Hearing the Hearing

I had a long drive into the hinterlands today, and as I repeatedly pushed "seek," seeking something worth hearing on the radio, I happened upon the tail end of the Alito hearing. Senator Durbin was being reasonable, though he phrased his question badly (open-ended is always better than leading--it gives them room both to succeed and to hang themselves). Alito was being rational and rigid, though not anything that would justify a filibuster.

Unlike lots of people of my politics, I have not been following the hearings very closely, and I am not particularly distraught. As far as I'm concerned, we lost the Supreme Court around 3 in the morning on November 3, 2004, and all the rest of this is histrionics. We should be spending our time on state courts and legislatures, because that's where the battle has a chance of being, if not won, at least held to a draw.

In fact, what's bothering me about this situation--and I know I'm going to sound like a pedantic curmudgeon, or perhaps a curmudgeonly pedant, but so be it--is less Alito himself, than the absurd spectacle that this hearing process has become: the grandstanding on the senatorial side and the forced lying on the nominee side. Because I do believe that Alito is lying. Who in this country above the age of 15 does not have an opinion about abortion? Some opinions are absolute, some are murky and inconsistent, but nobody doesn't think about it. Especially an intelligent, political, religious lawyer.

I guess he doesn't have to lie. He could just say "I think Roe v. Wade should be overturned." And "The president is always right." And what a relief that would be. People could vote for or against him based on the real issues, not these trumped up concerns about Vanguard recusals and 30-year-old club memberships.

But the system doesn't work that way, if it ever did. And that's a huge problem in itself.