Please help stop Alito - sample letter to the editor

[Czolgosz]

Many Republicans (like John C. Harrison, former law clerk and disciple of extremist Judge Robert Bork) are hitting the newspapers with editorials and letters to the editor in favor of Judge Alito. Please offer your own letter to the editor rebutting that Astroturf (fake grassroots) campaign in favor of Alito. Feel free to draw upon these facts if you wish to prepare a letter to the editor against Alito:

Judge Sam Alito is unqualified to serve on the Supreme Court for several reasons.

First, Alito has a history of ethical violations and misleading Congress. In 1990, when Alito was seeking US Senate approval for his nomination to be an appeals court judge, he was asked to answer the same questions that other judicial nominees are asked in written questionnaire. Specifically, Alito was asked how he would resolve potential conflicts of interest, and he responded: "I do not believe that conflicts of interest relating to my financial interests are likely to arise. I would, however, disqualify myself from any cases involving the Vanguard companies." When a Vanguard case later came before Alito he did not disqualify himself as he promised Congress he would; instead, he broke the promise to Congress and ruled in favor of Vanguard without ever disclosing his ownership of approximately a half million to a million dollars in Vanguard.

Alito's failure to disclose this obvious conflict of interest and his failure to disqualify himself puts Alito in an extreme fringe of judges who take an out-of-the-mainstream lax view of the judicial ethics rules. However, Alito's failure to disqualify himself in violation of his express contrary promise to Congress puts Alito in an ethics category all by himself: before Alito there was no prior history of judges failing to disclose such conflicts and then failing to disqualify themselves after they had specifically acknowledged the conflict and then promised Congress to disqualify themselves. Alito's ethical breach is an extreme one-of-a-kind breach of judicial ethics.

Second, Alito's views are very extreme and far outside the judicial mainstream, and his legal history demonstrates a pattern of judicial activism where Alito has repeatedly chosen to ignore decades of prior court decisions to reach his own politically-favored result. For example, the scope of congressional authority to regulate nationwide solutions for nationwide problems is an issue that was decided about 70 years ago. But Judge Alito would ignore these past 70 years and thousands of well-decided legal precedents to re-open this settled legal matter because it does not suit his personal philosophy.

In Alito's dissenting opinion in United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996), he ignored these past 70 years of judicial precedents to reach the extremist ruling that Congress does not have the authority to regulate the ownership of submachine guns. Fortunately, even Alito's Republican colleagues on the court of appeals disagreed with this type of judicial activism and the Republican-dominated Supreme Court also rejected Alito's extreme view.

The same out-of-the-mainstream pre-1937 view of congressional authority was at the heart of Alito's poor decision to rule that Congress did not have the authority to require state employers to comply with the Family Medical Leave Act in Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development. Again, the Supreme Court was there to keep Alito's judicial activism in check by overruling his extreme views against the congressional power to enforce the Family Medical Leave Act across the nation, but there would be no higher court to check his extremism if Alito was promoted to the Supreme Court.

The same judicial arrogance lies at the heart of Alito's dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 947 F.2d 682 (3d Cir. 1991), where he once again demonstrated his willingness to ignore well-established judicial precedents to re-write the accepted view of the Constitution simply because his personal philosophy runs contrary to the established rule of law. Again, Alito's Republican colleagues on the court of appeals disagreed with his judicial activism and the Republican-dominated Supreme Court rejected his extreme view.

Judge Alito has also demonstrated equally extremist views on gender and racial discrimination where he would make it nearly impossible to police corporate discrimination if the law followed his dissenting views in Sheridan v. Dupont, 74 F.3d 1439 (3d Cir. 1996), and Bray v. Marriott Hotels, 110 F.3d 986 (3d Cir. 1997). Here are two more cases where even the Republicans on Alito's own court of appeals disagreed with his extreme views.

If anyone was left to wonder whether Alito's out-of-the-mainstream decisions are the result of his personal views, this issue was resolved by the uncovering of Alito's application to work for Ed Meese, where Alito said he was "particularly proud" of his "contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Finally, do not believe the Republican effort to rewrite congressional history regarding the filibuster of judicial nominees and the Supreme Court. In 1965, the Senate easily confirmed Judge Abe Fortas to the Supreme Court. Just three years later, when President Lyndon Johnson nominated Fortas to serve as Chief Justice, there was obviously no question about his qualifications because Fortas was already serving on the Supreme Court. Based only on Fortas's judicial views, however, the Senate Republicans launched a successful four-day filibuster of Fortas's nomination in September of 1968. Whenever you hear some Senator saying that there is no history of filibustering a Supreme Court nomination based on his out-of-the-mainstream judicial views, ask them to look up the front page of the Washington Post from September 26, 1968:
"A full-dress Republican-led filibuster broke out in the Senate yesterday against a motion to call up the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas for Chief Justice."
The New York Times ran as similar story that day, and many news outlets around ran the story later that week.

Alito must not be confirmed, and if necessary, his nomination must be filibustered. Please tell your Senators.



PLEASE HELP SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT ALITO -- HE IS AN EXTREMIST THAT CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO SET HIS PERSONAL AGENDA AS THE LIMITS FOR FREEDOM IN AMERICA.

[Czolgosz]

1. Please don't let anyone forget Alito's extremism came after confirmation

Please don't let anyone forget -- since Alito's confirmation in 1990, Alito confirmed his extremism when he

(1) proved that he lied during his confirmation hearing,

(2) violated judicial ethics rules (including rules where he previously admitted his conflict of interest in writing to congress and then subsequently failed to disqualify himself as he had promised and then ruled in favor of a company he owned nearly a million in),

(3) declared himself willing to ignore 70 years of legal precedents about the scope of congressional authority to try in order to re-write the laws regulating submachine gun sales and the Family Medical Leave Act,

(4) declared himself willing to ignore 40 years of legal precedents about reproductive privacy and freedom in order to install the government as the policeman of your bedroom,

(5) declared himself willing to defend corporations against the penalties for racial and gender discrimination, and

(6) disclosed his 1985 application to Ed Meese which proves that Alito had admittedly adopted this extremist agenda at least five years before he was appointed to the court of appeals and so he can no longer effectively deny that his personal views have corrupted his result-oriented judicial decisions.

[Czolgosz]

2. "Knock, knock." "Who's there?" "Your civil rights." "What civil rights?"

"Yeah, Judge Alito didn't recognize me either."