Obligatory thoughts on Alito

I know, I haven't posted anything on Alito, despite the fact that he was announced almost a week ago. As an evil neocon, I should be welcoming the forthcoming repeal of Roe v Wade other reenforcement of the white maile power structure. Plus, you know, as a (mostly) Italian from NJ with a name like Anthony, I must be mobbed up and will look forward to his soft on the Mafia stance.

Right. Except that none of those accusations are really true. I think the debate over Casey is a pretty good sign. If that is the worst decision the Left can come up with that Alito has been involved in, it bodes pretty well. First of all, I've seen a bunch of stats that most people are in favor of husband abortion notification, so it may not play as well as the left thinks. Many on the far-left seem to regard abortion like warm puppies or free beer - the more the better - while many Americans who are pro-choice are somewhere in the middle - they tolerate abortion, but don't like it, and would like to see it as rare as possible, so are willing to accept some limits on it.

But the question that Alito was answering wasn't if husband abortion notification was a good law or not, but rather if it was constitutional. Those are two different things. I think that Baltimore parking regulations, which manage to get me ticketed a couple times a year thanks to parking signs that contradict each other and bus stops whose size seems grow regularly, so that you can park a block away from a bus stop and still get a ticket for parking in a bus stop, are unfair. But they aren't unconsititutional. James Tarantino @ WSJ's Opinionjournal sums up this argument.

I think Alito is a good choice. I was less hostile than most in the blog world to Miers, because I thought it would be good to have an easy-to-confirm nominee. But in retrospect, it's much better to have a good nominee than an easy-to-confirm one, and to have one with a documented solid pro-consititution, narrow interpretation philosophy than one like Miers who had no documented philosophy to speak of. Alito seems to be uncontroversial enough to get through, but solid enough to stick to the constitution.

And he's Italian and from New Jersey, too. Not that ethnicity should matter.