Stace said:
I didn't follow the Roberts hearings at all, but I did watch a good portion of the Alito hearings....and even as a liberal, I didn't really see or hear anything that would indicate he would be a bad judge, or even really a partisan judge .
You are talking about a man who would allow a 10 year old girl to be strip searched by the police even if she was not named in the search warrant. When Alito was asked why he would allow that to happen, his answer was chilling: "ALITO: Senator, I wasn't happy that a 10-year-old was searched.
Now, there wasn't any claim in this case that the search was
carried out in any sort of an abusive fashion. It was carried out by
a female officer. And that wasn't the issue in the case.
And I don't think there should be a Fourth Amendment rule -- but,
of course, it's not up to me to decide -- that minors can never be
searched. Because if we had a rule like that, then where would drug
dealers hide their drugs?" [
http://www.law.umich.edu/library/news/topics/alito/confirmationhearings/transcriptjanuary10.pdf]
This is the same person who believes "that the attorney general should have the absolute immunity, even for actions that he knows to be unlawful or
unconstitutional; suggested that the court should give a president's
signing statement great deference in determining the meaning and the
intent of the law; ";
"While at the Justice Department, Alito said that he “personally believe[d] very
strongly” in opposition to affirmative action, even as a remedy for past
discrimination, claiming that he was opposing quotas and making arguments
rejected by the Supreme Court. At the same time, he proudly touted his
membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a notorious Princeton alumni
group that advocated quotas intended to harm women and minorities.17"
"While at the Justice Department, Alito maintained that the Constitution
permits police to shoot in the back and kill an unarmed 15-year-old boy
suspected of a nonviolent offense, and that the police action was not even a
“seizure” under the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled precisely
the opposite, with every member of the Court disagreeing with Alito’s view
on whether the Fourth Amendment applied, and every police group that filed a
brief in the case disagreeing with Alito’s position."
Leave it to Alito and we go back to the Stone Age as far as civil liberties is concerned.
