Alito critics focus on 10 appellate opinions
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05329/612221.stm
Pittsburgh Post Gazette - Pittsburgh,PA,USA

Alito critics focus on 10 appellate opinions
Say he would shift top court to right

Friday, November 25, 2005
By Michael McGough, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- With 15 years on a federal appeals court and hundreds of
decisions under his belt, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. has a
much longer paper trail for liberal activists to pore over than Chief
Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who served only two years on the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

And pore over it they have.

Judge Alito's rulings on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals are not the only focus of groups like People for the American Way
and the Alliance for Justice. Those organizations and senators sympathetic
to them also have made an issue of a 1985 job application in which Mr.
Alito, then a lawyer in the solicitor general's office, took pride in
advancing legal arguments "in which I personally believe very strongly,"
including the view that there is no constitutional right to abortion.

But Judge Alito's opinions on the 3rd Circuit, which address several of the
issues he would face on the Supreme Court, have provided his liberal
critics with chapter, verse and footnote for their argument, as the
Alliance for Justice puts it, that "Judge Alito consistently takes
positions that dovetail with the agenda of the right wing of the Republican
Party"

... right on issues involving abortion, employment discrimination, privacy,
free speech, the rights of criminal defendants and the separation of church
and state. ...


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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education

You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]

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. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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