{"id":5813,"date":"2005-11-11T12:54:18","date_gmt":"2005-11-11T17:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5813"},"modified":"2005-11-11T12:54:18","modified_gmt":"2005-11-11T17:54:18","slug":"alito-raises-doubts-from-his-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/alito-raises-doubts-from-his-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Alito raises doubts &#8212; from his side"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, the WaPo ran <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2005\/11\/08\/AR2005110801938.html\">an item<\/a>, on the front page, explaining that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito &#8220;has signaled he would be highly reluctant to overturn long-standing precedents such as the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The piece went on to quote a variety of senators, most of them pro-choice centrists, who seemed pleased to hear directly from Alito about his respect for long-standing precedent. But what about the anti-abortion activists who are counting on Alito to get on the high court and overturn Roe? Apparently, their concerns about Alito are getting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-alito11nov11,1,3648552,full.story?coll=la-headlines-nation\">more and more serious<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know what his personal views are, but I know that he has ruled on pro-life cases four times and he has ruled against pro-life positions three times. And the fourth was a split decision,&#8221; said Richard Collier, president of the Legal Center for the Defense of Life, based in Morristown, N.J. &#8220;If you look at the paper trail, it is all negative.&#8221; [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>A leading antiabortion group, the National Right to Life Committee, has not taken a formal position on Alito&#8217;s nomination, but the organization&#8217;s website suggests that the group considers his record on abortion to be mixed at best.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In examining his record, there are four principal abortion-related cases,&#8221; the group&#8217;s website states. &#8220;Judge Alito voted in favor of the pro-life side once and against it three times.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve largely assumed that the far right would get a wink and a nod from the White House, effectively telling these activists, &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry, he&#8217;s with us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s a sign of Bush&#8217;s falling national support, or maybe it&#8217;s a byproduct of the Harriet Miers mess, but these groups sound awfully concerned about Alito and aren&#8217;t willing to take Bush&#8217;s word on faith. It&#8217;s not enough to formally oppose his nomination, of course, but the LA Times <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-alito11nov11,1,3648552,full.story?coll=la-headlines-nation\">talked to<\/a> a series of state and national anti-abortion groups, all of which expressed varying degrees of reservations.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I have never heard a peep of protest on precedents from Judge Alito,&#8221; Collier said. &#8220;He has not advanced the ball intellectually on how to overturn Roe and Casey.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A potential problem area for the nomination?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this week, the WaPo ran an item, on the front page, explaining that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito &#8220;has signaled he would be highly reluctant to overturn long-standing precedents such as the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling.&#8221; The piece went on to quote a variety of senators, most of them pro-choice centrists, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}