Stall Tactic Fails
Jordan Lorence has a good column up over at Town Hall regarding Splash Kennedy's (the Senator, not the dog) attempt to stall the hearings. Hey, if you don't measure up intellectually to the nominee, you gotta try anything, no matter how stupid and dishonest.
Sen. Kennedy's ambushed Sen. Specter with a political stunt right before lunch, demanding that Sen. Specter immediately subpoena the keeper of documents of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which Judge Alito belonged earlier. Sen. Kennedy read extreme statements made by people connected with Concerned Alumni of Princeton, where Judge Alito went as an undergraduate. Sen. Specter effectively put down Sen. Kennedy's repeated acts of insurrection, rebuking the Senator from Massachusetts that he, and not Sen. Kennedy, is the chairman of the committee, and that he would review the request and make a decision in due course.
If you saw this stunt, you must agree that it was a pathetic show on Kennedy's part. He tried to bully Specter, and Specter didn't let him get away with it.
This is why I think the liberal senators have initiated this tactic: Whatever Sen. Specter decides to do, it gives liberal senators an excuse to vote against Judge Alito. Either Sen. Specter resists subpoenaing anyone for any documents, or he allows the subpoenas. If the liberals get no documents, they can claim they are voting against Judge Alito because the record is incomplete, and they cannot with integrity vote for him when these documents remain unknown and unreviewed.
Or, if they get the documents, they can search them for more scurrilous or extreme statements made by people connected to Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and then vote against Judge Alito because he at one time associated with such an unsavory group. Either way, it gives them excuses to vote against Judge Alito. The real reason for senators voting against him is that the liberals know he cannot be trusted to affirm Roe v. Wade and the "right to abortion," and other elements of the liberal agenda that they want to impose on unwilling Americans by a liberal-dominated judiciary.
Yep, obfuscation is the order of the day. They can't find anything of substance in Alito's record to use against him, so they are grasping at anything. The problem for them is, their tactics are very transparent and the American people interested enough to be paying attention aren't stupid. Consider this statement from David Kirkpatric in The New York Times:
David Kirkpatrick wrote about them [William Rusher's papers] in November in the NYTimes (November 27, 2005, "From Alito's Past, a Window On Conservatives at Princeton") and concluded: "Those records and others at Mudd Library at Princeton give no indication that Judge Alito, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, was among the group's major donors. He was not an active leader of the group, and two of his classmates who were involved and Mr. Rusher said they did not remember his playing a role."
And this, from Ed Whelan at Bench Memos:
I have been informed by a very reliable source that Senate Judiciary Committee staffers have reviewed the entirety of William Rusher's CAP documents at the Library of Congress and have determined that those documents make no mention at all of Alito.
That oughta kill Splash's attempt at stalling. I'm sure one of his boorish colleagues will try something else today, which I hope is just as embarrassing to the Democrats as Teddy's performance.
Sen. Kennedy's ambushed Sen. Specter with a political stunt right before lunch, demanding that Sen. Specter immediately subpoena the keeper of documents of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which Judge Alito belonged earlier. Sen. Kennedy read extreme statements made by people connected with Concerned Alumni of Princeton, where Judge Alito went as an undergraduate. Sen. Specter effectively put down Sen. Kennedy's repeated acts of insurrection, rebuking the Senator from Massachusetts that he, and not Sen. Kennedy, is the chairman of the committee, and that he would review the request and make a decision in due course.
If you saw this stunt, you must agree that it was a pathetic show on Kennedy's part. He tried to bully Specter, and Specter didn't let him get away with it.
This is why I think the liberal senators have initiated this tactic: Whatever Sen. Specter decides to do, it gives liberal senators an excuse to vote against Judge Alito. Either Sen. Specter resists subpoenaing anyone for any documents, or he allows the subpoenas. If the liberals get no documents, they can claim they are voting against Judge Alito because the record is incomplete, and they cannot with integrity vote for him when these documents remain unknown and unreviewed.
Or, if they get the documents, they can search them for more scurrilous or extreme statements made by people connected to Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and then vote against Judge Alito because he at one time associated with such an unsavory group. Either way, it gives them excuses to vote against Judge Alito. The real reason for senators voting against him is that the liberals know he cannot be trusted to affirm Roe v. Wade and the "right to abortion," and other elements of the liberal agenda that they want to impose on unwilling Americans by a liberal-dominated judiciary.
Yep, obfuscation is the order of the day. They can't find anything of substance in Alito's record to use against him, so they are grasping at anything. The problem for them is, their tactics are very transparent and the American people interested enough to be paying attention aren't stupid. Consider this statement from David Kirkpatric in The New York Times:
David Kirkpatrick wrote about them [William Rusher's papers] in November in the NYTimes (November 27, 2005, "From Alito's Past, a Window On Conservatives at Princeton") and concluded: "Those records and others at Mudd Library at Princeton give no indication that Judge Alito, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, was among the group's major donors. He was not an active leader of the group, and two of his classmates who were involved and Mr. Rusher said they did not remember his playing a role."
And this, from Ed Whelan at Bench Memos:
I have been informed by a very reliable source that Senate Judiciary Committee staffers have reviewed the entirety of William Rusher's CAP documents at the Library of Congress and have determined that those documents make no mention at all of Alito.
That oughta kill Splash's attempt at stalling. I'm sure one of his boorish colleagues will try something else today, which I hope is just as embarrassing to the Democrats as Teddy's performance.
posted by Jennifer at 1:23 AM
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