Stari-Eyed Salazar

Sen. Ken Salazar (D, Co) was elected to the U.S. Senate only a year ago after a campaign in which he promised not to take part in any filibuster of judicial nominees. So, what does he say now about the possibility of filibustering Judge Alito?

“It’s an option out there,” he said. “I’m not saying whether I would be participating in one or not.”

Sounds like he was against filibusters … before he was for them.

Sen. Salazar is one of the Democrats in the “Gang of 14,” which promised to eschew filibusters except in extraordinary circumstances. What, then, does Salazar find in Alito’s record that might be extraordinary? According to the Rocky Mountain News, Salazar

said he is still undecided on Alito’s nomination, but is concered about a 1985 job application in which Alito said “racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.”

Judge Alito’s 1985 statement about the constitutional status of abortion has received a great deal of attention, but I find it equally if not more striking that an important Democrat, widely perceived to be “moderate,” so openly acknowledges that he believes racial and ethnic quotas should be allowed.

When the Denver Post

[a]sked what he didn’t hear from Alito that he wanted to hear, Salazar said:

“On the issue of diversity and Affirmative Action that he would have said the [Grutter] decision which was the decision of the majority in the Supreme Court is precedent. I recognize stari decisis [sic] for what it is and that will be what will guide me on the Supreme Court. I did not hear that from him,” Salazar said.

Salazar was not asked whether he thinks Supreme Court justices who were not guided by clear precedents were wrong when they decided to outlaw racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, prevent state legislatures from radically gerrymandering electoral districts in Baker v. Carr, or protect gay rights in Lawrence v. Texas.

I’m tempted to say that Sen. Salazar wants the Court to be bound by precedent only when he agrees with the precedent, but to say that would be to call him unprincipled.