scalito nominated

last week was probably the worst week ever for bush (though there is some competition for that title), what with the miers withdrawal, scooter's resignation, and the fact that fitzgerald's nomination still hangs over them all, threatening that more heads might roll.

what's a president to do? change the subject! so how about a new supreme court nominee, one far more controversial than roberts and possibly even more controversial than miers?

i wrote last week that the right-wing wanted a super-right-wing nominee: they wanted a "scalia junior". so how appropriate that bush has picked a man whose nickname—"scalito"— literally means "little scalia"!

President Bush, stung by the rejection of his first choice, nominated veteran judge Samuel Alito on Monday in a bid to reshape the Supreme Court and mollify his conservative allies. Ready-to-rumble Democrats warned that Alito may be an extremist who would curb abortion rights.

So consistently conservative, Alito has been dubbed "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite" by some lawyers because his judicial philosophy invites comparisons to conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. But while Scalia is outspoken and is known to badger lawyers, Alito is polite, reserved and even-tempered.

in other words, alito is the answer to the question "what if scalia were not such a huge prick?"

as someone with an italian-sounding nickname myself (in italy they use the name "stallio e ollio" to refer to laurel & hardy, and on my old [now dead] hard drive i had partitions named "stalito" and "stallone"), i can appreciate a man with a good nickname... but i don't like anything else i hear about the guy.

from think progress:

ALITO WOULD OVERTURN ROE V. WADE: In his dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito concurred with the majority in supporting the restrictive abortion-related measures passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in the late 1980's. Alito went further, however, saying the majority was wrong to strike down a requirement that women notify their spouses before having an abortion. The Supreme Court later rejected Alito's view, voting to reaffirm Roe v. Wade. [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1991]

ALITO WOULD ALLOW RACE-BASED DISCRIMINATION: Alito dissented from a decision in favor of a Marriott Hotel manager who said she had been discriminated against on the basis of race. The majority explained that Alito would have protected racist employers by “immuniz[ing] an employer from the reach of Title VII if the employer’s belief that it had selected the ‘best’ candidate was the result of conscious racial bias.” [Bray v. Marriott Hotels, 1997]

that's just the beginning. there's more at the think progress link, and that's just what we know as of this morning. surely more will come out.

the white house didn't waste any time in parading scalito in front of rosa parks's corpse, which is rather offensive considering that scalito's record shows him to be anything but a civil rights crusader.¶