Full O' Bluster

From Investors Business Daily:

Posted 1/27/2006
Checks & Balances: Senate Democrats threaten to filibuster Samuel Alito to save the Constitution, but that unprecedented abuse of power would be undemocratic and driven by nothing nobler than liberal ideology.
The New York Times is goading Senate Democrats to show backbone and stage a filibuster even if it's unsuccessful. "Even a losing battle would draw the public's attention to the import of this nomination," its editorial page maintained last week.

That's the game right there. The left-wing activists who rely on the federal courts because they can't enact their agenda via the ballot box believe a failed attempt against Judge Alito will get the American public used to the idea that filibustering Supreme Court nominees is a reasonable weapon. A battle lost now will increase the chances of a successful filibuster of President Bush's next appointment to the high court.

The savvy Ralph Neas and his People for the American Way know Alito is a near shoe-in, yet they're dying to go down in flames over him. The group has a new slogan: "The filibuster is not a tool to be used trivially. Alito is not a trivial threat."

Filibustering a nominee for associate justice of the Supreme Court, however, would be a first in U.S. history. Democrats point to the Abe Fortas affair in 1968, but let's review that shameful episode of cronyism.
Fortas was being appointed Chief Justice of the United States, the head of one of our three branches of government. He was already serving as a Supreme Court justice, yet he was unethically moonlighting as a speechwriter for President Johnson, briefing LBJ on private Supreme Court deliberations and even lobbying senators in the president's behalf.

As a sitting justice, Fortas took $15,000 raised by his former law partner from business magnates disguised as a payment for seminars at American University.

LBJ's pal Fortas had a shady role in Johnson's corrupt 1948 Senate election, and by 1969 was forced by Chief Justice Warren to resign his Supreme Court seat after it came to light that he signed a deal for a lifetime annual consulting fee of $20,000 from financier Louis Wolfson, who was jailed in 1968 for stock manipulation.
The Senate's bipartisan action saving the country from such a sleazy character becoming chief justice was in the spirit of Alexander Hamilton's description of the Senate's role in the Federalist Papers as "an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president."

What's more, if Democratic senators really consider the filibuster a legitimate tool against Supreme Court appointments, why didn't they use it in 1991 against Clarence Thomas, who won by the slim majority of 52-48? Answer: At the time, they thought character assassination would be more effective.

Alito's opponents simply can't accept that the country re-elected a conservative Republican president and that there's a Republican majority in the Senate. Just the threat of filibuster proves their lack of respect for democracy. But then, that's exactly why judicial imperialism is so important to them.