The hearings are in recess until 2:15 EST. What are your impressions of Alito, and the Senators?
About The Author

BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
All I know is, Ted Kennedy called a couple of his fellow senators “scurrilous dogs” when they jokingly objected to Specter’s decision to give him a couple of extra minutes due to the clock malfunction. I have never heard someone actually use this as a ‘barb’ in real life. It was hilarious, in a senatorial way.
Hah. I must have missed that while I was getting more milk-bones (an emergency).
After reading up all the live threads here and on dKos, I am loving the order that the dems are going in.
After some of the issues that have been touched upon by Kennedy and Leahy (and Specter and Biden as well), Alito cannot be looking forward to the grilling he’s going to get from Chucky and Russ.
Does anyone think they are saving the abortion issue for DiFi? Seeing she is the only woman on the committee?
I don’t mind that Biden told him he didn’t care about whether or not he was prochoice or prolife but has different reasons to take issue with him and abortion related cases. Joe is just taking all the “talking points” away from the religious nutcases and still addressing the loss of constitutional rights. We have enough Dems who will let him know that they do care and do want the unconstitutionality of making abortion illegal brought up too in just those terms without even talking about the “fetus”.
It is possible, but there was some discussion of it under the first part of Specter’s time. I’m just going to copy Armando’s summary over here, since the story has a ton of comments and takes a long time to load (I hope nobody minds):
It’s absolutely critical that we make this about more than abortion.
The big issue is executive power. … presidential “unitary” control … whatever you want to call it.
We have a king, not a president.
Abortion can somehow be affected by that, but we also must remember that the ‘wingers WANT abortion to stay an issue — they don’t want Roe overturned because it lets them appeal to the fundies out there.
i also meandered over to dailykos to check out their alito threads. … i ended up getting disgusted at the cheap shots some posters were taking at his wife … about how she looked like she was on xanax or whatever.
She’s probably just trying to stay as still as possible when the camera includes her.
I wrote something derogatory about her below … but not that.
btw, Xanax is a drug prescribed to people with crippling, severe anxiety disorders, hardly a laughing matter.
Our culture is still quite insensitive to people with mental illnesses … and I”ve also noticed a terrible callousness towards alcoholics and drug addicts (including George Bush).
behind him is his wife. I had to go dig up some photos to figure out who she is. If the Clinton’s shared the Presidency the Alito’s will definitely be sharing the bench if he gets it. She reacts on cue to the questions he is asked and the questioners. She appears to me to be a real “climber” speaking in barefoot and pregnant terms and creeps me out because she has that super evil look to her that I have seen on the faces of woman who have succumbed to being second class citizens and are determined to claw their way to the top of that pile in order to feel better about themselves. Short term: She looks like an evil gossiping spiteful bitch! She looks like she would tell someone to go “F” themselves on the floor of the Senate! She looks like the only way she can hope to “achieve” in this lifetime is vicariously and carnivorously through her husband and I just don’t like the witch! She looks like she spanks him in black leather stilettos when he is “bad”.
She so has that pinched, nasty, “I really wear the pants” calculating look…and he is just a nerd. With the voice to match.
(How are those carpets? My paper is really moving along today…not.)
Don’t they call women like that a “beard” or cover wife?
It is bizarre to watch her hovering behind him, facially responding to everything the senators say, and almost mouthing his answers for him. And are they wearing the same glasses?
my carpets. Shucks, so I said what I had to say about the missus and I’d better get back to that shampooing. Boy you sure hit the nerd thing too though…..can you imagine the time and patience she has poured into the guy just getting him this far? He had better pay up and pay up big time. If he screws this up (and I’m sure she has taken down a few mental notes that she will be discussing with him tonight)she is going to beat his butt raw.
And make him wear that heavy studded collar with the electric shock thingy again…
again too……but at least he doesn’t think so much about the “guys” when he has to wear it and feels closer to the Lord. If I don’t get shampooing I’m going to get myself in trouble.
She’s a Bobblehead Bitty
She doesn’t wear the pants.. She presses them for her man.
