An LA Times writer suggests that Bush administration's power grab may be the Democrats' best weapon in opposing the nominee. As a genuine Libertarian once told me, the framers designed the constitution to be competitive -- with each branch jealously guarding its prerogatives and pushing back against the other two. Even the GOP Senate at some point, will recall that it, and not the executive, is the first branch of government. It remains to be seen if enough Republicans choose their power over their president. Here's the article, and the key point:
... no one expects Alito to be as effective testifying as Roberts was.
But to defeat Alito, Senate Democrats will need more than a clutch of 20-year-old policy memos and unsettling judicial opinions. They will have to portray Alito as a genuine threat to some core American value — and not merely to the right to privacy, on which all the moves and countermoves are already choreographed.
President Bush's decision to engage in warrantless wiretapping of Americans in apparent violation of the statute regulating spying for national-security purposes raises a constitutional issue of staggering importance. In undertaking this program — and other policies on the use of torture, detention and the designation of enemy combatants — in its prosecution of the war on terror, the administration asserts an inherent constitutional authority to commit acts that Congress has explicitly deemed criminal.
The question of whether the president is, to put it bluntly, above ordinary law whenever he invokes his constitutional authority as commander in chief will have to be decided by the Supreme Court. Whether it will transform the political landscape remains unclear. But it may be the only issue on which Alito is truly vulnerable. He is on record supporting a very broad view of presidential authority and, as a judge, has shown great deference to the acts of executive branch officials, including advocating legal immunity for the attorney general against lawsuits charging him with illegal wiretapping.
Alito will resist questions on these matters on grounds that presidential authority will be the subject of cases on which he would sit.
But the president's power to flout the will of Congress in secret, and solely on his say-so, should be an issue of transcendent importance. If Senate Democrats pursue it, Alito may face the prospect of separating himself from the president who nominated him or risk a filibuster. Previous: Tags: Supreme Court, Politics, SCOTUS, Law, News, Alito, Sam Alito
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