The All-Out War, Day 2

Well, that's what the New York Times is calling the SCOTUS nomination and coming confirmation battle of Judge Samuel Alito, even though they concede later in their op-ed that it is a battle the GOP is destined to win, because of Alito's excellence, long judicial experience, personal background and telegeniety (i.e. he's Robertseque) and because those factors make an "all-out war" more of a political liability than a political asset.

Apparently, the extreme Left didn't take the time to even briefly consider that before plunging straight into the gutter.

Echoing Chucky Schumer's trademark descipicability from yesterday implying that Judge Alito would have sent the late Rosa Parks to the metaphorical back of the bus, that aging anti-Semite Jesse Jackson rolled out the usual, tired, sagging, rusting, decrepit "closet night-rider" template today:

Democratic Party activist Jesse Jackson is blasting Bush Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito as a "states rights" advocate who is "clearly adverse to civil rights" and who would have opposed Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who is being remembered this week for helping to overturn legal segregation.

Registering his complaint in a column in today's Chicago Sun-Times, Jackson noted: "President Bush honored [Parks] and then nominated Samuel Alito," who Jackson described as "a states' rights, strict-constructionist throwback to a bygone age."

Double-J also managed to smear all sixty-two million 2004 Bush voters as racists in the very next graph, too. And they say Jesse's mind is going.

The even more aged Mike Wallace, whose mind probably IS going, came at Judge Alito by slurring his religious beliefs:

Appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live program, Wallace responded to a quote by Alito’s 90-year-old mother, Rose, who – when asked about her son’s views on abortion – said, "Of course he’s against abortion.”

Wallace sn[eer]ed, "He’s a nice Catholic boy and he doesn’t believe in abortions.”

This, of course, was delivered in a not-so-complimentary fashion.

Would Wallace have used the term "boy" if Judge Alito was black? Would he have said, "He's a nice kike..." if Alito were Jewish? Just wondering.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue had a nice retort:

"We at the Catholic League like nice Catholic boys who don’t believe in abortion,” Donohue said. "For that matter, we even like not-so-nice non-Catholic girls who don’t want to kill the kids.

"What we don’t like,” Donohue continued, "are condescending octogenarians who don’t know when to get out of the ring. Or when to shut up.”

Touché.

But the by-far lowest below-the-belt shot is a DNC-produced smear document purporting to suggest that Judge Alito, as a late-'80s U.S. attorney, went soft in a mafia prosecution because the defendants were fellow Italian-Americans (via RedState):

While serving as a U.S. Attorney, Alito failed to obtain a key conviction, releasing nearly two dozen mobsters back into society....

U.S. Attorney Alito Failed to Obtain Conviction of 20 Mobsters, Saying “You Can’t Win Them All.” Federal law enforcement agencies sustained a major rebuff in their anti-mafia campaign with the August 1988 acquittal of all 20 defendants accused of making up the entire membership of the Lucchese family in the New Jersey suburbs of New York. The verdict ended what was believed to be the nation’s longest federal criminal trial and according to the Chicago Tribune, dealt the government a “stunning defeat.” Samuel Alito, the US Attorney on the case, said, “Obviously we are disappointed but you realize you can’t win them all.” Alito also said he had no regrets about the prosecution but in the future would try to keep cases “as short and simple as possible.” Alito continued, “I certainly don’t feel embarrassed and I don’t think we should feel embarrassed.

How egregious an ethnic slur is this? It made NBC's Chris Matthews lose his lunch:

"I don't know. I think the Democrats, I'm sitting here holding in my hands a disgusting document, put out not for attribution. The Democrats are circulating it. It's a complaint sheet against Judge Alito's nomination. The first thing they nail is he failed to win a mob conviction in 1988. They nail him on not putting italian mobsters in jail. Why would they bring this up? This is either a very bad coincidence or very bad politics. Either way it will hurt them. This document, not abortion rights, not civil rights but that he failed to nail some mobsters in 1988. This is the top of their list. Amazingly bad politics."

