Dear Alito: Please just make them all shut up.

I've been gomping the hell out of this manuscript and listening to the Alito confirmation hearings all day. Oh. My. GOD. I'm sick of hearing sentences that start with "I'm puzzled." I'm sick of hearing about the 1985 CAP letter. Remember when David Duke was all "Uh, yeah, I was totally a member of the Klan"? Now that was some prejudiced associatin' you could really sink your teeth into!

And I'm sick of the judicial committee members who are using these hearings just to deliver their own diatribes, and then conclude them with a "question," like "Liberals are destroying our nation and want to kill all the children. Mr. Alito, will you be an awesome Supreme Court Justice?" "My conservative colleagues would have us believe you've answered all the questions fully. Would you not agree, Mr. Alito, that in fact President Bush is a doofus?"

The last guy--I don't know if you heard him--was by far the worst. So I took a break from DOS to write him a letter. The subtext: "Are you, Senator Coburn from Oklahoma, not also a doofus?"



Dear Senator Coburn:

I am dismayed by your use of the approval hearing for potential Justice Alito as a personal soapbox, and even more so that you are able to do so with no oversight as to the veracity of your own statements, unlike the judicial candidate. Your citation of the NOW survey to indicate that abortion makes a women more likely to commit suicide and abuse substances is undoubtedly spurious; might not the same factors in a woman's life that might contribute to her seeking an abortion--poverty, misery, substance abuse itself--also make her more likely to commit suicide or abuse drugs later in her life?
Moreover, you asked Mr. Alito to justify a hypothetical situation involving a woman 37 or 38 weeks pregnant seeking an abortion. Third-trimester abortions are illegal in your state unless the health of the mother is at vital stake. Even in the very few states where third-tremester abortions are not strictly illegal, I defy you to find a healthcare provider in your state or any other who would perform an abortion at so late a stage of pregnancy in anything other than an emergency medical situation.
I certainly believe in your right to question the candidate, as a representative of the people of your district, in the way you see best to determine his fitness as a juror. But to use your alloted time to deliver a speech against the legality of abortions in general is not, to my mind, a particularly helpful way of determining Alito's beliefs about anything at all.

Sincerely,
Tornadia