The growing importance of Alito’s Concerned Alumni of Princeton documents

January 11, 2006

Granted, the Alito hearings have been a little on the dull side from the very beginning. But this afternoon offered something a little different: a meaningful, heated conflict.

Yesterday, the hearings touched on Alito’s membership in the controversial Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group formed in 1972 to oppose the admission of women to Princeton, which also criticized the school’s minority admissions, “permissive social norms,” and nondenominational religious services. Yesterday, Alito, who touted his membership in the organization in 1985, said he no longer remembers being associated with the group.

Today, Sen. Ted Kennedy said he wasn’t buying Alito’s explanation and wanted more information. In fact, Kennedy suggested the Judiciary Committee go into executive session and consider subpoenas for documents relating to Alito’s membership in CAP. Specter was livid, saying Kennedy should have brought this to him directly before the hearings. Kennedy said he sent Specter a letter two weeks ago on this very issue, though Specter claimed he never saw such a request. It got pretty heated.

“If you’re going to rule it [a subpoena] out of order, I want to have a vote on that,” Kennedy said.

“I take umbrage at you telling me what I received,” Specter said, with growing anger.

Kennedy: “I would appeal the ruling of the chair.”

Specter: “There’s been no ruling of the chair.”

Kennedy says he’s moving for an executive session and “we’re gonna have votes of this commlittee again and again and again” until Specter goes along.

Specter: “I’m not going to have you run this committee,” Specter said. “I will consider it in due course.”

Think Progress has a video clip; it was more intense than the transcript suggests.

Once the committee broke for lunch, Kennedy told reporters, “It’s extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he’s still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application.”

Call me crazy, but I think this Concerned Alumni of Princeton issue seems to be something of a sore spot….

It is being reported that Kennedy actually received a letter from Spector on this, acknowledging receipt of Kennedy’s letter. Arlen appears to have been caught…..lying.

  • Like I said yesterday, dig into this as deeply as possibly and you’ll see exactly why Alito says he doesn’t remember. (which of course, is total BS.)

  • CAP is impossible to spin, so I’m sure the White House has coached him to “forget” it. It’s pretty unbelievable, but the public might buy it. Just as I’m sure they’ve coached him to downplay and deflect or in some cases just disavow anything that’s too inconvenient.

    I heard the exchange on NPR and I was going to say in the absense of bubba’s post that I think Specter is right on procedural grounds, Kennedy sounds like he’s making a bit of a show, and Specter runs the show here. Not to say that Kennedy isn’t right on his facts, or his demands – just his methods.

  • Thank God for the video link. I missed it and now Biden is droning on again. I feel more hopeful now. This may be the jugular, the weakness we can exploit.

  • To bad we can’t get Rian Mueller’s Ginsburg question asked again and again. In lieu of that, though, CAP seems like a pretty good alternative.

  • I am hoping that they know there is something in the CAP papers that will catch Alito in a lie. That would trump any other questions and give a solid basis for a filibuster.

  • I don’t know if a personal statement on abortion will be good enough. Even if he says he agrees with what Justice Ginsburg said exactly.

    Alito has outright disavowed stuff from the 80s already, something he said was “inapt”, and said he “deplored” the positions of CAP, the organization he said he was proud to be a member of 20 years ago. He’s said he respects stare decisis, but Senator Schumer pointed out yesterday that Justice Clarence Thomas said the same thing in his confirmation hearings and ended up wholly rejecting the principle of stare decisis in his Supreme Court rulings. He could very well be lying his ass off and his true nature remains what he sold himself as 20 years ago. The pattern of defensiveness in his answers surely indicates it. How can we be sure? Why should we believe what he tells the Senate?

  • Can someone put up a transcript of what the senator is saying RIGHT NOW? Whomever it is, he makes a great summary of the questions and concerns that remain that we want answered, and the dissatisfactory and evasive nature of the answers he’s given so far.

  • I just wish someone would ask him straight out, “Is anything the president does legal simply because it’s the president who does it?” Nixon tried to make that argument decades ago and nobody bought it then, and nobody would buy it now.

  • Think Progress is now saying that Kennedy introduced the response Specter made to Kennedy’s Dec 22 letter. Specter said he never saw the letter, but somehow he wrote a response?!? Is he lying, or is he just mistaken?

  • Thanks for the link! Actually, I asked this:

    Hi, Senator. As you can see from my ZIP code, I am not a constituent, but I am concerned with Judge Alito’s opinions nonetheless.

