Freedom Winter campaign demands ‘Stop Alito’

>Archive - PWW Print Edition Archive - 2006 Editions - Jan. 14, 2006


 

As hearings open, labor, civil rights, women’s groups call for Senate rejection

WASHINGTON — Judge Samuel Alito spun a “rags to riches” tale in his opening testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. But his record, brought to light during the committee’s confirmation hearings, and by a broad human rights coalition, exposed him as a judge who panders to the rich and powerful.

“I’m gravely concerned by Judge Alito’s clear record of support for vast presidential authority unchecked by the other two branches of government,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in his opening statement Jan. 9 in the packed hearing room. “In decision after decision on the bench, he has excused abusive actions by the authorities that intrude on the privacy and freedoms of average Americans.”

Outside the hearing, Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, charged, “In his 15 years on the federal bench, Alito has almost never sided with African Americans in employment discrimination cases.” Alito’s defense of his membership in a racist alumni club at Princeton is “disingenuous,” Henderson added. Alito “has a clear and disturbing record on civil rights and other fundamental rights and freedoms.”

Hector Flores, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, announced that LULAC’s executive board voted unanimously to oppose Alito, citing a memo he wrote in 1986 arguing that undocumented immigrants “have no due process rights” under the Constitution.

The National Organization for Women has brought hundreds of protesters here for “Freedom Winter.” NOW spokesperson Lisa Bennett told the World that many students, mostly young women, “are in the capital during their winter break visiting senators’ offices to urge them to vote ‘no’ on confirming Alito.” Others are back home organizing visits to senators’ offices, e-mails, phone calls and letters to the senators protesting Alito’s hostility to women’s rights.

People for the American Way launched a “Stop Alito” campaign with grassroots activity in every state and the District of Columbia.

The labor movement is also opposing Alito (click here related story, “Labor opposes Alito nomination”).

Senators cited the disclosure last month that in 2001 President Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency to spy on law-abiding people in the U.S. without warrants in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

“Under the president’s spying program, there are no checks and balances; there is no outside review of the legality of this brazen infringement on the rights and liberties of the American people,” Kennedy said. “The Supreme Court must serve as an independent check on abuses by the executive branch and a protector of liberties, not as a cheerleader for an imperial presidency.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont denounced the Bush-ordered spying. “We found out the Department of Defense is going around photographing people who are objecting to the war in Iraq,” he said. “They were spying on Quakers in Vermont. … I want to be sure we have a court that is going to say: ‘We’re going to protect your privacy.’”

Alito acknowledged that the president must “comply with the Fourth Amendment and the statutes passed.” But he added, “To make a judgment I would have to hear why he chose to ignore FISA, why the actions taken were lawful.” He called it a “twilight zone.” But critics called it a gaping loophole.

During cross-examination Jan 10, Kennedy questioned Alito’s upholding of the eviction at gunpoint of a dairy farmer and his family who had “fallen on hard times,” as well as a police strip-search of a 10-year-old girl and her mother, neither of them crime suspects. Alito defended this police abuse.

Reminding the hearing of the Sago, W.Va., mine tragedy that killed 12 coal miners, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked Alito to explain why he used a technicality to rule in favor of a coal mining corporation in a health and safety dispute.

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) asked Alito about his rejection of the appeal of a woman “denied a job she was qualified for because she was Black. … Your colleagues said if they applied your standard it would eviscerate Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act].’”

Alito replied that the case was just “a subjective business judgment … a factual case on which reasonable people could disagree.”

Alito justified his “proud” membership in the racist and sexist Princeton alumni club on the grounds it was defending ROTC that had been forced from the campus by anti-Vietnam War protesters.

Alito was questioned about the ban on “torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees” approved by the Senate 90-9. Bush issued a “signing statement” claiming the right to “construe” the torture ban “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power.”

Bush appeared to be basing himself on concepts advocated by Alito in a 1986 memo, in which Alito extolled “unitary executive” power and urged presidents to use “signing statements” to twist laws based on such power. He wrote, “The president’s understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of the Congress.” Kennedy charged that Bush’s signing statement “quietly gutted his commitment to enforce the torture ban.”

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