Democrats Powerless Against Alito

By John Tabin
The American Spectator

For all their badgering over mutual funds and alumni organizations, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee scarcely laid a glove on Samuel Alito this week. Yesterday Ryan Lizza at the New Republic laid out (subscription required) the thin gruel that Democrats have to work with if they hope to mount a filibuster. (They almost certainly won't do so -- but more on that in a minute.) Lizza notes that Alito easily explained every decision of his that Democrats' questioned, and writes that "Alito and his defenders on the Committee....defanged the major ethics issue -- the accusation that, as a judge, Alito should have recused himself from a case involving Vanguard, a company in which he had investments -- by simply pointing to the numerous legal ethicists who have declared the charge bunk."