Noise about Judge Alito

I’m reserving judgment on Judge Alito for the time being. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, for Bush to have picked someone worse than Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, so at the least Alito is a significant improvement over the last nominee.

That said, I’ve heard very different stories about what kind of judge he is and where he stands politically from the different sides of the political spectrum, so until some genuine facts come out (during Senate inquiry I assume) and he has a chance to speak for himself, I’m not going to say anything good or bad about him. But I do have a few observations about the whole situation.

First, I find it interesting that our Evangelical Protestant president has now nominated two Catholics to the Supreme Court. I wonder if the GOP is going to nominate a Catholic for president any time soon. Furthermore, when he tried to name a fellow traveler, the mere fact that she was an Evangelical was not good enough for other EVs. That’s interesting to me, though I haven’t thought enough about it to draw any conclusion. Second, and probably without intending to, Bush has made it appear that there are no women in the federal judiciary worthy of sitting on the Supreme Court. Contrasting Miers against Alito is insulting; that Bush went to Alito after the Miers flop seems to say that Miers was simply the best woman he could find, and, released by her of the duty to nominate a woman, he returned to the white males.

I’m a white male. I would like a federal judgeship some day, sure. Who wouldn’t? So I’m not trying to play the diversity card here to run down Alito’s nomination; as far as I’m concerned it’s terrific to know that white males can still be selected for the Court. I just think the contrast between Alito and Miers is so stark as to make all potential women aspirants to the court seem pathetic; that’s a shame, and I hope Bush didn’t intend to produce that image. That said I think if we get a Democrat in the White House next time around his/her first court nomination will be a woman, just to draw a contrast.

Finally, I’d like to point out this article in today’s Washington Post, about Judge Alito. It seems the Post thinks Alito is a bit, well, dorky. A nerd. All politics aside, I think this is wonderful. Roberts was a jock, let’s face it, and Bush wishes he was a jock (he was one of those guys who hung around the jocks to look cool, you know? You can just tell). But Sam Alito, well, he’s been to baseball fantasy camp, but in high school he played in the band. I like a guy like that.