Liberal support of Alito

We've been pretty quiet about the Alito confirmation hearings due in large part to the fact that they've been somewhat uneventful with Biden pontificating, Kennedy flailing and Schumer reprising his role as Torquemada. It appears very likely now that Alito will come up of committee on a party-line vote with perhaps one Democrat voting for him and confirmed with about 60 votes.

Here are two cases Alito's former left-leaning social progressive law cleraks have come out in support of Alito citing his integrity, ability and fair-mindedness. By the way, the fact that the man had left-leaning progressive law clerks ought to be testimony in itself.

NY Times:

The first witness was a former clerk for Judge Alito, Nora Demleitner, a law professor at Hofstra University, who called Judge Alito "one of the greatest legal minds" of his generation.

A self-described "left-leaning Democrat," Ms. Demleitner said the judge has many supporters who are liberal, and that she believed his confirmation would not "pose a threat" to women or immigrants.

Powerline: [click for Sullivan's entire article - worth reading]

[Susan Sullivan] was one of Judge Alito's law clerks in 1990-1991, the year the Casey decision was decided. I consider myself a social progressive. I am a card carrying member of the ACLU, a liberal pro-choice advocate who supports abortion rights. I favor gun control support gay marriage and oppose the death penalty. I don't have a problem if you want to take "God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. In short, no one is likely to mistake me for a conservative any time soon. Yet, I support the nomination of Judge Alito because I know from having worked closely with him that he is not a political ideologue and is not intent on advancing a conservative political agenda.

As a liberal, what scares me is not the prospect of having Sam Alito on the Supreme Court; what scares me is the way my fellow Liberal Democrats are behaving in response to the nomination. I’m appalled and embarrassed by the fear mongering, the personal attacks and what I see as an irresponsible and misleading distortion of his real judicial record as well as his character. Now the threat of a filibuster lurks and Senator Kennedy’s tirade about documents being concealed, seems like little more than a pretext to justify a filibuster.