A listless intellectual fog had fallen over the Senate hearing room on Tuesday, the first full day of questioning for Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. before the Judiciary Committee. ...
The senator was expressing frustration over a process that doesn't work. It turns out that, especially when their party controls the process, Supreme Court nominees can avoid answering any question they don't want to answer. Senators make the process worse with meandering soliloquies. But when the questioning gets pointed, the opposition is immediately accused of scurrilous smears. The result: an exchange of tens of thousands of words signifying, in so many cases, nothing -- as long as the nominee has the discipline to say nothing, over and over and over.
Alito, an ardent baseball fan, established himself as the Babe Ruth of evasion. ...
That was just one of many evasions. When Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked if "the president has the power to curtail investigations, for example, by the Department of Justice," Alito replied: "I don't think the president is above the law." A fine sentiment that didn't answer the question. Leahy asked yesterday if Congress could strip courts of their authority to rule on cases involving the First Amendment. Alito didn't have a view.
When Biden asked Alito about John Yoo's expansive reading of presidential power, Alito said he had not read the former Justice Department official's recent book, even though Yoo's views have long been well known.
And there was something odd about the gap in Alito's memory concerning his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a right-wing group whose publications said some rather unpleasant things about blacks, women and gays. Alito didn't remember anything, but if he did remember something, his membership might have been related to Princeton's decision to throw the ROTC off campus ...
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