The Case of "Filibuster v. Alito" [View All]

[The Donkey]

The Senate is getting ready to have a vote on whether or not Judge Samuel Alito should replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. It appears that Judge Alito will get a unanimous approval among the Republican members of the Senate, meaning that he indeed does have enough votes in that chamber to get confirmed. However, while the Democrats are in the minority, they have the option of filibustering the nomination.

For those of you who are unaware of what a filibuster is, it’s when the Senate chooses to block the passage of any measure by using all of the time allotted for debate, usually by giving extremely long speeches. Because of Senate rules, the Democrats can postpone this nomination permanently if they so choose.

Should they use this tool? After all, the mere mention of it has sent most TV pundits into a tizzy, followed by the usual rants of “unbridled partisanship” and “dirty tricks” directed at the Democrats. I can agree in one sense that overuse of the filibuster is likely not the best long-term solution to advance your agenda as a minority party. Therefore, it should only be used in times of real emergency.

This happens to be one of those occasions. An appointment to the Supreme Court is a very rare occurrence in the Senate, and each appointee is given a lifetime tenure. The Supreme Court is the head of one of our three co-equal branches of our government. As such, the implications of having a man like Samuel Alito on the Court will likely have a major impact on the future of our country.

If you think that I might be exaggerating Alito’s possible influence, here’s a smattering of some of his past judicial decisions. Take a peek and see if you agree that this is the path our country should follow . . . .

If you are pro-choice – this is possibly the worst guy that could have been nominated for you. He has consistently ruled to limit access to abortions for women, even going so far as to say that if you are married and choose to have an abortion, you are legally bound to consult your spouse before you do so. You will also have to wait 24 hours after being given medical information regarding the procedure before having it. Additionally, abortion clinics will be compelled to make their records public.

In Doe v. Groody, Alito said that it was okay for police to strip-search a ten year-old girl during a search of a house of a suspected drug dealer. Sure, the girl was not named in the warrant, and the police did not even know that she would be in the house when they entered. Alito felt that stripping the little girl down and searching her in front of her mom was a great idea (even though she wasn’t even a suspect). After all, she could have been hiding something, right? Nothing was found on her person, of course, and I’ll bet that she’s suffering a bit of trauma to this day over the ordeal.

Are you a female, a minority, or both? There are several examples where Alito dismissed complaints of sexual or racial harassment and discrimination. In Robinson v. City of Pittsburgh, he tried to dismiss a sexual harassment claim by a female police officer from one of her superiors due to “lack of evidence”, and that her harasser was not her “direct” superior. Sure, there had been formal complaints registered. Sure, the guy had a habit of unhooking her bra, touching her inappropriately, and describing how their sex would be, if she only said yes. Apparently such behavior is legal and acceptable in Judge Alito’s world.

In Riley v. Taylor, Alito let it be known that was perfectly acceptable for a black person’s fate to be decided by an all-white jury of his “peers”, even when qualified black jurors were available.

In Bray v. Marriott Hotels, a minority hotel employee was passed over for a job promotion in a case where the company hired a white person (from outside the company) for the job instead. The hiring process went against Marriott’s own written hiring and promotion policy, and the company itself gave several conflicting statements as to why they didn’t promote the plaintiff. Alito sided with Marriott, claiming that the suit was without merit, even when presented with ample evidence to the contrary.

On the bright side, if you love assault weapons, then Alito may be the guy for you. In United States v. Rybar, he ruled that not only is it okay to own and use machine guns, it’s okay to sell them to other people! Sure, there are currently laws against that sort of thing, but Alito has written that he thinks Congress overstepped their bounds when writing them. So much for legislating from the bench by crazy judicial activists, right?

Okay, all of those things are bad – really bad. Based on that alone, I’d be very acceptable to seeing a Senate filibuster on the guy. But it was something I heard during his confirmation hearings last week that put me over the edge. It has to do with his notion that our three “separate but equal” branches of government should not share the same portion of power and influence in our country. While the founding fathers created such a system to ensure “checks and balances” in our public officials, Alito feels that they were wrong in their thinking.

I’m talking about Alito’s belief in the notion of a Unitary Executive – meaning that the President of the United States should have more power than the courts or the congress. Here’s the quote that made my skin crawl:

"As I understand the concept, it is the concept that the president is the head of the executive branch. The Constitution says that the president is given the executive power. And the idea of the unitary executive is that the president should be able to control the executive branch, however big it is or however small it is, whether it's as small as it was when George Washington was president or whether it's big as it is today or even bigger (emphasis added). It has to do with control of whatever the executive is doing. It doesn't have to do with the scope of executive power. It does not have to do with whether the executive power that the president is given includes a lot of unnamed powers or what's often called inherent powers. So it's the difference between scope and control. And as I understand the idea of the unitary executive, it goes just to the question of control; it doesn't go to the question of scope."

So according to Alito, the President’s power is without scope. In other words, the Executive in government holds the same supreme power as an executive (or CEO) of a corporation. They control the whole thing. If you think I might be cherry-picking a quote for my own purposes, take a look at what Alito said about the same subject to the Federalist Society in 2001:

"The Constitution makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that.... The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power—the whole thing."

If Samuel Alito is confirmed to the Supreme Court, he replaces a former “swing” vote (O’Connor) with one who will side with the corporatists and neoconservatives on virtually every issue. If confirmed, we will see abortion rights wither away. We will see the rights of women and minorities take major setbacks. We will also lose our freedoms against unlawful searches and seizures. We will witness the erosion of individual rights.

Most importantly, we will see the system of democracy so beautifully carried out over the past 200-plus years be forever altered. We will watch as power leaves the judicial and legislative branches of our government, only to be concentrated in an executive branch that currently has very little interest in the well-being of the country as a whole.

For this reason, I hope that a filibuster occurs, and that by some miraculous intevention this nomination is permanently shelved. It is not enough to ask our senators to vote “no” on this issue, as it will do nothing to stop this confirmation. A filibuster is the only solution. Please join me in calling your respective senators to help preserve our country.