Aside from basic cronyism, why did George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court? After much thought, I've concluded that Bush felt Miers would be a docile apologist for untrammeled expansion of executive power and destroying our checks and balances system. Indeed, her background exhibited an utter naivite regarding Presidential power; every bit of ?advice? she apparently offered to her President merely assured him that he could do anything he damn well pleased - including torture prisoners, apparently. That, I decided, was why Bush found Miers so attractive; she would be totally in his pocket, the consummate ?yes? woman. Now, here we go again, except with a competent man.The nomination of Samuel Alito to replace Miers was initially greeted with enthusiasm; here was someone who obviously had the judicial experience Miers so blatantly lacked. And, even though Alito was clearly ?conservative,? he also evidenced an attitude of restraint and respect for ?settled law.? For instance, when a 1985 job application surfaced in which Alito stated that he ?personally believed very strongly? that the Constitution provided no right to an abortion, Alito explained that he was merely a job applicant, telling his prospective employers in the Reagan administration what they wanted to hear. This explanation even seems to have convinced Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
In addition, Alito recently has backed away from his statements against a woman?s right to privacy, made when he was a much younger man. The only problem here is this: if Alito was willing to say whatever it took to get a job before, couldn't he be doing exactly the same thing now? Frankly, it seems to me that if you lie once, there's no reason you won't lie again in similar circumstances.
But let?s not be distracted by this contretemps about abortion, as important as it may be. As Paul Rosenberg explains, in the blog "Political Cortex," the same documents revealing Alito?s opposition to Roe v. Wade also show him as totally opposed to Democracy?s basic principle: one person, one vote. Now THAT is truly important.
In Alito's job-seeking memo, the earnest young man addressed the question of judicial restraint as it applied to reapportionment and cited the case of Baker v. Carr. This was, for the 1960's Warren Supreme Court, a landmark case. It came out of Tennessee, which had refused since 1900 to re-district, thus leaving growing urban districts with much larger populations than declining rural districts. Baker argued that his district had ten times as many residents as neighboring rural districts, and that this deprived him of ?equal protection under the laws? (14th Amendment to the Constitution). Today, most of us agree that a basic tenet of democracy is "one person, one vote," to be achieved by making sure each Congressional district approximates every other district in number of voters. That way, no one person has more voting clout than another. That is representative Democracy. Ultimately, the Supreme Court agreed.
Samuel Alito, to the contrary, apparently disagrees. Alito's view, as expressed in 1985, was that redistricting was a ?political question" in which courts should not meddle. Which, apparently, puts Judge Alito ("Scalito") to the right of Antonin Scalia with regards to judicial restraint. As Paul Rosenberg points out, this makes Alito basically anti-Democracy.
Rosenberg also notes that, in the matter of the dreaded (by the right wing) ?judicial activism,? a careful examination of recent Supreme Court rulings indicates that the Court "conservatives" actually have been far more activist than "liberals" - across the board. Given this fact, how do you suppose Justice Alito will rule when it comes to detainees at Guantanamo filing writs of habeas corpus after being held without charges for 3 years? How do you suppose a Supreme Court Justice Alito will judge which areas of law are ?off limits? to the courts? The point is, the danger of an Alito/Scalia/Thomas Supreme Court goes way beyond abortion, and begins to threaten the entire American political system.
This is exactly why the Senate needs to probe deeply into Samuel Alito's suitability for a job on the Supreme Court. Unlike with Harriet Miers, however, this probing should go way beyond whtether or not Alito is "qualified" purely on technical merit, which he almost certainly is. In addition, the Senate needs to delve deeply into Alito's entire philosophy on judicial "restraint" and, indeed, the entire place of the Judicial branch in our precious system of checks and balances. If not, we could end up with a qualified but dangerous "yes man," as opposed to an unqualified and dangerous "yes woman." Take your pick; they're both really bad news.