Democrats + Yalies - Perfect together!

The Democrats are going to ride the Alito nomination off a cliff...pandering to the far left while acting as a representative of the people, New York's Chuckie Schumer gives us his take, before the hearings truly got underway:

New York Sen. Charles Schumer said Monday he was worried Judge Samuel Alito would be an agent for right-wing extremists if confirmed for a U.S. Supreme Court seat.
"You seem to have been picked to placate the extreme right wing after the hasty withdrawal of Harriet Miers," Schumer said, speaking bluntly to Alito in his opening statement at Senate confirmation hearings.
Miers, the White House counsel, was blocked by a "cadre of conservative critics" who doubted her conservative credentials, the New York Democrat said.
Schumer's comments set the stage for tough Democratic questioning of Alito this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee...
Schumer said Alito's record of opinions and statements on a number of critical constitutional questions "seems quite extreme."
"Although I have not made up my mind, I have serious concerns about that record," he said
[link: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060110/NEWS01/601100315/1006/NEWS]

OK, if anyone thinks Schmuckie Schumer has "not made up his mind", then this Jersey guy has a bridge over the East River to sell you...the public is tired of these nomination hearings turning into ideological witch hunts; Gateway Pundit tells us more about it:

Several Democrats Monday, including the reliable Sen. Edward Kennedy, seemed on the verge of making an even worse tactical error. They suggested that Alito's respect for executive branch prerogatives would make him too ready to approve wiretapping and other surveillance of terrorists.
That shows a deep misreading of U.S. opinion. Not only do most polls show that a small plurality of Americans favors wiretapping as a tool against terrorism, but even those against do not consider it a wildly extreme position. When the Democrats campaign against Alito on those grounds, they reinforce the public view of themselves as weak on national security. Unfortunately for the Democrats, they cannot restrain their own partisanship...

If Alito is confirmed, the Democrats will finally lose their majority on the Supreme Court that for 50 years has allowed liberals to legislate from the bench on everything from racial preferences to the detention of terrorists. Their desperation makes them imprudent. Instead of rooting their arguments in what the public believes, they base them on their own passionate political commitments. They consistently misread public opinion as a result...
[link: http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/after-1-month-of-attack-ads-alito-grew.html]

This is going to get ugly, and fast. But maybe those good 'ol Yalies can help out...from a Yale Law press release:

New Haven, CT -- Over the last several weeks, an informal group of Yale Law School students and faculty calling themselves "The Alito Project," reviewed all 415 judicial opinions that Judge Samuel Alito wrote while serving as a Circuit Judge. The report was delivered to all one hundred Senators on Monday, just as many of them are preparing for Judge Alito's nomination hearings scheduled to start on January 9, 2006. " Our goal was to help Senators and citizens make an informed decision about this nominee," said Professor Owen Fiss, one of the project's participants.
[link: http://www.law.yale.edu/outside/html/Public_Affairs/685/yls_article.htm]

Uh huh. Mr. Owen Fiss is a classic liberal, one who knows better than all of us plebes. Just take a look at this review of Fiss' seminal work, The Law As It Could Be:

Politics, it has been said, is the authoritative allocation of values. For Owen Fiss, those “public values” are embedded in the law, and it is the job of the judge to discover and apply them, undeterred by the controversy and difficulties that might ensue...
[link: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/fiss305.htm]

Classic definition of judicial activism - no surprise this is whom the Democrats are taking their marching orders from. And the outcome of the Alito Project report?

Their report can be categorized as generally critical of Alito's positions on key legal issues.
"A number of Judge Alito's decisions are difficult to reconcile with the general direction of American law," said project participant Brian Deese in a release issued by the project, "except when viewed in light of the broad philosophical views Judge Alito expressed in his job application of November 1985."
The release also quotes the report as blasting Alito's record on employment and discrimination.
[link: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Alito_Project_at_Yale_releases_final_1220.html ]

Deese is another genius, look here http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=132896 to see his report on how poorly the American economy (4.9% unemployment, Dow at 11,000, productivity rising...) is performing. OK, little liberal, whatever you say...

And there sits Schumer, with this report in hand, blasting away at Alito. Who will they blame for the fiasco that awaits them in 2006? The Jersey Devil?