Up, Down and Sideways

The vacuous skull that sits atop Bill Frist's shoulders is making noises again and, as we might have expected, those noises are about killing the fillibuster in the Senate because Senate Democrats have been expressing concerns about Alito. Recently, there has been a lot documentary flotsom coming to the surface about Alito that should give pause to almost everyone; everyone, that is, except the Bush Rockettes on Capitol Hill. Frist, being the lead Rockette, has this to say about the threatened fillibuster of Alito, though we have heard it before and often:

Supreme Court justice nominees deserve an up-or-down vote, and it would be absolutely wrong to deny him that.

Right. This is exactly why Miers got as far as she did.

I guess that Frist has no idea what a complete ass he looks like when he trots out this tired line, especially in the wake of the Miers' withdrawal. In the run-up to her confirmation hearings, when it was Senate Republicans who were expressing the deepest concerns over Miers' qualifications, Frist was entirely silent. Nary a word was uttered by the Senate leader about "up-or-down" votes in the Senate when the Miers nomination looked it would die a swift death in committee. Not one word was mouthed about up-and-down votes then. Not. One. Word.

Frist further asserts, to the belief of no one, that Alito has a "a modest judicial temperament." If this really were the case, is it possible to imagine that the Christian right would happy with this nomination? Those people live for radical temperment and one of the reasons they bitterly opposed Miers is that her temperment -- if it could even be said that she had one -- was entirely unknown. Dobson wants them as rabid as they come (for some interesting discussion of Alito's less than admirable participation in the disgraceful activities of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, CAP, Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has a great write up).

In conjunction with Frist's debasement of US Congress, he is also debasing the english language by calling Alito's temperment modest. One wonders how others might view the temperament of a judge who once argued that

he saw no constitutional problem with a police officer shooting and killing an unarmed teenager who was fleeing after a $10 home burglary. "I think the shooting [in this case] can be justified as reasonable."

A far more modestly tempered Supreme Court smacked down Alito and said the shooting was “unreasonable seizure" and that it intended to use that judgement to

set a firm national rule against the routine use of ‘deadly force’ against fleeing suspects who pose no danger.

If Frist does believe that shooting juvenile petty thieves (10 bucks!) in the back as they're running away seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, I guess that is how he comes to the opinion that Alito has a "modest judicial temperment." I don't see the Dems standing up against this one so I guess we can soon expect to have two crazies on the big bench who seem to relish state abuse of children.