From WAPO (Read it all):

"For five years, President Bush waged war as he saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, he authorized it. If the military wanted to hold terrorism suspects without trial, he let it.

Now the Supreme Court has struck at the core of his presidency and dismissed the notion that the president alone can determine how to defend the country. In rejecting Bush's military tribunals for terrorism suspects, the high court ruled that even a wartime commander in chief must govern within constitutional confines significantly tighter than this president has believed appropriate."

Now of course, the strategy on The Right will be either to pooh pooh this as, "much ado about nothing," or "An outrage against a President only trying to protect us," depending on whatever Captain Ed and the Other BIG Right Wing Blogs say the spin should be.

At this point, honestly... I am far too busy to care. Bush got reigned in, its a good thing for the American people. Nuff said!

Others with thoughts:

New York Times, Firedoglake, democracyarsenal.org, TPMmuckraker, Bark Bark Woof Woof, The Heretik, Middle Earth Journal, The Strata-Sphere, The Peking Duck and The Rude Pundit

was story was just b.s.

The fact that Samuel Alito was a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and cited that fact on his 1985 job application, has been in the news recently; and it occurred to me that since I was a Princeton undergraduate (class of '81) while CAP was active, I might be able to provide some useful background on this one.

CAP is generally described as 'a conservative group'. But this is as misleading as calling the John Birch Society a 'conservative group' would be. There are lots of conservatives who are thoughtful and intelligent, and who have real intellectual integrity. Conservatives like this did not tend to join CAP. CAP was dedicated to finding outrages that it took to be caused by the horrible fact that women and minorities were being admitted to Princeton. The need to find outrages generally came first; any encounter with facts came later. For this reason, CAP tended to attract not conservatives per se, but the sort of conservative who is forever getting deeply hysterical about some perceived threat to a supposed previous golden age, who sees such threats everywhere, and who is willing to completely distort the truth in order to feed his (and it generally was 'his') obsessions.

(I mean: just ask yourself: what sort of person would devote time and energy to a group focussed entirely on combatting trends at his undergraduate institution, trends that the actual undergraduates of the time had no problem with? We used to wonder: don't these people have lives?)

CAP did a number of things to combat Princeton's slide into mediocrity and decadence, otherwise known as its decision to admit women and more than a token number of minorities. It published a magazine, Prospect, devoted to lurid stories about all that decadence and mediocrity and outraged editorials calling for a return to the halcyon days of the 1950s.

Rob let me introduce you to John, whom I am sure you know. You should probably read John a bit more, since he has solid Conservative Credentials but is a bit more temperate on pulling the trigger on Bullshit. Nice contrast the two pieces....

Bottom line...

These hearings are childish and silly. With aged men looking like children fighting over who gets to play quarterback in a pickup football game. As for the Judge's wife crying? I think John nicely covers that little fib, dont you?

Other than that, whether or not the man belonged to some elitist Conservative Club during his college years or after college, is of little consequence to me. I agree with you Rob that the Dems need to be quoting his record from the bench. If this is the best the Democratic leadership can do, the man has already won his seat on the court.

UPDATE: Kevin was nice enough to provide links to the video. Which makes me wonder if the Conservatives who are jumping all over the Drudge Fabrication, even bothered to watch the video. And for that matter so Freakin' what? The woman cried. Did she go to Senate Confirmation hearings expecting them to be an honors banquet? Please guys, I agree with John, I am pretty sick of the lying and the bullshit. Were you guys writing ode's to Hillary when she was crying her eyes out in the White House over her families personal dirty laundry being aired on the nightly news? Especially Mr. "Sludge," who seemed to revel in every disgusting detail back then. The Hypocrisy is almost as bad as the bold faced lies dressed up in hypothisis.

But let's face it, this guy is going to win...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. said today that he agreed with the principle that a president does not have "a blank check" in terms of power, especially during wartime.

"The Constitution applies in times of peace and war," President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court said in the first round of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The Bill of Rights applies at all times."

In the second day of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to the United States Supreme Court, Judge Alito said, preservation of individual rights is particularly important in wartime because that is when the temptation to abuse liberties in the name of national security is most dangerous.

Declaring that the Constitution "protects the rights of Americans in all circumstances," Judge Alito was addressing an issue that his critics have called very troubling: whether he would too easily embrace the concept of far-reaching executive power, as his critics say the judge's paper trail seems to indicate.

In agreeing that the president does not have "a blank check" in terms of power, even in wartime emergencies, Judge Alito embraced the language of the justice he would succeed, Sandra Day O'Connor, who so wrote in a decision that upheld the right of a prisoner held as an "enemy combatant" to use the courts to challenge the basis of his confinement.

And unlike politicians, once he dons the robes, there won't be a damned thing we can do about him flip flopping, if he choses to do so. Let's hope he sticks to his word...

This post about Joe Biden's comments on Meet the Press would seem to indicate so.

Personally, I say let the Republicans go with their Nuclear Option. It is clear that the American people do not support it, so let them bring it on. The REAL filibuster has been going on for five years in Washington, and it was designed to cow the opposition and silence debate. Time to send Harry Reed a Case of Viagra.

