{"id":40,"date":"2006-01-30T21:01:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-31T04:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/wordpress\/?p=40"},"modified":"2006-01-30T21:01:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-31T04:01:00","slug":"justice-alito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/2006\/01\/30\/justice-alito\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Alito"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For some strange reason, my father, in his dotage, is becoming more of a political animal. Sadly, such transformation involves becoming pretty much something of a dittohead. He calls the <em>New York Times<\/em> the &#8220;Traitor Times.&#8221; He says the <em>Washington Post<\/em> is not so much traitorous as corrupt. He subscribes to the <em>Washington Times<\/em> now, balancing out Sharon&#8217;s subscription to the <em>Post<\/em>. Oh, yeah, he reads Ann Coulter now, too.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever. It&#8217;s good at least to see him at least paying attention to the body politic, although he has some catching up to do. He asked me to explain &#8220;undue burden&#8221; to him on Saturday. I mean, I&#8217;m no scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think any discussion of <em>Roe<\/em> necessitates a little background knowledge, <em>Griswold<\/em> and <em>Casey<\/em> at least. Or at least know who Harry Blackmun is before you go declaring that he pulled <em>Roe<\/em> out of his ass.<\/p>\n<p>There are a handful of Supreme Court decisions we should all be at least passingly familiar with: <em>Marbury v. Madison<\/em>, <em>Dred Scott<\/em>, <em>Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em>, <em>Brown<\/em>, <em>Miranda<\/em>, and <em>Roe<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Get a little bit geekier and throw <em>Korematsu<\/em> in there, at least for lefties. And then we can go back before <em>Roe<\/em> to <em>Griswold<\/em> and then forward to <em>Casey<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So, anyway, my father also seemed quite triumphant over Alito&#8217;s appoinment, treating it almost as a personal victory. I myself found Judge Alito quite the dissembler, regarding his personal views when presenting himself as a job applicant to the Reagan Justice Department vs. his views now when presenting himself as a job applicant to the Senate, regarding his affiliation with Concerned Alumni of Princeton, and regarding Vanguard and (non) recusal.<\/p>\n<p>But, hell, they confirmed Rehnquist, and he defended <em>Plessy<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>And so now we have five Catholics on the Supreme Court. Gee, you think that&#8217;s an accident? Think somebody&#8217;s up to something?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For some strange reason, my father, in his dotage, is becoming more of a political animal. Sadly, such transformation involves becoming pretty much something of a dittohead. He calls the New York Times the &#8220;Traitor Times.&#8221; He says the Washington Post is not so much traitorous as corrupt. He subscribes to the Washington Times now, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/2006\/01\/30\/justice-alito\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Justice Alito<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohls.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}