Keeping with the CV Halloween theme, I am posting what I find to be the most frightening story this Halloween day - the nomination of Samuel Alito to the supreme court. Now, I like a good Halloween scare as well as anyone else, but this one is ringing all my alarm bells. Knowing little about him, I’ve been doing some reading today - he clearly has appropriate judicial credentials and seems to be intellligent, however he has a fearful reputation as an ultra-conservative and the radical right-wing strongly supports him. But it’s the tidbits of Alito’s judicial record, just starting to be publicized, that I find just plain scary. Here’s a sampling from various web sites:

In Doe v. Groody, Alito agued that police officers had not violated constitutional rights when they strip searched a mother and her ten-year-old daughter while carrying out a search warrant that authorized only the search of a man and his home. [Doe v. Groody, 2004]

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) “guarantees most workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one.” The 2003 Supreme Court ruling upholding FMLA [Nevada v. Hibbs, 2003] essentially reversed a 2000 decision by Alito which found that Congress exceeded its power in passing the law. [Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development, 2000]

In separate cases, Alito wrote dissenting opinions that would have made it essentially impossible to prove employment discrimination based on race or disability.

And last, but not least:

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1991), Alito was the only dissenter in a case that, among other things, threw out a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to notify their husbands. The ruling was later upheld by the Supreme Court, which partially affirmed the overall right to an abortion. Alito disagreed with the legal rationale used by the woman he would replace: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. In overturning the law, O’Connor established a new legal standard on abortion laws, that they impose no “undue burden” on women seeking the procedure.

A brief profile of him can be found here and here.

To my view, Charlotte Allen, of the Independent Women’s Forum put it best:

“We will be learning more in the coming days and weeks about why fringe extremists on the right are so pleased with Alito — and whether a Republican Party being torn apart by corruption, incompetence and fracturing coalitions can afford to let them continue to be in the driver’s seat.”

We will indeed continue to learn more about this rendition of trick or treat. And we should all take the time to educate ourselves on Alito’s views and then relay our views to our senators. If ever there was a time to get involved, this is it.