I’m waiting for her to jump and start singing “Stand by your man” with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Aw fuck it here’s run down of her.
She’s part Bobblehead
part Stepford Wife
with a pinch of repressed woman who felt she committed a “sin” after a learning to ride a girl’s bike incident
She’s what the Red Regime want us ALL TO BE. ACCCK run run for your very lives….
Sorry, self-censoring here, this is a family blog right?
but you have been tagged 🙂
oh freakin’ hell Man E… way to pressure a girl into
a) actually posting on my blog again &
b) revealing my deepest darkest quirks… okay, maybe they don’t have to be deep & dark, but STILL!! 😉
Apparantly the word has gone out to counter the drumbeat of corruption, corruption, corruption.
I’m wandering off to the kitchen every time I hear integrity integrity integrity.
while in the car. But here’s my opinion anyway.
OrrinHatch2000.com answered all the questions he asked himself. Alito wasn’t giving clear enough answers to the softballs; so OrrinHatch2000.com had to help him. A lot.
Joe Biden can kiss my ass. I don’t know if I agreed or disagreed with anything he said, because it was so hard to tell what he was saying, because…It’s The JOE BIDEN SHOW! All about Joey, all the time. I guess his kids went to Ivy League schools. I guess he’s a regular guy. I’m talking about Biden, because I know nothing more about Alito now.
OrrinHatch2000.com was expected to suck and did. Biden shocked me in taking this historic opportunity and running with it…for President. What a tool.
Joe has the wit and the brains and the savvy to deliver punch after punch … and you’re right to call him on going on and on about irrelevant stuff too much … it’s Senator-speak, and it is a disease that afflicts every Senate hearing.
(Sam, honey, we need you …)
because I agree, Biden can be devastating when he is focused. But I haven’t seen him properly focused in many years. I look forward to his retirement.
Someone on the NPR live broadcast just said Biden didn’t ask a question until minute 24 of his 30 minutes. That’s what I call a waste of my tax dollars.
you underestimate the psychic torture Biden did to Alito by talking for 24 straight minutes at him.
LMAOFOTF.
Biden is your boy, Boo. Don’t ever forget it.
Biden…talks to much. Christ..Alito will sail right through if every Senator is like Biden. This is the time to let Alito tell us what he is about, to maybe let him hang himself, not to hear about Biden’s kids and family life. Our Senators need to ask precise questions and let Alito spend time answering them. This is about Alito, his past opinions and rulings, and what he will do if confirmed to the SCOTUS, not about the Senators and their bag of wind questions that go on way to long. I was disgusted with Biden this morning.
cubicle-ized at work, I’ve only been following on the blog threads.
My impression, so far, is that I don’t yet see any momentum building towards filibuster.
Unless that happens, the rest of this is meaningless political theater.
You’d think that they’d be a little more energized or enthusiastic or something if they were planning to filibuster. Are they just doing this so they can whine and cry about “but we’re the minority party-we shouldn’t be expected to do anything right” yet again?
My GUT tells me:
Alito is a sociopathic as Bush, just with a much higher IQ and a lot more education.
He is nearly, if not completely, without feeling.
He is married to a woman who is just like him. And her mother is Barbara Bush times two — did you see that old bat chewing gum to beat the band yesterday when she was introduced?
He has learned — like all successful sociopaths do — to feign, somewhat, a sense of affability.
But he is one cold bastard. Remember when Dukakis blew the answer to _ __ (going blank, the CNN anchor) asking him if his wife Kitty were raped, how he would react … and Dukakis was cold and analytical? Dukakis has real feelings … but Alito is coming off like that … that horrible story of the 10-year-old girl and the farmers (which Jerry described so well when he was live-blogging) are heart-rending … Alito displayed zero compassion or even recognition of what those people went through.
Has anyone, like, dug around his property or under his basement for possibly bodies of missing teenage boys???
The dude has a swarmy look to him. Someone I’d tell my kids to stay away from. I KNOW I KNOW it’s not an intelligent position.. but the dude gives off some serious heebie jeebie vibes to me.
I shared with Tracy my felings about his bobbleheaded stepford wife. EW!!!
🙂