Administration objects to story describing Alito as conservative

This story actually hurts my brain a little bit. The conservative Bush Administration is objecting to a story that describes Alito as a conservative. Isn't that one of the reasons that he was picked i the first place?

Or is it because Democrats are distributing the story? This seems to be just a matter of whatever the Democrats say, the Republicans counter. This time it's backfiring. The conservatives are angry that someone has called a conservative a conservative.

Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder Newspapers writes:

The Bush administration is mounting an aggressive effort to counter a Knight Ridder story that described Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a committed judicial conservative.

The administration's response - delivered separately Tuesday by the White House and the Justice Department - reflects its determination to defend Alito and its sensitivity to the "conservative" label for him.

The attack came after Senate Democrats circulated Knight Ridder's assessment of Alito's judicial record for possible use against him at his confirmation hearings next month.

The 2,500-word Knight Ridder analysis, based on 311 opinions by Alito during his service on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, concluded that he "has worked quietly but resolutely" to advance his conservative philosophy on a host of legal issues.

"Although Alito's opinions are rarely written with obvious ideology, he's seldom sided with a criminal defendant, a foreign national facing deportation, an employee alleging discrimination or consumers suing big business," reporters Stephen Henderson and Howard Mintz wrote.

The reporters also concluded that Alito "rarely supports individual rights," shows "a strong deference to police authority" and is extremely skeptical about claims of racial discrimination. Henderson covers the Supreme Court for Knight Ridder. Mintz, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, a Knight Ridder paper, worked on the Alito project during a stint in Washington.

Administration officials said the story unfairly cast the Supreme Court nominee as a conservative ideologue.

Of course he is. That's why he was nominated. The republicans are people think this? It is not unfair to call a conservative a conservative.

"His 15-year record on the 3rd Circuit shows him to be a mainstream, fair, thorough judge," Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand said in a C-SPAN interview devoted to her critique of the Knight Ridder analysis.

Brand, whose duties include shepherding judicial nominations through the Senate, rejected the conservative label for Alito.

"The term conservative means different things to different people. A judge is supposed to apply the law, not make it," she said.

This is a new technique for pushing conservative judges through Congress. Being conservative shouldn't matter because he's a judge, not a senator. This is a lie. It does, of course, matter. A judge will base a ruling on what he or she feels just. For instance, if you don't like abortion you won't feel like it should be a right therefore, it's unconstitutional.

John Nowacki, senior counsel in the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs, also objected to the Knight Ridder analysis. In an e-mail to Henderson, Nowacki criticized attempts to discern a judicial philosophy by looking for trends in a judge's record.

"This outcome-based analysis is inapplicable and unfair to judges ... A judge's work cannot be divorced from the facts of particular cases," Nowacki wrote.

The White House offered an opinion article defending Alito against the Knight Ridder analysis by lawyer Jeffrey Wasserstein, a Democrat who says he supported John Kerry in the last presidential election. Wasserstein, a former Alito clerk, said he was unaware of Alito's political leanings when he worked for the judge in 1997-98.

"It was my experience that Judge Alito was (and is) capable of setting aside any personal biases he may have when he judges," Wasserstein wrote.

But some of Alito's allies say he should embrace the conservative label because it fits.

"The Department of Justice statement is fatuous. If you can't tell by looking at his opinions what kind of philosophy he would carry to the Supreme Court, how would you know to nominate him?" said Bruce Fein, a conservative legal scholar and an Alito supporter. "A judge has a personal view of what the Constitution means."

I'm going to look forward to the hearings. I think it's going to be fun.

Here's the link to Knight-Ridder's analysis of Alito's rulings.
Review of cases shows Alito to be staunch conservative

Link to full article:
KR Washington Bureau | 12/06/2005 | Administration objects to story describing Alito as conservative