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    Cal » Blog Archive » dodged a bullet
    overheard on the subway »

    dodged a bullet

    I have to say that barring some sudden revelation that Samuel Alito chains his kids in the basement, eats puppies for lunch, or something like that, the nation has yet again been given a gift we could barely have hoped to receive. Certainly what I said when Roberts was nominated is still true: if I could sculpt my own Supreme Court nominee out of clay, he would not look exactly like Alito. But the impression that I get of this man is of a brilliant, devoted, deeply good human being who has spent his life trying to do well by his country.

    Before making any snap judgements, though, I took a couple hours last night and read summaries of the District and Appeals Courts’ decisions on ‘Planned Parenthood v. Casey,’ along with most of O’Connor’s decision and all of Rehnquist and Alito’s dissents. And I have to say that far from scaring me, I was made all the more happy about the Bush White House’s decision. I appreciate O’Connor’s desire to bolster Roe, and I think that her decision was, if not correct, at least very close to correct and therefore acceptable to me.

    But the fact is that Alito’s dissent from the District Court’s opinion is extremely well thought out and shows a man who is truly concerned about the issues at stake (and it makes Rehnquist’s look like an op-ed piece). He attempts to judge the case on the basis of O’Connor’s prior framing of the issue and, although I freely grant my layman status when it comes to Constitutional law, I think that he wound up possibly doing a better job of sticking to this established framework than O’Connor herself did when she subsequently overruled his objections and struck down the Pennsylvania law. Really, I think that his take and O’Connor’s on the ‘husband notification clause’ were only a small distance apart - just on opposite sides of the dividing line.

    The really amazing thing in all of this is that this man was given to us by the same dysfunctional gestalt brain that gave us the Miers nonentity. What diseased system of reasoning makes this man a *second choice* after Miers?

    Anyway, I think that with Roberts and Alito the sword of Damocles that has hung over our nation for 12 years has finally been taken down.

    Cal

    O’Connor’s Opinion

    Alito’s Prior Dissent

    This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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