Other Columns by Doug Patton
Doug Patton Bio

Printer-Friendly Version

With war and scandal, real and manufactured, dominating the political landscape in Washington, it is easy for the average harried American to forget that a crucial nomination to the United States Supreme Court, one which could shift the ideological balance of power in the federal judiciary, is still pending.

After the Harriet Miers debacle last fall, President Bush named Federal Appeals Court Judge Samuel Alito, arguably the most qualified nominee in the last seventy years, to succeed retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, always willing to undermine a solid conservative court nominee whenever the opportunity arises, stalled Judge Alito's committee hearings until this month. This, of course, gave the president's opponents plenty of time to gather all the ammunition they could muster against the judge. Now, in a vain attempt to "Bork" him, the left has trotted out a whole list of offenses he has allegedly committed.

According to two of the U. S. Senate's most vocal Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York and Diane Feinstein of California, Judge Alito may be the most dangerous man to walk the earth since Adolf Hitler.

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," Schumer unleashed a ridiculous litany of charges against Alito. First, he claimed that the judge supported the unrestricted sale of machine guns to the public; then he said that Alito favored unrestricted presidential powers in dealing with terrorists.

Of course, none of Alito's rulings in fifteen years as a federal judge suggests such activist zealotry, but facts never stop liberals from lying about a man's record, and Schumer was on a roll. In fact, his diatribe continued until host Tim Russert pointed out that the American Bar Association had given Judge Alito its highest rating, at which time Schumer was forced to admit that, yes, Alito did, in fact, possess the qualifications and the temperament for the job. However, qualifications and temperament apparently matter little to the left. The most crucial consideration, according to Schumer, was Alito's "judicial philosophy."

This should tell us all we need to know about the agenda of radical Dems in the U. S. Senate.

Schumer described Clinton Supreme Court appointee Ruth Bader Ginsburg (a former lead counsel for the ACLU who had written that the age of consent should be lowered to 12) as "mainstream," and called Justice Stephen Breyer (a former aide to Ted Kennedy and Clinton's other High Court appointee) "a moderate."

Feinstein was coyer with Brit Hume on "Fox News Sunday," but it was clear that she and Schumer were reading from the same talking points. Both spoke of Alito as being "out of the mainstream," a favorite criticism of conservatives.

While Democrats talk of all the many issues that "trouble" them about the Alito nomination, the one issue that truly concerns them is abortion. This is because they know that Roe vs. Wade was built on judicial quicksand, and because they understand how divided Americans are on the issue. But as Rush Limbaugh once observed, feminism has become a religious cult, with abortion as its sacrament. Given that reality, Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein have become the cult's high priest and priestess, charged with protecting feminism's holy grail at all costs on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

>> Continued -- Page 1 2