It was because of his great court picks.
Needless to say, HP is VERY happy with this pick.
Update: More info on Alito,
A graduate of Princeton and then Yale Law School, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the appellate division, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey — what’s not to like?
Judge Alito also was unanimously confirmed in 1990 by voice vote in the U.S. Senate for the Third Circuit seat he currently holds; has argued 12 Supreme Court cases, argued at least two dozen court of appeals cases, and handled at least 50 others.
So he’s been confirmed by the Senate twice, has impeccable credentials, and a hsitory as a crime-fighter . . . as U.S. Attorney, he prosecuted white collar and environmental crimes, drug trafficking, organized crime and civil rights violations.
Oh, yes — and he’s a member of the Federalist Society.
Update: Judge Alito in his own words, from the Newark Star-Ledger, May, 2005:
“Most of the labels people use to talk about judges, and the way judges decide (cases) aren’t too descriptive. … Judges should be judges. They shouldn’t be legislators, they shouldn’t be administrators.”
GOOD!
A little off topic,
but damn DD, you look great . . . . OK, I am a married spud, I am a married spud!
Again a bush president picks a minority that does not hold to the same views as the majority of the group in which he comes from, I feel another clarance “uncle”thomas is being put on the bench, well sooo much for social freedom in america. I only hope the democrats in the senate put up a bitter fight to protect us from bushes legacy .
lol at W.NM
Thank you for the compliment……vote Alito! haha!
yes dd is a hottie, almost makes up for being a republican .
Almost eh? But not enough to perhaps convert ya?
Well being that I started out as a fiscal conservative
it would be hard. you see even though I’ve always been socially libral , I used to be naive and think all it took was hard work to make it in this world, but reality set in , when I moved out of my parents house some 16 years ago,and their money didnt follow me , I gained a whole new view of the world. You see actually working for a living does that to a person.
I basically have the belief that no person who gets up and goes to work everyday should have to worry about where his next meal comes from,how he is going to pay his medical bills, how his credit will be jacked up if he doesnt, or have to work at a job he hates because it pays more than the job he enjoyed.
I’m with you HP! I would have preferred Miguel Estrada, but Sam Alito will do quite nicely. Now, let’s get ready for a tough fight and a national debate on the role of the courts and the course of the country.
he’s certainly more certifiably conservative than miers. even so, it seems the court will be more evenly split. 4 (scalia, thomas, roberts, alito) conservatives, 4 (stevens, souter, ginsberg, breyer), and 1 swinger (kennedy). likely gonna see just as much loggerheads as before. the only way bush will truly change the court is now if john paul stevens retires as he’s the only really old liberal justice likely to do so in the next few years.
Oh, wow, if that were to happen under Bush’s presidency, your next trip to SD is on me Myke!!!
it should be on you anyway due to the sheer glory of my presence.
LOL. Sheer glory huh? Only if you go to a Game concert w/ me…what do you say?
Much more qualified choice.
HP-
Curious about your thoughts on his opinion that a wife must get consent from her husband in order to have an abortion.
Yeah, I was wondering about that myself.
Michael, MsAbcMom,
If this guy is a true judicial originalist, and I have no reason to suspect he is not, than his ruling in that case had to do with the law on the books, not his personal opinion. And since I am not a lawyer, I don’t know if the law implied that or not, but again assuming he is an originalist, I would agree with his ruling, provided the law really did imply that.
Now, before anyone assumes that it was his personal opinions getting in the way, it is important to note his other abortion rulings, most notably Planned Parenthood v. Farmer (2000), the Wall Street Journal writes:
Another Wall Street Journal article states:
As a proud pro-lifer myself, I can safely say that there are few laws we feel more passionately in favor of, than partial birth abortion bans, yet Alito specifically struck down a partial birth abortion ban, precisely because it violated the Supreme Courts clear ruling, in other words Alito is exactly what I have been waiting for, a Supreme Court justice who puts the constitution above his personal views on the matter, a Judge who acts like a Judge, not a legislator.
HP-
The partial birth ban is the law that I am most uncofortable with and i am a pro-choicer.
“a Supreme Court justice who puts the constitution above his personal views on the matter”
I think you are stretching it with this claim. He has never voted against restricting abortion in any case he has decided upon and it is pretty much assumed that he is anti-abortion personally outside of the legal issues. He may disagree with abortion on both constitutiional grounds but this is not in conflict with his own beliefs. This is hardly a case of putting the law above his personal beliefs.
