Listening to the Alito hearings, there’s one word the nominee keeps using, to the point of distraction, in a variety of contexts. See if you catch it.
“Now, Judge Chertoff looked at it differently. And there are cases where reasonable people disagree. And that’s all that was going on….
“Now, these cases involve difficult line-drawing arguments at times, and I respect Judge Rendell’s view of this very much, but reasonable people will view these things differently….
“And I think that division illustrates this was a factual case on which reasonable people would disagree….
“Now I didn’t say that and I didn’t think that. And I thought that they had somewhat different qualifications, and a reasonable person could view it either way….
“But it just wasn’t anything that I saw that a reasonable person could point to as a basis for a reasonable inference of an intent to discriminate.”
I think Alito’s trying to tell us something. His record consistently puts him on the far-right edge of the judiciary, but don’t worry, his rulings are “reasonable.”