It's been a hectic new year already, as I'm trying once again to balance a full class load and working more hours than I probably should be. But, you don't want to hear that old story again!
I've been trying to grab spare moments here and there to catch some of the Alito hearings either online or, should I ever happen to be around a television set during the day (unlikely!), on C-Span.
From what little I've seen so far, it seems to be going as expected. By that I mean, the Republicans are lauding him for being the second coming (or so it always sounds when they're laying on the praise) and the Democrats are trying their hardest to get some real answers from the man and not succeeding.
Most chilling, I think, is the fact that Alito bragged in '85 (on a job application for the Reagan White House) about having belonged to the group Concerned Alumni of Princeton, though now he has come down with selective amnesia about the group and his membership in it. How convenient for him. Senator Kennedy had a poster made of a quote from the group's magazine, and this really says it all:
"People nowadays just don't seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns black and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and hispanic, the physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports, and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children. And now... and now come women."
This is the sort of man they're trying to put on the court to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. The Democrats and any even halfway moderate Republicans should be coming together to stop this from happening. They're literally holding the future of countless Americans in their hands and if they screw this up...I don't even want to think about it. But suffice it to say, we'll all know who failed to stop this. The Democrats have been in danger of losing the left for a long time now, and if they let Alito receive confirmation without putting up a real fight, that could be the final straw for many of us.
I say filibuster the nomination. If the right then takes away the right to filibuster, at least the public knows that the Democrats put up a real fight. If they let this go to a vote without a filibuster, they've caved in yet again to the right.
On a completely different topic, I've been waiting impatiently for Brokeback Mountain to go into wider release so that I can finally see it. And at long last it's finally coming to a theatre near me tomorrow, so I'm greatly anticipating that. Hopefully I'll have time to see it this weekend.
I also have been told that I should watch the show Book Of Daniel on NBC. So I'm going to try and catch the show tomorrow night.
It has Christian Campbell in it, brother of Neve, and star of one of my favorite gay movies, Trick, so that alone is reason to try and catch the show, especially since he's playing a gay character in Book of Daniel as well.
