Too good not to share

Via PastPeak comes this from Jay Leno:

President Bush was asked how he came up with a conservative like Alito, and he said he got the idea over the weekend while turning the clocks back.

If John Roberts as a nominee represented the bob-and-weave style and Harriet Miers was the "also on the card" entry with no footwork and the glass jaw, Samuel Alito appears to be the plodder who intends to win just by never going down.

I mean, this guy, with his record, he's not even a moving target. He's an out-front right-wing ideologue who questions church-state separation, opposes abortion rights, and doesn't give two hoots about his own conflicts of interest or even keeping the very specific promises he made to the Senate during his confirmation to his current position.

Trying to excuse him, the wingnuts, who waxed ecstatic about his nomination to SCOTUS, insisted that he "follows precedent." Well, BFD for the most part; appellate-level justices are supposed to follow Supreme Court precedents. But what struck me more than anything else about his opinions as noted above and what I think is very revealing, is that he looked to apply the most reactionary interpretation of precedent available. That is, he would "follow precedent," but to the degree precedent allowed, he would seek to limit civil rights laws, increase police powers, stifle the rights of workers, block access to the courts by victims of bigotry and discrimination, and on and on.

What does that say about what he will do on the Supreme Court, where precedent is a guide but is not binding?

Not surprisingly, there is talk of a filibuster and already the wingnuts are raising the specter of the "nuclear option" that would essentially ban filibusters of judicial nominees. Yeah, but what about the so-called "gang of 14" with their oh-so-Solomon-like balancing act to head off that possibility?

Two Republican members of the group, Senators Mike DeWine of Ohio and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have said that if Democrats stage a filibuster against Judge Alito's confirmation, they would support a rule change.

I have to say it: I told you so. I told you so in May, when the deal was first announced.

It ... would be entirely in keeping with the letter of the deal for the GOPpers to at any useful point in the future to say of a Dem attempt at a filibuster, "This is not an extraordinary circumstance! The deal's off!" With Frist saying the nuclear option is still on the table and that he "will monitor this agreement closely," that is by no means an idle concern.

I told you so again in July, when I said

GOPpers are already making noises that there had better be no filibustering of whatever wingnut sock puppet Shrub puts up for the Supreme Court. In fact, there really shouldn't be any questions asked at all.

I also quoted Orrin Hatch (R-Uh-oh) as saying that he couldn't see "any circumstances where a filibuster would be appropriate."

The brutal fact is, enough GOPpers are going to do as they're told to get this creepy jackass on the Supreme Court no matter what he believes or says or does as long as he's copacetic with the most reactionary elements of their party. So filibuster him, dammit! At this point, what have we got to lose? If Frist wants to detonate the bomb and blow a hole in 200 years of Senate tradition, tell him to go ahead and do it! In fact, dare him to. Would we be any worse off?

And is anyone so damn sure he'd actually do it? Last spring he kept threatening it but kept putting it off and I frankly wondered - and still wonder - if he ever actually had the votes. I noted at the time that certainly most GOPpers would go along; the question was if enough would. I frankly can't imagine that too many of them would be really enthusiastic about supporting a move of which, according to polls (if I recall correctly), most Americans disapproved and facing an opponent who might - if they were smart and while it's hard to believe, some Dems actually are - hammer away at their "disrespect for the traditions of our way of government."

Bottom line here is that Samuel Alito is even worse that John Roberts. Roberts is a conservative in the mold of Rehnquist: Hard right-wing but not completely without nuance. Alito is a conservative in the mold of Scalia (thus the nickname "Scalito," or "little Scalia"): Rigid, undeviating reactionary. We may not be able to stop him - but we will stand in disgrace if we don't do our damnedest.