Redstate

like this as a good thing.  When the moonbats come out of the chute with spurious charges that never stand the light it strengthens the candidate.  PFAW, NARAL and wackos like this are the best thing that could happen to a nominee.  Middle America can see thru these types of attacks because you don't have to be a legal scholar to understand how feckless they are.

what would make anybody think they judged?  The word judgement is necessarily connected  to consideration of facts.  In this case "they reacted" is more appropriate' or perhaps "they jumped'. Alito stands for something the Macedonian Alexanders at Yale can't abide, a measure of judicial restraint.  If you want and fervently believe you deserve a free hand in following your emotions and sociology Alito is anathema.  Over at the Yale Laboratory Yalies are working on a clone of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, they just can't get the face right.

Wasn't Alito one of the names frequently tossed around before the nomination? Why wouldn't people have taken a look at him early?

I think you can safely assume constitutional law professor Bruce Ackerman did not form his opinion of Alito in a day, and has in fact "perused" Alito's record.

This does not mean his judgment is correct, but it is silly to call it a "rush."

is simply one of appearance.  That is VERY important because most of America never gets beyond appearance.  They don't have the attention span for the actual argument.

So, whether these groups have had opinions of 5 or 50 potential nominees doesn't matter.  What matters is that all of the leftist groups appear to be opposed to any and every possible conservative nominee.  Which, of course, happens to be true.

I don't think that is the point. Repeating from the original article: "But why is it too much to hope that people will at least hold their powder dry for a little while before deciding that Judge Alito does not belong on the Supreme Court?"

Your point is interesting, but the US has a tradition of getting people on air to talk about a nominee /elections/developments within hours of it. I think it's a bad idea in many situations (not this so much, because Alito was rumored ahead of time), but it's the fault of the 24 hour news cycle more than anything else.

If you're really concerned about appearance of time, a more worrisome area, in my opinion, is when bills get pushed onto the floor of Congress and voted on in just a few hours, when there have been significant changes. A nominee doesn't change radically in the course of a few hours; a few amendments can radically change a bill.

<insert snarky response about the previous nominee (she who will not be named) and the rush to judgment there>

In fact, Kristol's was much worse since he went off on Meirs because she wasn't on his list. He knew next to nothing about her. I suspect the libs at the law school did find out enough to know that Alito wasn't the kind of ib they wanted on the bench.

. . . the next thing you know they'll be demanding his name is withdrawn without a vote -- or even hearings!

those libs demand a filibuster of an obviously qualified candidate for no other reason than he's a conservative!!  When a majority of Senators go on record supporting him!!!  

Nah, that cant happen, it would be TOO crazy and unfair.

 "I don't think conservative is the word. This person is a judicial radical."

I think that type of comment coming out of Yale is exactly the reason conservatives love him as a nominee.

What did you want?  A moderate?  A Souter?  How about a Ginsberg?  If they were hailing Alito as the best thing since Ginsberg would you be happy?

NO you wouldnt!

He is way out of main stream conservative, but just not quite far enough to get filibustered.  I believe that is exactly what most people on this board were going for.

Well at least you're right about the crazy liberals part.  

Seeing the usual suspects get unhinged over Alioto was one of the first indicators that made me expect I'd like Alioto when I saw more of his record. So far I like what I see.

It's kind of the opposite of the Miers nomination. When I first heard of it, I assumed that she was probably ok if Bush nominated her. But when the same suspects were circumspect while the likes of Senators Reid & Schumer looked pleased, I immediately started worrying what am I going to find out about this person that the liberals like.

opposition group, be they liberal or conservative, will strive to define a Supreme Court nominee of the opposing ideology as 'radical'. This is to be expected and combated with facts. If they can't support their arguement that he is a radical with sensible and factual informaion, then they don't have an arguement.

Should be evaluated based on legal precedant and the constitution.  If anyone can prove that he called a case based his politics or incompetance, he should be canned.  Anything short of that, he should be embraced by all on both sides of the aisle.  'Nuff said.

The day the Left (and this includes you) gets to define what actually constitutes the "mainstream" of anything is the day the sun rises in the North and sets again in the North.

Alito is no more out of the mainstream than is Ruth "Let's Ban Mother's Day" Bader Ginsburg. Has Alito ever advocated the banning of "National Coming Out Day?"

astonishing to those of us who actually think that we ought to make this judgement on the whole of the man.

With all due respect to everyone who has posted on this topic, you do not seem to be intimately familiar with university faculties. Yale's response was predictable for three reasons:

1. American universities are dominated by liberals, with possibly the exception of the hard sciences and engineering schools.  PC reigns.
   
2. Within academic departments, including schools of law, there is incredible friction among faculty. Their scholarly differences and personal peccadilloes are fuel for a constant bonfire.
   
3. The faculty believe that if he were a serious scholar of law, he would not have left the university.

The only favorable remarks that a conservative might get from his alma mater would come from a dean, provost, or president.

I wouldn't expect Redstaters to be familiar with Bruce Ackerman....

It's pretty unsettling for Ackerman to call anyone a "judicial radical" given that Ackerman has hypothesized that there are moments in our history where our country lawfully amended the Constitution without resort to the amendment process as set forth in the Constitution.  He calls his theory a "constitutional moment."  An example is Roosevelt's court-packing scheme that resulted in the "switch in time that saved nine" vis-a-vis upholding New Deal legislation previously deemed unconstitutional.

In a nutshell, Ackerman is at least as liberal as Alito is conservative.