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From Fox News' "Fox News Live" January 24, 2006Former DNC Chairman, Governor Ed Rendell [D-PA]: "I Believe He's A Qualified Judge. He Sits On The Third Circuit Court Of Appeals In Philadelphia. I Don't Know If You Know This ... My Wife Is A Third Circuit Court Judge."Fox News' Bill Hemmer: "I'm Aware Of That, And Your History In Philadelphia Should Give You Pretty Good Knowledge Of Him."Rendell: "Right. She Has A High Opinion Of His Integrity And His Academic Standards. She Disagrees With Him On A Number Of Cases And Agrees With Him On Some. I Disagree With A...

Now that the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito are over, what did we learn? That a nominee for the high court won’t answer questions he’s not supposed to answer? Or that liberals will then use those non-answers as a public rationale for opposition? We did learn (again) that televised Senate Judiciary Committee hearings featuring the questioning of a nominee have outlived their usefulness, if such usefulness ever truly existed. We also learned (again) what the left values and opposes in a judicial nominee. We learned that they hold results to be more important than old fashioned notions...

Sam Alito gets his first of two votes today, by the Senate Judiciary Committee to be followed later this week by the full Senate, and Mr. Alito can be excused if he thinks of these as his victory laps. The Democrats have not given up; somewhere in a basement in Washington aides are concocting further horror stories for their bosses to spring on the public today, tomorrow or the next day.

If Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearings lacked drama, apart from his wife's bizarrely over-covered crying jag, it is because they confirmed the obvious. Judge Alito is exactly the kind of legal thinker President Bush wants on the Supreme Court. He has a radically broad view of the president's power, and a radically narrow view of Congress's power. He has long argued that the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He wants to reduce the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans, and has a history of tilting the scales of justice against the little guy. As senators prepare to vote...

The year is 2009. President Hillary Clinton introduces a nationalized healthcare package, which she assembled after conducting a dozen secret meetings in the White House with George Soros, Big Labor, and unknown representatives from industry groups who stand to make a bundle. Judicial Watch files a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the minutes of the meetings. Clinton refuses, citing her Executive Privilege to hold private and confidential conversations about most anything she chooses. The case goes to the Supreme Court. How would Samuel Alito vote? President Al Gore, in a major speech on "the terrorism of child pornography," orders...

The Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito told us more about the Senators than it did about Judge Alito.First, there were those long-winded preambles to "questions" for the judge. Then there were the Mickey Mouse maneuvers and insinuations, spiced here and there with outright lies.The ridiculousness of the charges was classically illustrated by Senator Joseph Biden's claim that Alito had been part of a group that was trying to keep minorities and women out of Princeton. Apparently wanting everyone to meet the same admissions standards is considered to be the same as being against minorities and women.To dramatize his...

ABOUT THE ALITO HEARINGS, one thing is certain: If it had been the Concerned Alumni of Princeton that was up for confirmation, the nomination wouldn't even make it out of the Judiciary Committee. Democrats led by Sen. Edward Kennedy portrayed CAP as hostile to minorities and to coeducation and thus to women. And Republicans weren't about to get into a fight over CAP, which was formed in 1972, shortly after Princeton went coeducational and the same year Samuel Alito graduated. CAP went out of business in 1986.CAP drew the interest of committee Democrats because Alito once identified himself as a...

Those who hold hands with the future at night and relay their divinations tell us that Judge Alito will be OK'd by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a party vote. Some reach even further and predict that he will be confirmed by a party vote, but that there might be a little maneuvering on the floor in the matter of a filibuster.One is told not to expect a filibuster because it is a weapon of last resort, and weapons of last resort should be kept for last-resort use. Several times, in the recent past, the question has been raised whether...

 Ladies and gentlemen, Democrats of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, welcome to this introductory tour of the North American federalist in his natural habitat. We hope that by getting to know the 10-toed American federalist a bit better this afternoon, you'll avoid, in the future, some of the errors and missteps that have thus far plagued your efforts to understand, question, and possibly impugn them at confirmation hearings. Sen. Feinstein, please do try to keep up with the tour. We ask that you listen carefully as we debunk some of the stereotypes and myths you may have heard about...

Forget Sam Alito's tenuous ties, two decades ago, to the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Where's the outrage about Sen. Edward Kennedy's continuing membership in the Owl Club? Kennedy relentlessly badgered Judge Alito for listing the Princeton group on a job application in 1985, but The Washington Times reported Thursday that the Massachusetts senator remains active with the Owl - one of nine males-only fraternities that in 1984 Harvard "booted from the university for violating federal anti-discrimination laws, authored by Mr. Kennedy." TheNew York Times examined the records of CAP and found no evidence Alito was an active member. Yet the...

