Cynical Nation

Remember when John Kerry said "I hope I'm wrong" about Sam Alito on the Senate Floor? Well John Kerry must be a very happy man tonight, because he was wrong as rain, and I'm sure he won't mind being frequently reminded of that fact over the months and years to come.

I've said it again and again, most recently here. Sam Alito is not some crazed, reactionary ideologue, eager to run roughshod over civil liberties the second he after he gets sworn in.

Alito's opponents could never make that charge stick, and for very good reason -- Alito's record did not support it. And for Democrats to balk on Alito after having rolled out the red carpet for John Roberts made absolutely no sense. Roberts, as I've said before, was closer to the caricature the left painted of Alito than Alito himself.

Now don't get me wrong. Alito is no Thurgood Marshall. But his very first ruling doesn't exactly lend credibility to the image of Judge Alito as the gleeful fascist who wipes his ass with the Bill of Rights.

New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito split with the court's conservative Wednesday night, refusing to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection.

Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down Missouri's last-minute request to allow a midnight execution.

In short, his opponents were wrong. I don't expect any apologies will be forthcoming, even from the very glad Mr. Kerry, but these folks should know there's a price to be paid for the unwarranted slander of this man. When they inevitably oppose the next significant judicial nominee from this president, they will do so with vastly diminished credibility. That's astonishing when you think about it, because they had precious little in the first place.