Bush Picks Alito for Supreme Court - Yahoo! News

That's right: it's Sam Alito, often called "Scalito" because his reasoning leads him to conclusions so similar to those of Antonin Scalia.

Sorry, Joseph L. Farah. Bush fooled you . He did not, as you predicted, nominate Maureen Mahoney, fixer extraordinaire from the Ken Starr circle. He picked a man, according to Bush, with the most judicial experience of any nominee sent to the court in the last seventy years.

So who is Sam Alito, really? Well, here's his listing in the Federal Judicial Circuits Web site. Not much, as I'll readily admit. His Wikipedia entry tells us much more, and with detailed case citations. Also, check out this article about him in US News and World Report back in July. He had a "buzz" going on about him as soon as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her intention to retire. And let me give my Hat Tip of the Day to my fellow BlogSpot blogger, who started a blog on Alito two days ago, before the Bush announcement. I warn you, this is parody. I don't think for one picosecond that this is Sam Alito talking. But somebody out there was dead-on-target prescient about today's announcement.

All kidding aside, all accounts show Sam Alito to be a deep thinker--a "judge's judge." In short, he's the kind of judge that the Founders had in mind for the Supreme Court. He's not bombastic, either--and though he often concludes the same way Scalia does, he's not prone to badger witnesses. You may, if you wish, imagine Alito and Scalia playing the Good Cop and Bad Cop during oral argument.

Even the liberals predicted that someone like Alito would get the nod. Check out these remarks from Ellen Ratner:

Red-state red meat for the Supreme Court. I don't know who Bush will nominate to fill the Court's open slot, but I know this – it won't be some mumbly-bumbly hackette or a tactful smooth talker whose IQ exceeds the combined brains of the Senate Judiciary Committee. No, Bush needs to rally his base, and that means picking a fight with Democrats. So expect a real right-wing brawler for nominee, some Bible-toting guy or gal who says-it-like-it-is, who writes an opinion on speeding tickets and includes dicta opposing abortion and gay rights. In short, somebody to rally the base.

Actually, Ellen, you didn't call it quite right. Alito combines the thinking of Scalia with the demeanor of John Roberts. (Which brings up another thing: he and Roberts ought to get along just fine. To paraphrase King Herod Agrippa II, almost they might persuade Anthony Kennedy to be the conservative that Reagan thought he was. Stranger things have happened, on the Court and off.

The liberals are, of course, screaming bloody murder. Harry Reid's rant alone is worth the price of admission--that price being all the aggravation we suffered until Harriet Miers sensibly withdrew her name. And this is what he was saying the day before, on ABC's This Week with George Stuff-in-ollapaloosa. Basically, he said that he wanted a middle-of-the-roader to replace O'Connor. He didn't get it. I can hear his howl of outrage from here. And Bob Beckel, spewing forth on the Fox News Channel, looked fit to be tied.

All right, you liberals. You have challenged us to fight, and we accept the challenge. To paraphrase MacBeth, as quoted by Shakespeare: come into the lists and champion us to the utterance.