Stuart Taylor on Alito vs. Ginsburg

Stuart Taylor of National Journal, as he often does, provides a very cogent analysis of the Left's latest smear of Judge Alito.

PA Supreme Court Justice Nigro Ousted

The legal Intelligencer today ran this report on the historic vote yesterday in Pennsylvania. For those not following closely, in the 36 years that Pennsylvania has required its judges to run in retention elections, no sitting appellate judge had ever lost such a ballot. Yesterday, Pennsylvania voters, upset with the stench emanating from what many believed to be an unconstitutional pay raise enacted for the benefit of Pennsylvania's legislators, judges and exeutive branch officials, did Justice Russell Nigro the honior of making him the first sitting appellate judge to lose a retention election. Not altogether a bad result, in my opinion.

Organized Dishonesty

It is clear, in the first days of the Alito confirmation process, that the Democratic party and its assorted flunkies will not hesitate to resort to lies and distortion to try and derail this nomination. Ken Salazar, just interviewed on Fox News, actually suggested that those people who know the judge, have worked with him or have argued before him, have described him as a "conservative ideologue." This is a blatant lie. Not one of any such people quoted anywhere so far have described the judge in that manner. To the contrary, Judge Alito's colleagues, friends and lawyers who have appeared before him (myself included) have uniformly described Judge Alito as conservative, yes, but thoughtful, diligent, prudent and restrained. I have nowhere seen the term "ideologue" used except from extreme Democratic partisans such as Harry Reid and Chuckie Boy Schumer and left wing crank organizations such as NOW, Planned Parenthood and MoveOn. The liberal partisans have made clear that they will not let truth get in their way, and they are not to be taken seriously. Ken Salazar, a purported moderate who while campaigning for office pledged to support the President's judicial nominees, should know better and should be embarrassed at having bought into the mendacious left wing spin.