ConfirmThem

By AndrewHyman Posted in Judiciary Committee — Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Sen. Ted Kennedy badgered Judge Alito on Wednesday about Vanguard. For background about that ridiculous issue, see here. In a nutshell, Alito was asked by the Senate in 1990 about “potential conflict-of-interest during your initial service in the position to which you have been nominated," and Alito responded that he would recuse himself from cases involving Vanguard. Twelve (12) years later, Alito felt that his initial period of service was over. On Wednesday, Sen. Kennedy absurdly disagreed, ad nauseum. Just like Kennedy's implied accusations of racism and sexism, none of Kennedy's Vanguard charges will stick to Alito, but the charges do reveal a great deal about the well-intentioned yet extremely misguided party of which Kennedy is a leader.

KENNEDY: You made a pledge to the Senate -- effectively, to the American people --- that you were going to recuse yourself. Now you say, well, it was just for any initial time, and I think 12 years is more than I really had in mind --- you just qualified your answer. How long, when you made that pledge and that promise to the committee, how long did you intend to keep it?...
ALITO: Looking at that question today and looking at the answer, the question was: What you intend to do during your initial period of service? And I think that that's what the answer has to be read as responding to.
KENNEDY: You've just indicated that when you made a pledge to the committee that you were going to recuse yourself, that you thought that at sometime you were going to be released. And I'd just like to know how long that was going to be. Was that going to be two years, was it going to be three years, was it going to be five years? When did you feel that you were going to be released, if we followed your interpretation?...
ALITO: Looking at the question now, where it says initial period of service, I would say that 12 years later is not the initial period of service. But that was...
KENNEDY: When did it stop then? When did you think that your pledge to the committee halted, after how many years? Six months? What did you intend at the time that you made the pledge? What was in your mind at that time? I'm interested in what's in your mind at this time, but what was in your mind at that time?
ALITO: I can't specifically recall what was in my mind at that time, but I'll tell you what I'm pretty sure I had in mind. I was not a judge, and I was being considered for a judicial position. And what I was trying to express was basically the policy that I followed during all my years on the bench, which is to bend over backwards to make sure that I didn't do anything that came close to violating the code of conduct or give anybody the impression that I was doing anything that was improper.
KENNEDY: The last question on this is how long then -- when you made the promise under oath to the committee that you were going to recuse yourself -- and you understand that now to be in your own interpretation to be just the initial time -- how long did you think that that pledge and promise lasted?
ALITO: Senator, as I said, I can't tell you 15 years later exactly what I thought when I read that question. It refers to the initial period of service. And looking at it now, it doesn't seem to me that 12 years later is the initial period of service.
KENNEDY: My question to you, which I guess I'm not going to get an answer to, is when did it? Is 10 years? How about three years? Is that?
ALITO: I do not know exactly what the time limitation would be, but 12 years does seem to me to be not the initial period.