Also roaringly incompetent execution. Cap'n Ed fills us in:

This document started circulating, unsigned, yesterday on Capitol Hill and among the press. As has been noted elsewhere, the mouthbreathers who produced it forgot the first rule of e-mailing sensitive Microsoft Word documents - don't do it at all. The metadata clearly indicates that the author of this goes by the name "prendergastc", most likely Chris Prendergast, who works on the DNC. By displaying the document properties in Word, one finds out that the company holding the license for the copy of Word that created the document is - the DNC. The last person to edit the document was AdlerD, which Redstate thinks would be Devorah Adler, also of the DNC [and Associate Director for Health Policy in the Clinton administration], and who makes considerably more than Chris Prendergast does. That moves the problem from an out-of-control flunky to one of deliberate smear attempts by the Democratic Party itself.

There's a bit more here, too. The document comes from a template that was created on July 7th, which coincides with the nomination of John Roberts. The document/template title? "how they made their $$, personal holdings, the whole deal". Talk about operating from a playbook!

As Steve Maltzberg chronicles it, DNC Chairman Howard Dean was proud to take credit for this slimewad, as the Hardball host found out:

Matthews, who for once was on the correct side of an issue, confronted the failed presidential candidate with the sheet late in the hour. "Somebody in the Democratic party is putting out an attack sheet ... on Sam Alito and the first attack is that he was lenient on the mob back in an '88 case ... and here's a guy who has been tough on crime. Why start off (the talking point attacks) on that issue?"

Dean then claimed that he didn't put out the sheet, but he said, "Somebody did so I'll be responsible for it."

The leader of the Democratic party then went on to explain that the President had touted Mr. Alito as a "spectacular prosecutor" before becoming a judge, and it turns out that he wasn't so spectacular.

Then, the man who claimed not to have put out the sheet with the accusation, all of a sudden seemed very familiar with the case that it refers to.

"In that particular case all those guys got off. Twenty of them without even calling a defense witness."

No wonder Dean accepted responsibility for the sheet. If in fact he didn't put it out himself, it certainly appeared that he knew all about it and had no objections to it. But Matthews did.

"You don't sense a little ethnic aspect to this, the fact he's an Italian-American? And the number one issue against this guy is that he's weak on the mob? You don't see that?"

Howard Dean never smiles, but he was smiling now. It was the smile that says you caught me, I know you're right, you know that I know you're right, but I'll never admit it. He responded to Matthews through that smile with an unbelievable "No I don't."

Matthews shot back that he saw it, "And so does everybody else," he said. In response Dean switched talking point memos and started in on Bush and Karl Rove.

Earlier in the show Matthews had pointed out that a year after this alleged "failed" prosecution, Alito brought a major case against the Genovese crime family and scored two major convictions. The "hit list" happened to leave that part out.

Remember yesterday when Harry Reid got on the blower to Dr. Demented and told him to knock off the nadshots because the Alito rollout was going so well for the Bush White House that they would not be tactically advisable? This must be what he was talking about. And what does Dirty Harry do on the very day that Dean's "Scarface Sam" smear splatters all over the press? Pull the Rule 21 tantrum as, at least in part, an attempted diversion.

Sure, that's like crapping your pants to distract from the fact that you've also just pissed them, but I guess the Dems are convinced that desperate times call for desperate measures:

Panic may now be setting in among Democrats. Senator Chuck Schumer appeared on CNN late Monday night, with a five o'clock shadow and somber attitude, saying that the Senate should not be rushed into a vote, never mind that Schumer's own staff have been vetting Alito for more than a week, ever since word began leaking out that the White House might be looking to make a change....

One Democratic political consultant who was coming off Capitol Hill after meetings late Monday said there was a level of frustration among Senate Democratic staff that he had not seen with the Roberts nomination. "This is a guy [Alito] who has had 15 years on the bench. Our guys say his rulings are consistent, but for every one you think you have him nailed on ideology, you flip the page and, boom, he cuts back on you to the other side of the argument in a different case. And it's still solid stuff. This morning, I got the sense our guys were ready for a fight. Now 12 hours later I'm not so sure. They want the fight, they just don't have a lot of ammo."

Perhaps this helps explain the growing consensus behind the contention that the Democrats, despite, and very well because of, these excursions into the wastelands of character assassination, will not be able to mount an anti-Alito filibuster.

Elsewhere, John Tabin, Julian Sanchez, Ed Whelan, John Hinderaker, and Jonathan Adler roll out the heavy intellectual artillery in defense of the sterling Alito judicial record.

My God, what a mismatch THAT is.