Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Flip (flop)

"I've known [Harriet Meirs] long enough to know she's not going to change, that 20 years from now she will be the same person with the same judicial philosophy she has today," Bush said. "She'll have more experience. She'll have been a judge, but nevertheless the philosophy won't change, and that's important to me." --ABC News, Oct. 4, 2005


While most of the committee's 10 Republicans lobbed soft questions, Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa.--who supports abortion rights--began the day by quizzing Alito on a 1985 memo in which he wrote that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

"That was a correct statement of what I thought in 1985 from my vantage point in 1985," Alito said, "and that was as a line attorney in the Department of Justice in the Reagan administration."

When Specter reminded Alito that the memo was part of a job application, Alito replied, "I'm not saying that I made the statement simply because I was advocating the administration's position. But that was the position that I held at the time."
--The Seattle Times, Jan. 11, 2006

Interesting that last year, the White House was trying to sell Meirs as the perfect Justice because she wouldn't change, and now it's pushing Alito because he did. (Well, supposedly.)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Anyone - ANYONE - who would not be changed by 20 years of experience frightens me.