From WAPO:

Under other circumstances, President Bush's choice of Judge Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court would have been seen as a bold move by a strong president with a clear policy objective. By choosing a man of superior intellectual heft and an indelible record of conservative views on major social issues, Bush would have been challenging his critics on the Democratic side to test their arguments in an arena where everything favored him: a Republican Senate.

But after the fiasco of the Harriet Miers nomination and the other reversals of recent days and weeks, the Alito nomination inevitably looks like a defensive move, a lunge for the lifeboat by an embattled president to secure what is left of his political base. Instead of a consistent and principled approach to major decision making, Bush's efforts look like off-balance grabs for whatever policy rationales he can find. The president's opponents are emboldened by this performance, and his fellow partisans must increasingly wonder if they can afford to march to his command.

John Cole has an interesting take on the issue.

The Alito nomination is just another example of an Administration reeling under the weight of failure. My good friend the Commissar spoke the other day, about Lefty opposition to Alito:

I think it's fair to say that the entire Vast Right Wing Conspiracy will be on board for the Alito nomination. If the Moonbats want to rumble, I say (without apology and mindful of precedent) "Bring it on."

I think even he may be surprised that the Dems are taking his advice.

From The Moderate Voice:

President Bush's nomination of doctrinaire conservative Samuel Alito -- "there will be no one to the right of Sam Alito on this Court," says NBC legal analyst/George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley -- is clearly a move to wipe the legal and ethical issues surrounding the administration and the GOP off of the front pages. But it is also an attempt to distract from real and pressing issues facing the country, such as the growing American death toll in Iraq. The AP's Thomas Wagner passes on the disturbing numbers from October.

Based on the News conference going on right now with Scotty Boy, it aint working....

Looks like Bush is going to nominate a hard core conservative for the court.

As The Commissar says, it should please his base. Based on recent polls, that is all he has left. In the end Alito will make the Court. With Republicans in power, there is sadly little that can be done to stop the nomination. We will be getting what we deserve for giving this morally bankrupt administration another chance...

Let the chips fall where they may... We are about to take a huge step backwards in this country, and I have to admit, I cant even feel angry any more. What I feel is a sense of dread at what is coming.

God Bless America, the America I used to know, not the one it has become or is yet to become...

Chris Hitchens post an interesting commentary yesterday on the Roberts nomination:

Everybody seems to have agreed to tiptoe around the report that Judge John G. Roberts said he would recuse himself in a case where the law required a ruling that the Catholic Church might consider immoral. According to Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, the judge gave this answer in a private meeting with Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., who is the Senate minority whip. Durbin told Turley that when asked the question, Roberts looked taken aback and paused for a long time before giving his reply.

Attempts have been made to challenge Turley's version, and Sen. Durbin (who was himself unfairly misquoted recently as having made a direct comparison between Guantanamo, Hitler, and Stalin when he had only mentioned them in the same breath) probably doesn't need any more grief. But how probable is it that the story is wrong? A clever conservative friend writes to me that obviously Roberts, who is famed for his unflappability, cannot have committed such a betise. For one thing, he was being faced with a question that he must have known he would be asked. Yes, but that's exactly what gives the report its ring of truth. If Roberts had simply said that the law and the Constitution would control in all cases (the only possible answer), then there would have been no smoke. If he had said that the Vatican would decide, there would have been a great deal of smoke. But who could have invented the long pause and the evasive answer? I think there is a gleam of fire here. At the very least, Roberts should be asked the same question again, under oath, at his confirmation.

It is already being insinuated, by those who want this thorny question de-thorned, that there is an element of discrimination involved. Why should this question be asked only of Catholics? Well, that's easy. The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislate on morals for all its members and to excommunicate them if they don't conform. The church is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington. In the very recent past, this church and this state gave asylum to Cardinal Bernard Law, who should have been indicted for his role in the systematic rape and torture of thousands of American children. (Not that child abuse is condemned in the Ten Commandments, any more than slavery or genocide or rape.) More recently still, the newly installed Pope Benedict XVI (who will always be Ratzinger to me) has ruled that Catholic politicians who endorse the right to abortion should be denied the sacraments: no light matter for believers of the sincerity that Judge Roberts and his wife are said to exhibit. And just last month, one of Ratzinger's closest allies, Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, wrote an essay in which he announced that evolution was "ideology, not science."

The commentary has received a firestorm of criticism from Catholics. As someone who lives in a Catholic Country, and one that all but shuts down on certain Catholic Holidays, I have a unique perspective on the influence of the Catholic Church. I also watched with great interest last year, the last minute news of an alleged Kerry excommunication... The news being spread right before the General Election. So I have no love for Catholicism and Political meddling!

I have not had much to say about the Roberts nomination, because honestly, I believe Bush will eventually get his way. But I am becoming increasingly concerned about the issue of separation of church and state.

If Roberts can not be trusted to place our constitution above Church Dogma, we should all be concerned...