    Here is the most important question to me that I would like to see answered. In applying for other jobs, Alito said certain things and gave certain opinions, among them that he was proud of his membership in CAP, and that he did not believe the Constitution provided a protection of abortion rights. Now, applying for a different job, Alito is telling us otherwise. That he is not predisposed to overturn Roe, that he disavows his participation and pride in CAP. As a few examples.

    The question is: if he “sexed up” his credentials for the Reagan administration in the 80s, how can we be sure he isn’t sexing them up now? What assurances of Alito’s open-mindedness do we have outside of empty words from a man who has been coached by a White House that has no qualms with withholding information from the Congress, deceiving, and outright lying to the Congress?

    I think it’s important to have that straightened up before Alito is asked to agree with Ginsburg’s statements.

  • Now, this is curious. The current results for the Alito poll on the World Net Daily site are exactly the opposite of wha they were an hour ago. And the entire previous poll results appear to have been replaced with new ones. Before, there were some 1250 responses. Now, there are only 384.

    Anyone know what happened, here? Did liberals “freep” the poll, so that World Net Daily scrapped the results and started over?

  • Could be. Web polls are ridiculously easy to game. As Slashdot says, “This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you’re using these numbers to do anything important, you’re insane.” WorldNetDaily probably caught a few ballot stuffers.

  • The relationship between the Old Guard and the more ‘liberal’ modern day stakeholders at Princeton and other Ivy League schools is sometimes quite stark. Unless you’ve seen a letter from a well regarded alumnus decrying the admission of women or declaring that women (as a rule) belong in the kitchen, you haven’t lived. Interestingly, the movie ‘Mona Lisa Smile’ touches on this phenomenon from a slightly different perspective. Anyway, the opposition to women and minorities was quite virulent, even though the first women and minorities accepted into Princeton during the 60s and early 70s were generally standout students who usually went onto higher degrees. Kennedy should contact some of those alumni for their comments on CAP; they probably have first hand accounts of that organization.

  • I actually predicted that this would be a good spot to pick at in the comments for a previous Alito related article. I think it is win-win:

    Membership in a hate group

    Or

    Lying about belonging to a hate group because you thought it would appeal to a GOP administration

    There is a reason to dig. ‘I have no recollection whatsoever’ does not match ‘I’m sure I didn’t do fundraising or throw rocks at minority students’. Keep digging and he’ll either have to come clean about being involved or admit he lies on job applications.

    -jjf

  • Coburn made some also very revealing statements. Basically, in his last statements he said his hope was that Alito will overturn Roe. This is the test. This is the test of the senate over who really supports the constitutionality of abortion and who doesn’t. The overt pro-lifers who want Roe overturned, like Coburn, support Alito’s nomination, and expects him to overturn it given the chance, and every piece of evidence suggests that he will. Those Democrats like Schumer and Durbin know there is no reason to trust Alito not to jump at overturning Roe. The rest of the senators, Specter in particular, are all looking for a reason to keep their hands clean while voting for such an obvious pro-life judge, so they can say in future elections that they really believed that Alito would be impartial while knowingly voting for a guy who is definitely not impartial. It seems that’s what all these hearings are about for a lot of these senators.

  • According to Hotline On Call the CAP documents are on the way:

    During the lunch recess, Specter called Rusher, an ex-National Review publisher, and asked about the papers. Rusher, who apparently had never been asked for documents relating to CAP, agreed to share them with the cmte

  • I have my tinfoil hat on. Specter claimed that he hadn’t received Kennedy’s letter. Kennedy’s office supplied the committee with the reply from Specter’s office. Has Specter been caught in a lie ? It would be a very stupid lie. Specter couldn’t have forgotten (it hasn’t been 20 years).

    I think the most likely explanation is that someone on Specter’s staff replied (refusing Kennedy’s request) without showing tthe letter to Specter or clearly explaining its contents. I mean Specter may be a whimp but he is not an idiot and clearly would not risk being nailed for lying on TV for no good reason.

    How much of the majority staff was inherited from Hatch ? Recall Miranda who was reading Democrats’ e-mails. I think it is possible that hard core Republican operatives are trying to control Specter by hiding things from him.

    Now if he puts up with that, he is not only a whimp but the worlds whimpiest whimp ever.

    I know this all sounds crazy, but why would Specter angrily confront Kennedy, then give him what he wants during the lunch break ?

    • Comments are closed.