More Amnesia--Now With Added Arrogance!

The Judiciary Committee passed Judge Alito's nomination to the Senate floor on a 10-8 party-line vote. This is good, right? Sure--according to California Yankee's scorecard, Alito's got 52 YEAs, meaning a minimum two vote surplus.¹ But righty lawyers worship reason, not results; the left -- grass-roots, organizers but especially Senatorial -- are stuck on stupid:

• Senator Herbert Kohl (D-WI):

  After thorough examination, Mr. Chairman, I regret that I cannot support the nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.
  
  I fear that a Justice Alito will narrow our rights, limit our freedoms and overturn decades of progress. . .
  
  Generations of Americans have looked to the Supreme Court as more than a simple legal tribunal asked to decide cases and controversies. Rather, we expect the Supreme Court to guard our liberties, protect our rights and, where appropriate, expand our freedoms.

  United States Constitution, Art. III, Sec. 2, cl. 1:

  The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; . . . to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--. . . and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. (emphasis added)

• Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) :

  Think how much better it would have been if, in this case, President Bush had sought any one of dozens upon dozens of highly qualified people -- highly qualified people, men and women, various ethnic backgrounds, all of whom would have gotten an overwhelmingly -- overwhelmingly, if not unanimous, vote from the Senate.

  Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495 (2000) (Kennedy, J.) (reviewing Hawaii board of trustee elections open only to voters of designated race/ancestry):

  The State's position rests, in the end, on the demeaning premise that citizens of a particular race are somehow more qualified than others to vote on certain matters. . . All citizens, regardless of race, have an interest in selecting officials who make policies on their behalf, even if those policies will affect some groups more than others. . . Hawaii may not assume, based on race, that petitioner or any other of its citizens will not cast a principled vote.

• Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY):

  If Judge Alito has been so willing to disregard the precedents of his own court in unprecedented ways, what solace can we take in his professed allegiance to stare decisis should he be confirmed to the Supreme Court where he would have even more freedom to overturn important and settled precedents relied upon by millions of Americans? . . .
  
  What of Morrison v. Olson which held that the president does not have the total and unfettered power to fire independent officials? Here, too, there is cause for alarm because Judge Alito has stridently endorsed the view of the lone dissenter, Judge Scalia, and refused meaningfully to distance himself from that view in the hearings.

  NY Sun Editorial, Jan. 25, 2006:

  A funny thing has happened on the way to the confirmation (or filibuster) of Judge Alito. No one seems to be commenting on it, but the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have broken out with the fantods over Judge Alito's willingness to side with Justice Scalia in his famous dissent in Morrison v. Olson. That is the 1988 case in which the majority opposed to Justice Scalia gave its stamp of approval to the idea of an independent counsel. So what the minority on the Judiciary Committee is carping about in respect of Judge Alito is that he might not have allowed Kenneth Starr to ruin the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton.

• Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA):

  He never satisfactorily explained his reason for advocating such an extraordinary departure from the basic understanding of the Constitution, that the courts are intended to be coequal with the president and Congress.
  
  When I asked him about his extreme statement, he said it was inapt. That's certainly true, but it does not begin to tell the American people why he would make a statement so at odds with the checks and balances that have guided our democracy for two centuries. . .
  
  The record demonstrates that we cannot count on Judge Alito to blow the whistle when the president is out of bounds. He is a long- standing advocate for expanding executive power, even at the expense of core individual liberties.

  Leo Damore, Senatorial Privilege, Chapter 4 (1989):

  Joe Gargan, Paul Markham, and Senator Kennedy arrived at the ferry landing and parked the car facing Edgartown. During their drive from the bridge, Gargan had been insistent: "We have got to report this accident immediately," he had said repeatedly. Markham agreed, interjecting an occasional, "You're right, Joe."
  
  - Markham did not enjoy the same position of authority with Ted Kennedy that Gargan did, and because he "was really in pain, he wasn't being as forceful as I was about reporting the accident," Gargan recalled.
  
  - The Senator was silent during these discussions, but it was clear to Gargan that he did not want to report the accident at this time.
  
  - Kennedy began expressing alternate ideas about the situation:
  
  - "Why couldn't Mary Jo have been driving the car? Why couldn't she have let me off, and driven to the ferry herself and made a wrong turn?"
  
  - Kennedy asked to be brought back to the cottage to establish the story. After a while he would leave.
  
  - Kennedy suggested that when he was back at the Shiretown Inn, Gargan could "discover" the accident and report to police that Mary Jo had been alone in the car.
  
  - Gargan vigorously rejected the idea. "None of us knew Mary Jo very well," he said,"and we had no idea if she could drive a car, or even owned a license. And besides," he reminded Kennedy, "You told me you were driving!" (emphasis in original)

Conclusion: Lefties are neither coherent or honest. Which makes reasoned debate impossible--and adds demented deadweight to those still distinguishing good from evil, says MaxedOutMama:

The gulf between those on one side and between those on the other is real. There is probably no way to reconcile the worldview of those who look at Beslan and the continuous and savage attacks upon the civilian population in Iraq and form their conclusions as to what type of a threat the civilized world faces, and those who draw the conclusion that it is Bush's or Putin's fault. . .

It's an epistemological gap. On one side, you have a bunch of people who have seen the flames of the brushfire over the hill and are running around trying to clear firewalls, water down the roof and testing the wind to figure out where they can build backfires. On the other hand, you have Howard Dean, John Kerry and Pedro's friend with their hands clapped over their eyes wailing that all this disruption is hurtful, and that everyone has to stop it right now, because it's nap time.

A nap? Hell no!! Twenty five years on, it's still morning in America--especially on 1st Street, N.E.

More:

Ann Althouse catches the Dems nixing Alito for saying "stare decisis is not an inexorable command," though Chief Roberts used exactly the same phrase.
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¹ You know why, don't you? See also T. Lehrer, New Math, on That Was the Year That Was (1965) ("Hooray for new math/ New-hoo-hoo-math/ It won't do you a bit of good to review math. It's so simple/ So very simple/ That only a child can do it!").

(via Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, RightPundit)