Posted on 11/02/2005 1:49:04 AM PST by nickcarraway
PRINCETON, N.J. -- As a senior at Princeton University, Samuel A. Alito Jr. chaired an undergraduate task force that recommended the decriminalization of sodomy, accused the CIA and the FBI of invading the privacy of citizens, and said discrimination against gays in hiring ''should be forbidden."
The report, issued in 1971 by Alito and 16 other Princeton students, stemmed from a class assignment to study the ''boundaries of privacy in American society" and to recommend ways to protect individual rights.
The far-ranging report, which satisfied a requirement for public policy students and which was stored in the university's Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, provided a glimpse of a more liberal Alito than the jurist is now perceived.
''We sense a great threat to privacy in modern America," Alito wrote in a foreword to the report, in 1971. ''We all believe that privacy is too often sacrificed to other values; we all believe that the threat to privacy is steadily and rapidly mounting; we all believe that action must be taken on many fronts now to preserve privacy."
A classmate, Jeffrey G. Weil, said yesterday that Alito, one of the top seniors in his class, had been selected to advise juniors writing the report, coaching them through the research and then writing an introduction explaining their recommendations.
Alito was ''not a person who has an agenda in terms of changing the world," said Weil, who is now a lawyer in Philadelphia. His role was mostly advisory, said Weil, who wrote the section of the report dealing with gay rights but who said he could not remember whether Alito personally agreed with the recommendations.
The Supreme Court did not strike down laws prohibiting gay sex until the Lawrence v. Texas case in 2003. Many social conservatives have criticized that decision.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
and of course I still harbor the same thoughts that I did in 1971 as well!!!
Before anyone gets crazy . . .
in 1971 - the FBI / CIA and MI were all rountinely "invading privacy" - these invasions were part of the rational behind the prohibitions on investigations of "US Persons" (later Gorelick's Wall, etc...)
Expressing a desire for more protections against such invasions in no way contradicts with conservative values!!!
Even in my youth I was not a privacy-busting gay-hating zealot. ;-)
How is it we can read this report by Alito but Hillary's graduate thesis is still locked a way in a court ordered vault?
Only the idiots who decided Row could draw a link between privacy and homicide.
If you are 20 and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you are 40 and not a conservative, you have no brain.
Bring Back Harriet! ;-)
>>A lot of us where like this in our youth.
I voted for McGovern
When I was much younger, I thought pro-life protestors were a bunch of kooks. But now I know the truth because I've actually had many years to think about the issue and learn.
This 1971 report of a young Alito doesn't compare to the neoMarxist paper that a younger hitlery klintoon wrote during her college days.
But....but...I was a Goldwater Republican at the the age of four. I guess I never had a heart and always had a brain.
Bwahahahahaha - Good belly laugh -bump- this AM.
Thats it! Bush has done it again. Dump Alito!
Oh no! Am I going to be held accountable for some over the top remarks I may have made or written when I was a FRESHMAN in College and 17 years old.
I certainly hope not.
Please get off Alito's case. Leave the trashing to the Dims; it so much demeans you.
Glad it gave you a chuckle. As a fellow veteran of the Miers-thread wars, you knew I was joking!
Same here.
"How is it we can read this report by Alito but Hillary's graduate thesis is still locked a way in a court ordered vault?"
What an excellent point.
It is hard to believe that nobody has a copy stashed away. Maybe one will turn up for sale on eBay.... now that would be an interesting project.
How would you tell the real from the fake unless you had the actual real copy in hand?
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