Alito lite

The final graf from Maureen Dowd's op ed in the NY Times today (subscription wall) reads as follows:

Judge Alito was evasive, disingenuous and deferential. He fits the Bush era like a baseball glove.

Also noteworthy is the headline of an article the Times ran above the fold on the front page today:

Enough about you, Judge; Let's hear what I have to say

The best part of that article was about our favorite plagiarist, Joey Biden:

The highest ratio of words per panelist to words per nominee was that of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, who managed to ask five questions in his 30-minute time allotment.

"I understand, Judge, I am the only one standing between you and lunch, so I'll try to make this painless," he began, with some promise.

Mr. Biden then dived into a soliloquy on Judge Alito's failure to recuse himself from cases involving the Vanguard mutual fund company, which managed the judge's investments. After 2 minutes 50 seconds - short for the senator - Mr. Biden did appear to veer toward a question, but abandoned it to cite Judge Alito's membership in a conservative Princeton alumni group. Mr. Biden discoursed on that for a moment, then interrupted himself with an aside about his son who "ended up going to that other university, the University of Pennsylvania."

Judge Alito, who had been sitting without expression through Mr. Biden's musings, interrupted the senator midword, got out three sentences, then settled in for nearly 26 minutes more of Mr. Biden, with the senator doing most of the talking. With less than a minute to spare, Mr. Biden concluded, thanked Judge Alito for "being responsive," then said to Mr. Specter that "I want to note that for maybe the first time in history, Biden is 40 seconds under his time."

I guess that's exactly why I can't bring my self to listen to these hearings. When I turned them on for a few minutes yesterday, all I heard was Patrick Leahy giving a lengthy discourse on his life history. What a waste these people are. Oh, if only we could get some new blood into this party, or better yet, get a new party.

On second thought, the new guys would probably end up just like the old.