California Conservative

As you’d expect, it’s been a busy day or so on the Alito Confirmation Front. In that time, Robert Byrd has announced that he’ll vote to confirm Judge Alito, Hillary made a speech in which she accused Judge Alito of having a “radical ideology” and a “record of insensitivity to the civil rights of African Americans and women.” Meanwhile, the NY Times blasted the Senate Democrats for being spineless.

Sen. Byrd’s speech speech was a thing of beauty. He railed against Democrats for making accusations that eventually made Mrs. Alito cry. He railed against the media for playing an oversized role in the confirmation process. He even railed against the activists who have made the debate more shrill. He said that Senate Republicans shouldn’t have just been about hurling platitude after platitude in Alito’s direction. He said that Senate Democrats spent too much time questioning Alito’s political views, especially in their attempt to pin him down on Roe v. Wade.

Hillary’s speech — which I freely admit was something that I could hardly bear watching — was shrill, factless and meant to stir up the Democrats’ kook fringe base. Here’s a couple choice quotes:

Mrs. Clinton warned that if Alito is allowed to join the High Court, “decades of progress would fall prey to his radical ideology, jeopardizing not only civil rights, civil liberties, health and safety and environmental protections, but also fundamental rights like the right to privacy.”

And this:

In a bid to paint Judge Alito as bigoted, Mrs. Clinton went so far as to invoke the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education, along with another civil rights case, before complaining:

“I think we need judges who will maintain that forward progress and despite his distinguished academic credentials, Judge Alito has not shown himself to be that kind of judge.”

And again:

In a bit of supreme irony, Mrs. Clinton also insisted that Judge Alito “has not demonstrated a proper respect for the rule of law” before concluding: “I, therefore, cannot give my consent to his confirmation.”

Hillary saying that someone doesn’t have a “proper respect for the rule of law” is akin to Bonnie & Clyde accusing someone of not having “a proper respect” for bank security. PUHHLEAZE.

As for her backhanded smear of Alito being a racist without mentioning anything as proof, I can only express my utter disgust with her. I suspect that most Americans that saw the hearings knows that her mischaracterization of Judge Alito was just plain false.

Likewise, Hillary’s accusing Judge Alito of having a “radical ideology” is utterly factless. It’s also been repudiated by liberals who have clerked for him over the years. Jack White, a liberal Afrian-American attorney currently living in San Fransisco, said in his Judiciary Committee testimony that he left not knowing Judge Alito’s political views.

Frankly, I’ll take Jack White’s sworn testimony over Hillary’s scandalous accusations anytime.

Finally, we get to the NY Times accusing Senate Democrats for not having the spine to mount a filibuster against Judge Alito. Here’s a glimpse into their editorial:

Judge Samuel Alito Jr., whose entire history suggests that he holds extreme views about the expansive powers of the presidency and the limited role of Congress, will almost certainly be a Supreme Court justice soon. His elevation will come courtesy of a president whose grandiose vision of his own powers threatens to undermine the nation’s basic philosophy of government, and a Senate that seems eager to cooperate by rolling over and playing dead. It is hard to imagine a moment when it would be more appropriate for senators to fight for a principle. Even a losing battle would draw the public’s attention to the import of this nomination.

That opening paragraph is more shrill than Hillary’s accusations and that’s saying something. Something utterly disgusting. In that paragraph, the NY Times’ editors lament the ‘fact’ that Sam Alito “holds extreme views about the expansive powers of the presidency and the limited role of Congress” and accuses President Bush of having a “grandiose vision of his own powers” which “threatens to undermine the nation’s basic philosophy of government” and still has time to accuse the Senate of seeeming “eager to cooperate by rolling over and playing dead.” I suspect that had they had more space on the page, they might have gotten in even more baseless cheapshots.

Let’s look further into their diatribe:

The judge’s record strongly suggests that he is an eager lieutenant in the ranks of the conservative theorists who ignore our system of checks and balances, elevating the presidency over everything else.

Actually, their diatribe is almost right. As all conservatives know, the President’s power does expand in wartime because that’s what the Founding Fathers envisioned. As I’ve said before, there is a clear chain of command in wartime, just like there’s a chain of command in the military. Wartime decisions aren’t made by committee, they’re made by a person who is held accountable for his decisions. As Commander-in-Chief, President Bush is charged with protecting America from all her enemies. The Constitution anticipates that and gives him that power. PERIOD.

Nowhere in the Constitution do the Founding Fathers give the Legislative Branch anything more than modest or meager powers in wartime. This stands in stark contrast to the ’strong’ Congress envisioned in terms of domestic policy, most specifically in “the power of the purse.” In other words, President Bush can no more write laws which the Congress would rubberstamp than the Congress can limit the President’s ability to wage war against our enemies.

Oddly, though, nobody talks about that type of check and balance. Instead, it’s all about how much of a check Congress can put on the Presidency. Any history or ConLaw teacher worth their salt would laugh in the NY Times’ face.

His much-quoted statement that the president is not above the law is meaningless unless he also believes that the law requires the chief executive to defer to Congress and the courts.

This is the telltale line in the entire diatribe. As any ConLaw professor would tell you (for that matter, a high school student should know this), the U.S. Constitution spells out three co-equal branches of government. To illustrate the absurdity of this sentence, I’d like the NY Times editors to tell how the Executive Branch should “defer to the Congress and the courts” in wartime? Can they tell me that Congress should control troop movements, overall war strategy and the like? Should the Courts limit the President’s ability to wage war against our enemies?

At the end of the day, Sen. Robert C. Byrd is the only one standing tall in this trio and I applaud him for his inspiring speech.

On the other hand, Mrs. Clinton and the NY Times Diatribe staff have disgraced themselves and tried impeding Judge Alito’s path to the Supreme Court. The least the Times and Mrs. Clinton could have done was to have the decency of getting their facts straight before smearing a good man.

Publisher’s Note: This post is now featured at RealClearPolitics. Great work, Gary!

RELATED:
Shrum Attacks Alito While Buchanan Hopes For Filibuster
(The Political Teen has video)

Cross-posted at Let FreedomRing

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Judiciary, Liberals, Media, Op-Ed, Washington, DC. 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.