This is U.S. Appeals Court Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, a Clinton appointee who gave a glowing endorsement of her colleague, Sam Alito, earlier today, along with six other judges from the appeals court who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to support Alito. Chuck Schumer walked out before the judges started to speak. Teddy Kennedy showed up late, stayed for 10 minutes, then left. Pat Leahy put on a dour face for a short time, and also bailed... if Judge Barry were a screeching liberal moaning about Alito's threat to the female populace, the Dems would have been all ears--and...

Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court represents a grave threat to our fundamental liberties. His record makes it clear that he is a conservative activist who will put his personal ideology above the rule of law.If Alito replaces Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate justice who represented the swing vote in many cases, some of our most fundamental rights are at risk. Alito won't stand up to a president's abuse of power. He has said that the Constitution does not protect a woman's right to choose. And he has consistently used the bench as a launching pad for his conservative...

Samuel Alito Jr. wrote a memo in 1985 arguing there is no constitutional right to abortion, and pro-choice groups are alarmed by that document. They say it proves he's a right-wing extremist with a "long history of hostility to reproductive freedom," in the words of the National Abortion Federation.Maybe Alito is secretly plotting to make pregnancy mandatory for all fertile females, as the NAF sugests. But for those of us who are inclined to be charitable, there's another possible explanation for why he said the Constitution doesn't protection abortion rights: because it doesn't.It's true the Supreme Court has ruled it...

Ted Kennedy threw a tantrum yesterday. In the middle of the second day of the Judiciary Committee’s questioning of Judge Samuel Alito, Kennedy demanded the committee go into an executive session to vote on subpoenaing the private papers of William Rusher, a founding member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), and then threatened to disrupt the committee proceedings by repeating the request over and over until it was recognized.Chairman Arlen Specter, clearly surprised and annoyed by Kennedy’s antics, put the Senior Senator from Massachusetts in his place: “Well, Senator Kennedy, I’m not concerned about your threats to have votes...

President Bush declared Oklahoma a major disaster area due to wildfires. In Louisville, Kentucky, he gave a speech on the global war on terror, particularly Iraq. Judge Alito's wife left her husband's Senate hearing in tears as a result of the collegial Democrat Senators' "questions" to her husband. Welcome to Sanity Island.

With the battle over the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court set to take center stage on Monday, the American people have undoubtedly become familiar in past weeks with his critics -- along with their criticisms, attacks and mischaracterizations. If the best predictor of future behavior is past performance, then it is reasonable to expect that a host of rather predictable, knee-jerk criticisms -- which have already been refuted with fact -- will be leveled against this fine nominee in a misguided effort to discredit his qualifications. As a preview of the coming debate, here...

Yes, Senator Kennedy is at it again. Not content with destroying Judge Bork 20 years ago, Senator Kennedy, the same senator whose lifelong boorishness and feckless behavior brought such grief to his family and to the Kopechnes, has decided to savage the reputation of yet another good man, Judge Samuel A. Alito. I don’t know how anyone can keep a straight face as this man denigrates another person. In case you have forgotten, while Judge Bork’s garbage was being stolen and analyzed by Kennedy operatives (a new federal law was later passed forbidding this vile practice), Senator Kennedy said the...

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) threatened yesterday to strip Democrats of the power to filibuster if they block the vote on Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. "It would be against the intent of the Founding Fathers and our Constitution to deny Sam Alito an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate," he said on "Fox News Sunday." His willingness to consider a procedural maneuver called the "nuclear option" seemed somewhat premature. Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said that although he anticipates intense questioning of Alito during next month's hearings, he...

A POLITICAL sidebar that made surprising news the last few weeks is a phrase in a 1985 job application from now-Judge Sam Alito questioning the Warren Court's reapportionment decisions. That tidbit sent shock waves through the political and pundit classes. It shouldn't have. Justice-to-be Alito's statement wasn't an attack on equality, voting rights, or protecting victims of racial discrimination. It was a simple observation that a liberal court created a doctrine that, however salutary, has significant problems. Americans have long embraced the ideal of equality from ''all men are created equal" forward. Equality did not mean identical political influence in...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - It is the time of year when bedtime stories and television specials often recall the plucky reindeer and the little girl of Whoville who managed to save Christmas. This year, some conservative groups are hoping to add a new name to that pantheon of heroes: Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., the Supreme Court nominee. "Liberal groups like People for the American Way and the A.C.L.U. have opposed public Christmas and Hanukkah displays and even fought to keep Christmas carols out of school," declares a radio commercial paid for by the conservative Committee for Justice beginning Monday...