If I pun on "Alito," will Matt Drudge think I'm being a racist?

Michael Herman of the Agenda Gap has the facts on Alito covered if you're into facts. If you're into a little free-form thinking, read on.

The foremost problem I see with Alito is not that his confirmation will put Roe (or stare decisis for that matter) at risk. That is a grave concern, at least for the fact that Bush has undermined our infrastructure through tax cuts and the war to the point where I'm not sure government agencies could take on the additional burden of successfully providing alternatives to abortion. This will likely result in church or religious groups taking over the counseling of the women who will need these services.

As a young kid, I actually helped my mother work in one of these religious advocacy centers. I can tell you, it's not much more than a bunch of caring but ultimately impractical middle-aged women with little experience in any of the fields that would be required for the psychological, medical, or legal (not to mention financial) problems they will attempt to help with. This is not a good situation, but it is not even the worst part about the Alito nomination.

The biggest problem is that it has now put the Supreme Court definitively, demonstrably, and possibly irrevocably at the mercy of interest groups and placed the emphasis of the Justice's duty not on his or her thought, reasoning, or contemplation, but on how he or she ultimately votes. Karl Rove has made national elections little more than vote-counting exercises, this nomination does the same thing for the Supreme Court.

It is clear that Alito was nominated as a way of appeasing a wing of a party, and even if he wasn't, all of America thinks that. The expectations on every future judicial nominee will focus on how that candidate will vote, not on how they will think. I think that is nothing short of the destruction of the Court as a unique institution, separate and distinct from Congress and the Executive.

It also strengthens the power of interest groups everywhere--not just radical Christian wingnuts, but any group that can get loud enough on either side of the political spectrum now has a precedent, ironically, to hang its hat on. Getting a President elected is one thing, but putting an ass in a lifetime position of enormous influence, that's something different. And something wrong and very, very frightening.