California Conservative

I guess I’m not the only one who noticed how much the old “Liberal Lion” and his fellow windbags talked at the Kennedy…I mean Alito…Hearings yesterday. The NY Times’ Elisabeth Buhmiller has compiled more of the specifics than I had the stomach for. (Then again, she gets paid to get tortured and I don’t. OOPS…I mean she gets paid to report and I don’t.) Here’s a glimpse at her compilations:

The lure of 50 cameras and the captive audience in the Senate Hart Office Building appeared too much of a temptation for some of Capitol Hill’s windiest lions, who began by promising not to run a marathon session of questions, then did so anyway. At one point Sen. Ted Kennedy, (D-MA), was even granted two extra minutes from the committee’s chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter, (R-PA), drawing groans from colleagues, among them Sen. Charles Schumer, (D-NY). “Be quiet over there,” Mr. Kennedy admonished his fellow committee members, to laughter. “Scurrilous dogs.”
———-
The highest ratio of words per panelist to words per nominee was that of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, who managed to ask five questions in his 30-minute time allotment. “I understand, Judge, I am the only one standing between you and lunch, so I’ll try to make this painless,” he began, with some promise.
———-
Judge Alito, who had been sitting without expression through Mr. Biden’s musings, interrupted the senator midword, got out three sentences, then settled in for nearly 26 minutes more of Mr. Biden, with the senator doing most of the talking. With less than a minute to spare, Mr. Biden concluded, thanked Judge Alito for “being responsive,” then said to Mr. Specter that “I want to note that for maybe the first time in history, Biden is 40 seconds under his time.” The audience laughed appreciatively.

As I said in my earlier report on the day’s activities, you’d think that senators sitting on the Judiciary Committee wouldn’t subject the nominee to cruel and inhumane punishment but the lure of the cameras must’ve been too powerful for them.

As I said yesterday, the AQ Bill of Rights that’s now the (unneeded) law of the land shouldn’t have been written with AQ in mind. It should’ve been aimed at Judiciary Committee Democrats, who tortured Alito, and the American people who watched, mercilessly. Thinking back, I wish Sen. Specter had interrupted them more and asked if they intended to ask questions or just aimlessly meander through the stupor that they were in.

At the end of the day, it was obvious that the Dems hadn’t laid a glove on Alito and that he’s sailing towards confirmation. Not that that’ll prevent them from a straight party line vote. But that’s their shame.

In fact, it’s gotta be upsetting to the PFAW and other special interest groups that they aren’t getting more bang for the buck from the senators that they bought. They should’ve known better than to have relied on that bunch of idiots.

They’ll never learn.

One last thing. Here’s the most contentious exchange of the day. It’s between Sen. Schumer and Judge Alito:

SCHUMER: Does the Constitution protect the right to free speech?
ALITO: Certainly it does. That’s in the First Amendment.
SCHUMER: So why can’t you answer the question of: Does the Constitution protect the right to an abortion the same way without talking about stare decisis, without talking about cases, et cetera?
ALITO: Because answering the question of whether the Constitution provides a right to free speech is simply responding to whether there is language in the First Amendment that says that the freedom of speech and freedom of the press can’t be abridged. Asking about the issue of abortion has to do with the interpretation of certain provisions of the Constitution.
SCHUMER: Well, OK. I know you’re not going to answer the question…

UPDATE:
See Michelle Malkin: “Clash of the Windbags”
Political Teen has video

RELATED:
Bloviation Central, Pt. I

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 10:17 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Judiciary, Law, Liberals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.