In today’s Washington Post Bruce Fein, associate deputy attorney general and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan, offers powerful criticism of Republicans running from their judicial principles.
Misreading Robert H. Bork’s 1987 shipwreck, the White House is bizarrely instructing its Supreme Court nominees to disown their prior attacks on wayward constitutional thinking from the high court. During his confirmation hearing for the post of chief justice, John Roberts dismissed tomes of the brilliant, caustic critiques of past constitutional capers that he authored under President Ronald Reagan, calling them merely an attorney’s advice to a client….
Now, Samuel Alito Jr. is similarly insisting that he served in the Reagan administration as an ambitious apparatchik uncommitted to conservative principles. According to senators whose statements have been denied by neither the White House nor the nominee, Alito has distanced himself from his own writings assailing Roe and a cluster of dogmas dear to Democrats — for example, racial preferences and welfare rights. Those writings, Alito is now saying, were crafted to curry favor with his superiors but did not reflect the authentic Alito.
Fein argues that this dissembling is both offensive and unnecessary.
Bush’s embrace of his nominees’ lack of candor regarding their Reagan-era paper trails might be defensible if it were necessary for confirmation. But it isn’t. The circumstances that led to Bork’s rejection no longer apply. In 1987, the Senate was in the hands of Democrats. It is now run by Republicans, whose margin jumped to 55-45 in the 2004 elections, when the issue of judicial appointments figured prominently in Senate races.
Additionally, the nation is more ideologically conservative today than it was in 1987, when Democrats controlled Congress and the media were overwhelmingly liberal….
Finally, conservatives were unprepared to respond to the liberal polemics aimed at Bork…. Today, in contrast, conservative organizations like the Committee for Justice or Progress for America are flush with funds, talent and media access to promote Alito’s credentials and to answer extremist liberal detractors like People for the American Way or Alliance for Justice.
I suspect that part of the reason we don’t get straight answers is that we don’t have enough straight questions. Fein is primarily concerned in this piece with Roe, but along the way he mentions race, quoting a moving sentence from Justice John Marshall Harlan’s eloquent Plessy dissent:
The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or color when his civil rights are guanteed by the supreme law of the land.
No Democratic senator today can honestly agree with that statement, and most of them forthrightly and affirmatively advocate taking “account” of race to award racial preferences. Most Republicans officeholders do agree with Harlan, but are generally afraid to say so in public.
Forget the Democrats; we know where they stand. What we need is some Republican senators who will press Judge Alito on this issue. It would have been easier to do this if the White House had been more outspoken over the past five years in saying that racial discrimination — of any sort, for any reason — is wrong.
“I suspect that part of the reason we don’t get straight answers is that we don’t have enough straight questions. ”
The other problem is that the things that Alito put on his job application are plain old unpopular. And he better run away from them.
The other problem is that the things that Alito put on his job application are plain old unpopular. And he better run away from them.
At least as regards race, this is pure baloney, as evidenced most recently and most strongly by the Democrats’ strenuous efforts to keep racial equality off the ballot in Michigan.
“At least as regards race, this is pure baloney, as evidenced most recently and most strongly by the Democrats’ strenuous efforts to keep racial equality off the ballot in Michigan.”
At least as regards race, Alito aligned himself with a group that bemoaned integration and supported white quotas! That, my friend, is unpopular.
At least as regards race, Alito aligned himself with a group that bemoaned integration and supported white quotas! That, my friend, is unpopular.
It is also baloney on stilts…
“It is also baloney on stilts”
That what? CAP was into this stuff? or that Alito was into CAP? You know conservatives were very ugly back in the day. They didn’t like all this uppity change with women and black people coming into the white male world. It was a big liberal conspiracy see…
actus, I am not sure who you’re talking about here. Is it that Princeton alumni association? Or a plaintiff or defendant in a particular case that I don’t remember reading of?
Speaking of quotas and the like, though, this is somewhat OT but interesting. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a small piece this morning saying, cheerily, that the number of Black and Hispanic students coming in as freshmen in 2006 is up slightly from last year’s apparently disastrous numbers. “The figures are numerically slight but show that the university is doing better in its effort to attract a student body that reflects the demographics of the state,” the piece says.
Well, in the first place, “reflecting the demographics of the state” is not only not their job, but actually forbidden by CA law; and in the second place, if that’s what they were trying to do, they did it unbelievably badly, because the same article states that the Asian-American proportion of the entering class is 48%, up from 45% last year. The proportion of CA’s population that called itself Asian-American in the 2000 Census was a little over 10%. You’d think an almost five-fold overrepresentation would warrant notice. (In fact it got some in the article: “Campus officials” said that Asian-Americans were more likely to be UC-eligible (i.e., had high grades and/or good SATs), and also accepted UCB more often than members of other groups when invited to attend.
Inquiring minds will have noticed that if the Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American fractions of the freshman class all went up, something else will have gone down. Any guesses? (UC’s site was hosed when I tried to get at it, but I’ll report back.)
Sorry. I was writing while actus was posting. So actus did mean CAP.
actus, I will be surprised if you can substantiate what you say about CAP. So far all I have seen is that some members of CAP opposed making Princeton co-educational. Forgive my not falling down in a girlish early-Victorian swoon at the news. I am not sure what the “white quota” business is, but I’m quite positive that in the current university world, whites and men are the two categories that haven’t got de facto minima. They’re going to be needing them soon, though.
“actus, I will be surprised if you can substantiate what you say about CAP. So far all I have seen is that some members of CAP opposed making Princeton co-educational.”
What were the Concerned Alumni of Princeton concerned about?
“I am not sure what the “white quota” business is, but I’m quite positive that in the current university world, whites and men are the two categories that haven’t got de facto minima.”
CAP argued for them. Definately for males. And they argued that minority enrollment was too high.
“They’re going to be needing them soon, though.”
Poor fellas! Right around the time when o’connor’s 25 year limit sets in! Maybe she should be replaced by alito
CAP argued for them. Definately for males. And they argued that minority enrollment was too high.
CAP was against co-education at Princeton. Would you provide some evidence for your claim that it also opposed integration and supported “white quotas”? And while you’re at it, you might also want to provide some evidence for your first claim, that Alito’s view’s on race (opposition to racial preferences) is “unpopular.”
“Would you provide some evidence for your claim that it also opposed integration and supported “white quotas”? ”
Sho thing boss. Obsidian Wings has some quotes where they bemoan that there are too many minorities.
I wonder how one could read their actions at preserving legacy admissions against minority ones.
“And while you’re at it, you might also want to provide some evidence for your first claim, that Alito’s view’s on race (opposition to racial preferences) is “unpopular.”
Oh, that wasn’t my claim. My claim was that CAP’s views, which he touts on job applications, is unpopular.
Actually, Obsidian Wings doesn’t have any quotes where they bemoan that there are too many minorities.
Obsidian Wings has quotes where they bemoan that there are too many women. Obsidian Wings has one quote, from a letter to the editor of CAP’s magazine, which bemoans that there are too many minorities.
Not only are you attributing to Alito a belief based on a quote that he didn’t say, but you’re attributing it to Alito based on a quote that wasn’t said by an organization he belonged to.
(Besides, if one could attribute those views to Alito based on his membership in CAP, then pro-affirmative action types should love him. CAP agreed with the latter. They all think that non-discrimination isn’t an important principle, that there are other goals which supercede it.)