Oppose Alito – it’s a life-and-death issue

For many Americans the controversy surrounding the court nomination seems like a distant and lower-order concern compared to surging energy prices, low-wage jobs, pension shredding, the rising body count in Iraq and hurricane reconstruction. It seems like an inside-the-Washington-Beltway drama that is of little consequence to most of us who live beyond the corridors of political power.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Who sits on the court does matter and matters a lot.

Much of the buzz in recent months has spun around the fact that the future of Roe v. Wade — the landmark reproductive rights ruling — may very well hang on who fills Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the court. This is undeniable. No one should take lightly the dire consequences for millions of women, and their families, if Roe is overturned.

But it should also be noted that the new court will make other decisions as well that could either severely restrict or completely roll back the democratic rights and possibilities of labor, the racially oppressed, the disabled, gays and lesbians and people generally.

With Alito, the Bush administration has nominated a judge who comfortably fits into the right-wing extremist mold. Some of his supporters, like right-wing Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and even some who should know better like Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times, sugarcoat Alito’s judicial record, calling him “mainstream” or a “traditional” conservative.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of Alito’s opinions as a federal circuit court judge, in fact, were so extreme that they were rejected by the Supreme Court, including former conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

In moments of candor, right-wing pundits admit that Alito will be a sturdy ally of right-wing justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, joining them in their mission to push the legal framework prevailing in our country to the hard right.

Thus, what the Rehnquist court began, the Roberts court with Alito aboard will continue, but with a vengeance.

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