In the Casey case he was in fact rebuked by the upper court for twisting the previously decided “undue burden” principle in deciding the constitutionality of proposed abortion laws to fit his needs. Despite testimony of multiple experts on domestic abuse who stated the alarming number of women in abusive relations with their husbands, he somehow came to the conclusion that since 95% of married women consult their husbands and the majority of abortions are performed upon single women anyway. Their really was not an undue burden in seeking an abortion. This was rebuked by the upper court who correctly ruled that “The fact that § 3209 may affect fewer than one percent of women seeking abortions does not save it from facial invalidity, since the proper focus of constitutional inquiry [505 U.S. 833, 838] is the group for whom the law is a restriction, not the group for whom it is irrelevant.”
But there is an important point that’s being missed here, it wasn’t Alito that created the law, it was the Pennsylvania legislators along with the voters, all Alito was doing was deciding whether the law was allowed under the constitution or not, not deciding whether he personally agreed with the law or not.
And when in doubt, as I’ve said before, I would always err on the side of voters and legislators deciding the moral issues, not judges. Whether I personally agree with those morals or not.
I think you are stretching it with this claim. He has never voted against restricting abortion in any case he has decided upon and it is pretty much assumed that he is anti-abortion personally outside of the legal issues.
This is not true, and in fact, the links I point to above specifically rebuke this. Remember Michael, he struck down a ban on partial birth abortion, specifically because it contradicted the Supreme Courts ruling. As I said above, there are a few things pro-lifers agree on more, than a partial birth abortion ban, yet Alito specifically ruled a specific partial birth abortion ban was unconstitutional.
In addition to the above, a closer look at Alito’s record shows that he has voted more in favor of the pro-choice side than the pro-life side, The Christian Science Monitor writes,
Now as far as the specific case you mentioned, the article writes,
Clearly Alito is a judge who takes being a Judge, and only a judge, not a legislator, seriously, and it is THIS that scares the hard left the most, with judges like this, they know they can no longer forcefully pass their liberal theocracy on the rest of us, and knowing that the voters would never approve of their ideas, they are now left with nothing.
O’Connor who wrote the opinion not Rehnquist said it was incorrect using the undue burden clause. also in this cases and many others Rehnquist and the other members of the extreme right stated that they don’t beleive the “undue burden” clause is constitutional, so why would he endorse it.
“know they can no longer forcefully pass their liberal theocracy on the rest of us, and knowing that the voters would never approve of their ideas, they are now left with nothing.”
According to a Gallup poll released this morning an overwhelming majority believe that Alito should not be confirmed if he plans on overturning Roe v Wade.
“And when in doubt, as I’ve said before, I would always err on the side of voters and legislators deciding the moral issues, not judges”
This is a myth too, all of the consevative judges over the past 10 judges have overruled acts of legislatures more often than the liberal judges. It is all rhetoric and soundbytes.
Your point is taken on partial birth abortions. I respect him for his interpeation.
Look at this point based upon the limited information that I know about him, he should probably be confirmed. He seems qualified and his views are not so outside the mainstream to not sit on the court.
Also, I think that the “liberal justices on the court” also base their opinions on the rule of law and not personal opinion as Justice Stevens cited in his dicussion of how much it hurt him to vote as he did in the Eminent domain case in CT.
According to a Gallup poll released this morning an overwhelming majority believe that Alito should not be confirmed if he plans on overturning Roe v Wade.
This is a perfect example of why one should be skeptical about polls, what the majority of people are afraid of is not Roe Vs. Wade being overturned, but a complete ban on abortion, which is what they equate overturning Roe vs. Wade with. If you ask the average joe if States, as opposed to the Supreme Court, should decide their own abortion laws, the results of those polls would be very different. In addition, the vast majority of Americans would support a much more regulated form of abortion, than is allowed with Roe vs. Wade.
One more thing on the Casey case, I did some more searching around, and check out this little tid bit I found by Karlyn Bowman in Roll Call,
So clearly, whether you, I, or Alito like the law is irrelavant, what is clear, is that the voters themselves, along with the legislators that enacted the law, strongly supported the law, and a Judge has no place, unless the circumstances are extreme, preventing such moral decisions from being enforced.
And all this time I thought Sam Alito was a city in California.
HP wrote:
“what is clear, is that the voters themselves, along with the legislators that enacted the law,”
This is sound
It will be interesting how things unfold in regard to Alito.