In response to a question from Schumer, Alito was unequivocal that the Constitution protects free speech, but said its protection of abortion was a matter of interpretation: damning the Roe doctrine with faint praise. Separately, he refused to disavow his 1985 conclusion that the Constitution does not protect abortion — even though he has retracted or revised other positions under questioning during the hearings. In combination, his testimony supports the conclusion he has major doubts about Roe. Look for further restrictions on choice if he is confirmed. (The Court may never actually overturn the case, but may reduce it to a meaningless shell). Schumer, incidentally, gets a B+ today from me: he wandered around a bit too much, was somewhat repetitive, and did not have good exhibits. Still, not bad.
I heard only a snippet of Scalito’s testimony today, but he was clearly dancing around Specter’s questions regarding Roe v. Wade and respect for precedent.
I think this “Scalito” business is ridiculous, and is tantamount to making fun of people’s funny last names. There may well be good reasons to vote against Alito’s confirmation. The facial similarity of his last name to Justice Scalia’s does not strike me as one of them.
Sorry, didn’t mean to offend. I think that “Scalito” is meant more as a clever shorthand to remind that Alito and Scalia are likely to be highly correlated with one-another if Alito is confirmed, i.e., “Scalito” would not exist if Alito were a judicial moderate.
I know how widespread the use of this nickname is. But, for the reasons set out below, I think it’s a bad idea.
I disagree. It’s not about making fun, it’s about pointing out an important connection – that he will be that kind of judge on the court. It’s about substance. If indeed the only similarity was in their names, then yes, it would be silly mockery. But that’s not what it’s about.
If a liberal Jewish judge named Cohen were nominated to the Supreme Court, and conservatives started calling him “Cohenburg” to link him to Justice Ginsburg’s views, I would find it offensive. Moreover, if a conservative judge of Japanese ancestry named Hirohito were nominated to the Supreme Court, I seriously doubt we’d be hearing about Judge “Scalito.” It’s about ethnicity as much as it is about anything else, and this kind of name-calling is, IMHO, a bad idea that we as progressives shouldn’t be getting involved in.
I’m not really sure I buy your argument, but I agree with your conclusion. I’m just not convinced there’s any reason to perceive an ethnic slur in the nickname, but I think it should be dropped regardless. Not only is it, regardless of intent, childish-sounding, but I don’t think it’s accurate either. Scalia and Alito both have (or Scalia has and Alito appears to have) dangerous, radical conservative ideologies, but Scalia is at least not always so eager to hand all the power to the Executive branch (for instance in the question of whether the government could order US citizens detained indefinitely without charges on suspicion of being terrorists…) as Alito seems to be.
I don’t buy the theory you’re outlining, or the parallels you’re drawing, or the assertions you’re making… but on the other hand, I’ve never called him “Scalito” myself, except when having discussions about other people calling him “Scalito” đŸ™‚
[warning: that link leads to a RealVideo stream]