Liberal Former Alito Clerk: Don't "F" Alito
By opposing Alito, my fellow liberals and I run the real danger of shooting ourselves in our own left foot.
Jan 12, 2006
by Susan Sullivan
Most efforts at evaluating the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court have fallen along predictable party lines. By opposing the nomination however, my fellow liberals and I run the real danger of shooting ourselves in our own left foot.
I was one of Judge Alito's law clerks from 1990-1991, the year the Casey decision was decided. I consider myself a social progressive. I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU and a liberal pro-choice advocate who supports abortion rights. I favor gun control, support gay marriage and oppose the death penalty. I also don't have a problem if you want to take "God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. In short, no one is likely to mistake me for a conservative any time soon. Yet, I support the nomination of Judge Alito, because I know from having worked closely with him, that he is not a political ideologue and is not intent on advancing a conservative political agenda.
As a liberal, what scares me is not the prospect of having Sam Alito on the Supreme Court; what scares me is the way my fellow liberal Democrats are behaving in response to the nomination. I’m appalled and embarrassed by the fear mongering, the personal attacks and what I see as an irresponsible and misleading distortion of his real judicial record as well as his character. Now the threat of a filibuster lurks, and Senator Kennedy’s tirade about documents being concealed seems like little more than a pretext to justify such a threat.
In light of the Alito feeding frenzy, I feel compelled as a liberal and a former clerk to speak out and attempt to offer a different perspective to perhaps stem, or at least counter, what I see as a short-sighted, ill-considered and counter-productive attack strategy, made, sadly, by the very same liberal groups whose mission and philosophy I ordinarily support and embrace. I did not want to be part of the spin, but I don’t know how to stop it except to say what I know and hope some will listen.
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/SusanSullivan/2006/01/12/182113.html