moving in a more explicitly libertarian direction? If even Al Gore, who served as part of an administration that insisted on its 'right' to carry out virtually warrantless electronic surveillance -- and that once illegally procured over 400 FBI files on officials who served in previous administrations, is now denouncing similar albeit more radical intrusions as impermissible, then the answer is undoubtedly yes...

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8410


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp