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Saturday, November 12, 2005

Alito Cattivo or 3 outa 4 aint bad

Judge Alito swore that he would recuse himself from four types of cases. Cases involing Vanguard, cases involving Smith Barney, cases involving his sister's law firm and I forget what. He managed to break 3 of the four sacred oaths. I wonder if this is enough to make the Democrats face the dread nuclear option, as in, we get a filibuster the old fashion way, we earn it.

Now the wind whispers a possible defence of alito. In the sister's law firm case he just signed something saying he was present and he agreed with his 14 colleagues that an appeal was without merit. Wouldn't really have mattered if the decision was 14 to 0 not 15 to 0.

The avanguardia operaio case (avanti populi a la riscossa bandiera rossa etc) is less defensible. Here alito might claim that he didn't want to impose on any other judge the plaintif from hell. The plaintif was a lawyer representing herself. She had a fresh law degree from a not super top law school so one suspects she had plenty of time to spare. She was appealing a judgement that Vanguard did not commit a tort when it obeyed a court order.

Now oaths are sacred and all that but how exactly do you explain to the guy with the office next to yours that your concience requires you to send this plaintif to him ?


The subtle moral and legal issues are vague to me. One thing is clear. God is totally pissed that Bush claims to talk to him and he is making it totally clear that He has his little jokes and he does not let Bush in on them.

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