Those who are springing into action to try to take down Alito by making him look like a right-wing ideologue seemed to have blinded themselves to the way they look. The Brady Campaign put out a press release calling Alito "'Machine Gun Sammy,' a Perfect Halloween Pick." Do they think only their hardcore supporters read their press releases? They seem so deeply embedded in partisan politics that they they don't even notice the danger that people will see them as:
1. Unfair to a worthy man with a long career of public service
2. Incapable of reading a judge's opinions and understanding legal reasoning
3. Willing to distort and deceive to advance their own political interest
4. Unconcerned about the longterm degradation of respect for the institution of law
5. Woefully ignorant of the fact that lawprofs and lawyers are reading their statements and blogging about them.
So far it's been like shooting fish in a barrel... with a machine gun.
Could you Alito enemies try to be a little subtle and crafty pursuing your agenda? I mean, we'll keep critiquing your efforts -- we aren't going to start feeling sorry for you -- but I'm getting bored with how easy the work is.
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Yes, PDS, and it's one liberals should be especially concerned about. We want courts to protect our rights. When people think rights are just so-called "rights" that judges make up to usurp power, all is lost.
Let's play the ethnic card. "Machine Gun Sammy" makes him sound like a gangster... you know, an Italian gangster. I don't necessarily buy that, but it's fun to see how the card is played.
Unfortunately the realm of rational reasoned debate has shifted (with some exceptions) to the center and the right since the left (or what is now defined as "left") is on an emotional rollercoaster and seems to think slogans = arguments.
You're the poster child Ann... a "liberal" who is now painted as conservative because you like and advocate for, and provide a forum for sober reasoned debate.
And it's also like a turkey shoot -- with a machine gun.
Troy:
"Unfortunately the realm of rational reasoned debate has shifted (with some exceptions) to the center and the right since the left (or what is now defined as "left") is on an emotional rollercoaster and seems to think slogans = arguments."
Yes. And it may be a permanent shift; there are already signs that the conservative side has become more open to talk about, say, poverty and the environment.
Once again a liberal group embarassingly seems to think that the most effective way to state their case is the most extreme way. I find myself asking "What are you guys, sixteen years old that this is satisfying to you???"
Every time I see Alito on tv, I feel so sorry for him that he's going to have to endure all this.
I'm shocked -- SHOCKED -- to hear that a leftwing group motivated purely by politics is using lies and deception to smear Alito...
...okay, maybe not so shocked.
wah -
I think you're right that the Brady Campaign is not a prototypical leftwing group, but in this particular case they do seem to be acting as part of the movement. They're helping out. And it may also be a hint that they're more spastically leftwing in general than their image.
"Positively 4th Street" keeps getting more up to date.
Harrie - I would guess they're left-wing in the same sense someone would guess an anti-gun control site would likely be right-wing. And there is a lot of stuff about "Bush" and "lies" on their home page. But your point is well-taken, they are single-issue zealots but not necessarily left-wing, there is little mention of other traditionally left-wing views.
Ann Althouse's concluding remarks remind me somewhat of my own efforts as a frequent commenter at http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com. Effect Measure is informative as regards pandemic influenza, but the political commentary, whether in the postings or in the comments, is often excruciatingly facile. I'm convinced some of the webloggers and commenters have large capacities; it's just that they're unchallenged. Challenging them politely is easy in one way and hard in another. The challenge for the challenger is to restrain one's tendency to deride, so that derision is reduced to showing its power as an effective tool of gentle persuasion rather than as a destroyer of people's very willingness to listen. And that brings us back around to the point of Ann Althouse's blog post.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are willing to settle for what they can get from Congress and the state legislatures, and (since the New Deal era, at least) have not viewed the court as a vehicle for imposing conservative principles on an unwilling public. Roe , for example, rests on a right to privacy that the court discovered lurking among the penumbras of various constitutional provisions. If conservatives reasoned like liberals, they could try to put the penumbras to work for them.
That is largely true but it may be more a consequence of conservatives' lack of power among legal scholars than anything else.
And while it is true of some kinds of conservatives, it is not true of others.
Some libertarian-leaning conservatives have argued that if it is unconstitutional for the goverment to tell you whose penis you can put in you, it is also unconstitutional for the government to tell you what food you can put in you, or what drug.
I think it was Justice Kennedy who had incredibly expansive language in some opinion about how every person had to be free to pursue their individual quest for meaning, and government can't interfere.
But since that inevitably involves what you do, what you buy, where you live, and so on, potentially all government regulation is unconstitutional. The argument won't go anywhere with judges today but I have heard people who get called "conservative" making it.
I'm a fan of Instapundit's view of Roe.
It is a IXth Amendment issue.
I'd like to see the government stay out of my bedroom. If that means I have a right to expect privacy from government snoops, so be it.
I'm a big fan of limited government an unenumerated rights. I think even a cursory reading of our Constitution would show that it was written with such intent in mind.
I'm a big fan of limited government and unenumerated rights. I think even a cursory reading of our Constitution would show that it was written with such intent in mind.
And as long as the Commerce Clause came up - Congress can regulate stuff - the purpose of the commerce clause was to fascilitate commerce. The current application of the clause gives Congress the unlimited power of restraint of trade and empowers rent seekers. Nothing like limited government at all.
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