Preserve the Balance
Team Supreme Blog
Will the Real Judge Alito Please Stand Up
The more we learn about Sam Alito, the murkier his image becomes. Is he the true movement conservative that right wing activists hailed in days after his selection by President Bush? Does he have an agenda to reshape our courts and our country based on narrow constitutional principles?
His supporters thought so, and our careful and thorough examination of his record led us to the conclusion that he would at best undermine and at worst totally reverse all the progress that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans have made over the past few decades.
Yet, many observers are pointing out that Alito is systematically distancing himself from many of the more controversial pillars of his resume and record. The anti-gay and co-education Concerned Alumni of Princeton? Alito says he doesn’t remember being a member even though he put it on his job application to work at the Justice Department.
On that same job application, Alito wrote that “the Constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion.” When this became public, according to media reports, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked him about it and he said it should not be used to represent his views.
Interestingly, it’s not liberal Bush opponents that are most loudly objecting to Alito’s obfuscation on his conservative record. Sunday’s Washington Post featured an op-ed from conservative legal activist and former Reagan Justice Department official Bruce Fein. Entitled “Don't Run From the Truth: Why Alito Shouldn't Deny His Real Convictions,” in the piece Fein says that:
His supporters thought so, and our careful and thorough examination of his record led us to the conclusion that he would at best undermine and at worst totally reverse all the progress that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans have made over the past few decades.
Yet, many observers are pointing out that Alito is systematically distancing himself from many of the more controversial pillars of his resume and record. The anti-gay and co-education Concerned Alumni of Princeton? Alito says he doesn’t remember being a member even though he put it on his job application to work at the Justice Department.
On that same job application, Alito wrote that “the Constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion.” When this became public, according to media reports, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked him about it and he said it should not be used to represent his views.
Interestingly, it’s not liberal Bush opponents that are most loudly objecting to Alito’s obfuscation on his conservative record. Sunday’s Washington Post featured an op-ed from conservative legal activist and former Reagan Justice Department official Bruce Fein. Entitled “Don't Run From the Truth: Why Alito Shouldn't Deny His Real Convictions,” in the piece Fein says that:
Samuel Alito Jr. is similarly insisting that he served in the Reagan administration as an ambitious apparatchik uncommitted to conservative principles. According to senators whose statements have been denied by neither the White House nor the nominee, Alito has distanced himself from his own writings assailing Roe and a cluster of dogmas dear to Democrats -- for example, racial preferences and welfare rights. Those writings, Alito is now saying, were crafted to curry favor with his superiors but did not reflect the authentic Alito.While Fein is not someone with whom we often agree on policy, it is difficult to reject his conclusion that:
The explanations offered by Roberts and Alito, tacitly denying their Reaganite heritage, are fatuous on their face, akin to Thomas Jefferson's disavowing the Declaration of Independence to win a seat on the British Privy Council, or Justice Abe Fortas's disputing that he was a New Dealer despite having raced to serve under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.Let’s hope that the Senate Judiciary Committee Members are able to lift the veil on the real Sam Alito.
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