alito scmalito

I don't know if the rest of you are as fascinated (okay obsessed) with the senate supreme court hearings as I am, but ever since the Clarence Thomas hearings I have hardly ever missed a minute of any of them. political theatre to be sure, but in so many ways the supremes have more influence over our society than just about anyone. alito represents a potential for the court to move significantly to the right for a long time if actuarial predictions are correct. sadly it looks as though he is in. I don't see the democrats pulling off a filibuster, alito was not as slick as john roberts, but still avoided answering any questions that would give any insight into anything that he believes and he seems to be a nice guy, which makes his opponents look like bad sports. surely the true measure of a supreme court justice should be the depth of their compassion and wisdom about how the law can positively influence the lives of people. I think that the scariest thing I heard about alito was the memo that he wrote about the case where a police officer caught up with a fleeing 14 year old burglary suspect who was unarmed and climbing a fence and shot him through the back of the head. alito argued that the officer used 'reasonable force'. police have a tough and dangerous job, to be sure, but this seems like as egregious a case of the abuse of power as I have ever heard of. I think that the most important role of the courts is to protect people against this sort of abuse. we can hope that alito ends up being one of those justices who changes and matures once on the court, john paul stevens was very conservative when he joined the court. I won't hold my breath though, alito has shown no signs of moderating while on the court of appeals, I think that we are probably moving into a phase in this country where we will need to be more vigilant about the courts than the presidency or congress. those we can change, the supreme court is much harder. I think that the aclu and other civil rights groups will need all the help they can get.

nic