That the right is enthusiastic about Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination is a given. When John Roberts was tapped, conservatives were happy, but Alito’s level of support among all the various GOP factions is apparently unanimous.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t raise a few questions that’ll make them nervous.
For example, there was that report Alito wrote taking a progressive approach to issues like gay rights (via Pandagon).
As a senior at Princeton University, Samuel A. Alito Jr. chaired an undergraduate task force that recommended the decriminalization of sodomy, accused the CIA and the FBI of invading the privacy of citizens, and said discrimination against gays in hiring ”should be forbidden.”
The report, issued in 1971 by Alito and 16 other Princeton students, stemmed from a class assignment to study the ”boundaries of privacy in American society” and to recommend ways to protect individual rights.
OK, so maybe that isn’t likely to make the right panicky. The report was written, after all, over 30 years ago. If conservatives were willing to embrace Roberts despite his work on the “wrong” side of Romer v. Evans in 1996, they’ll likely overlook a 34-year-old undergraduate project.
But what about praise for William Brennan?
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Alito for his four favorite Supreme Court justices. One of the four might raise eyebrows from his conservative supporters.
Three of the names were no-brainers for a conservative advocate of judicial restraint like Judge Alito: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justice Byron R. White and Justice John M. Harlan.
But Justice William J. Brennan?
The William J. Brennan who was one of the most liberal members of the Rehnquist court – and one who, Chief Justice Rehnquist once complained, read his case memorandums in conference as if “reading aloud a rather long and uninteresting recipe,” according to a new biography of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor by Joan Biskupic?
That William J. Brennan?
Apparently, Brennan, like Alito, is a Roman Catholic from New Jersey, and Alito knows members of the Brennan family.
Still, I like anecdotes like these just to make conservatives a little nervous. I can hear William Kristol calling Karl Rove now, “You’re sure he’s with us, right?”