What a waste of time. The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee apparently can’t think of anything better to talk about than whether Judge Alito should have recused himself from an inconsequential case involving the Vanguard investment company, and whether he belonged to a borderline racist Princeton alumni group 20 years ago (to be fair, Sen. Feinstein has done a pretty good job talking about real issues). Alito has explained the Vanguard business – satisfactorily, in my view – by saying that he made a mistake and would have acted differently if he had it to do over again. And he claims to have no memory of the Princeton group. That’s a bit more surprising, but honestly, does it really make sense that Samuel Alito, a middle-class kid from New Jersey who was not the son of a Princeton alum, would be an enthusiastic member of a group that favored giving greater preference in admissions to children of alumni? In any event, some documents are supposedly on the way from the Library of Congress, which may (or may not) shed further light on this issue. My guess: Alito’s name will not be found in them.
My basic point is that in the great scheme of issues that the Supreme Court considers, these are sideshows. They’re the Dems’ best effort at a “gotcha.” But they’re failing, and the result is that enormous portions of the hearing have been wasted on these relatively inconsequential issues, at the expense of much more important issues (notably executive power) that they should be talking about. We don’t know much more about Alito than we did before the hearings began, and now they’re almost over. What a shame.
