Alito's Way: Breathe Deep, Talk Deep

SWNID has paid only passing attention to the Alito hearings, but it's clear enough that he'll sail through to confirmation. Just as clear is the way that the Senate Judiciary Committee Ds are using the hearings as a fundraising opportunity with NARAL, NOW, MoveOn.org and similar limousine liberal patrons. We like what James Taranto has to say about today's hearings, and the hearings in general, at OpinionJournal's "Best of the Web Today." Likewise, Peggy Noonan, whom we admire but haven't linked much, is discussing Alito with her usual graceful prose but an unusual amount of humor. She calls his approach "a low affect tour de force." Now there's a nicely crafted phrase. But for partisan, gloves-off humor, there's nothing like Ann Coulter, who uses the hearings to compare the two major parties:

Today's Republican Party stands for life, limited government and national defense. And today's Democratic Party stands for ... the right of women to have unprotected sex with men they don't especially like. We're the Blacks-Aren't-Property/Don't-Kill-Babies party. They're the Hook-Up party.

We see Alito as a master of patience with fools. As the senator's monologue goes on, Alito goes to his happy place, listening only enough to know the general subject of the question, if there is one (that means that he doesn't listen to Joe Biden at all). Then he patiently walks the bloviating senator, who was likely once a lawyer, through a detailed overview of the legal doctrines involved in the kind of case named, never committing himself to a decision.

For a careful judge, this has to be pretty easy. After all, he has no case before him to decide, just an issue. So he can't render a judgment. Politicians, on the other hand, imagine that everyone is like them. Ask a pol a question, he'll tell you what needs to be done (his "plan") and who will benefit from it (always "working American families," of course). So they don't get how a judge can't give a decision without an actual case. But for the judge, it's easy. He learned the principles in law school, so he just recites them, but he know that cases need facts and appeals need legal records. Having no facts or records, he just recites the principles.

So the judge looks knowledgable and evenhanded, while the senators look like political hacks.