Judge Samuel Alito Hearings Begin, and the Democrats Still Don't Get It...

Today at work I was listening a bit to some of the opening statements in the Alito hearings, and I could only shake my head and wonder how some of these people ever got to the Senate in the first place.

For example, Senator Feinstein (D-CA) wondered (these were opening statements, not questions yet) how Judge Alito would vote regarding the Senate's authority under the Protection of Interstate Trade and Commerce to pass anti-gun legislation:

"Let me give you one example here – and that’s the Rybar case. Your dissent argued that Congress lacked the authority to ban the possession and transfer of machine guns, based essentially on a technicality that Congressional findings from previous statutes were not explicitly incorporated in the legislation." ....

"I am concerned that the Rybar opinion demonstrates a willingness to strike down laws with which you personally may disagree by employing a narrow reading of Congress’s constitutional authority to enact legislation."

Basically, I got the impression that Sen. Feinstein wants to know if he will begin to limit Congress' ability to throw damn near anything they want under the Commerce Clause, including things that were never intended by the Framers to be controlled by the Federal Government, like firearms. It should be obvious that the Congress is overreaching, and that anything that appears out of reach to them is put under the Commerce Clause. It seems Sen. Feinstein doesn't want to lose this power, and feels very threatened by Judge Alito - his "personal opinions"are her scapegoat.

Senator Biden (D-DE) had the following to say:

"I cannot imagine, notwithstanding what many of my colleagues who I have great respect for believe, I can't imagine the founders when they sat down and wrote the document and got to the appointments clause said: You know what? The American people are entitled know before we make him president, before we make her senator, before we make him congressman what they believe on the major issues of the day.

But judges, Supreme Court nominees, as long as they're smart and honest and decent, it really doesn't matter what they think. We don't have to know.

I can't fathom -- can't fathom that that was the intent of the founders. They intended the American people to know what their nominees thought."

Well Senator, they were a lot smarter than you are because they realized that the Supreme Court is not a place for new ideas - it is a place to apply the Consitution, as it is written, to today's court cases. The reason the Founding Fathers put it that way is because they assumed that the appointments to the bench would be impartial, regardless of their personal beliefs. You obviously believe that the Court is where your own personal agenda and ideas of how things should be can be put into action.

Other common threads from the Democrats were abortion (how will he vote????!!!!), playing of the "minority card" since he will be replacing a woman Justice: "And it's also important to note that you're slated to replace the first woman ever nominated to the Supreme Court. We can pretend that's not the fact but it is. And through no fault of your own, we're cutting the number of women in half on the court. (Sen. Biden), and upsetting of the "balance" of the court.

All of these points brought up by the Democrats are nonsense, and have no business being discussed in this context.

I only hope that if the Democrats decide to fillibuster this nomination, that the Republican majority takes action and does not allow it - for that is another thing the Founding Fathers never intended: a filibuster of Judicial nominees.