Judge Samuel Alito has been offered up by the Bush Administration as a replacement for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.  Harriet Miers, a non Judge, but lawyer for the Bush Administration, had been presented just previously and all but laughed off the stage.  Alito was trotted out and there has been nothing but controversy over his candidacy.  Did he or did he not say enough controversial things as a lawyer for the Reagan Administration, before in law classes and afterwards as an appointed Judge?  The question can be answered in a number of ways.  Of course, his backers think he is the best thing since the invention of the Internet.  His distracters point to his many statements that his backers say he has outgrown and anyway, he is conservative and all for judicial non-legislative behavior.

We cannot avoid Sam Alito either as a judge or for the positions that the Senate has to deal with.  The Republican owned Senate can and will vote him in as the Next Supreme Court Appointee and President Bush will certainly put his stamp of approval on this man.  The outcome will be just another way of cementing a six to three majority of conservatives on the Supreme Court.  That Supreme Court will be ruling for the Bush “programs” far beyond the Bush Presidency.  Mr. Bush is in his last term and he had not had a change of heart or a change in his road map for the United States.  Come to think of it, he has not changed bit on any of his more outrageous positions in his thralldom to the Religious Right.

There are several lawyerly organizations that make judgments about possible candidates for the President to appoint to the Supreme Court.  These organizations are not crazy about Alito but he cannot be ignored or avoided.  He is out there, ready to be judged – not by his peers – but by Senators who are increasingly becoming disenchanted (even the Republicans for many of them are up for reelection in ’06).  Sam Alito is probably a good man, a good husband and a good father – but is he a good choice for a Supreme Court Justice?

Since I know nothing except what I read in the newspapers about the current brouhaha about this man, I will accept what good is said about him with a grain of salt and not believe all the bad things implied about his past utterances. The important thing is that we cannot avoid having to think about Sam Alito as a possible Supreme Court Justice; appointed by the President and sealed by the United States Senate.

Our best hope is that he will disqualify himself by some slip of the tongue or discovery of some yet undiscovered past statement in documents that will move him off the pages of history.