If you cherish your rights, this nominee bears questioning

[Jon8503]

When Samuel Alito was a Justice Department lawyer in the 1980s, he wrote that he saw no legal problem with a police officer shooting and killing an unarmed 15-year-old who was fleeing from a $10 burglary.

Alito, now nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, said the shooting "can be justified as reasonable" and advised his bosses that the courts shouldn't interfere with police discretion to use deadly force. But the Supreme Court thought otherwise - by a 6-3 vote. Justice Byron White noted that the Constitution bars "unreasonable" searches and seizures, adding acidly that "a police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead."

The case is one of numerous examples of Alito's troubling deference, both as a government lawyer and a judge, to the power of government institutions, employers and others in authority. Whether that deference adequately protects rights of individuals deserves very close scrutiny at Senate hearings on his nomination next month:

?In a death penalty case, Alito rejected a 17-year-old's claims that his public defenders had failed to use mitigating evidence of mental retardation and traumatic upbringing. Again the Supreme Court disagreed, using the case to warn state courts that shoddy defense work in capital cases shouldn't be tolerated.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051227/cm_usatoday/ifyoucherishyourrightsthisnomineebearsquestioning;_ylt=AheKDF11Atss6ma4XjBXBPas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3YWFzYnA2BHNlYwM3NDI-

[acmavm]

1. Sounds like Alito graduated at the bottom of his class, doesn't it?

.

[damntexdem]

2. I disagree:

If you cherish your rights, this nominee bears rejection.

[AndyTiedye]

3. Tie Alito's nomination to NSAgate and it will sink. Fast.

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. said in a 1984 memo that he believed the president's top lawyer should be shielded from being sued for approving illegal, warrantless wiretaps on the grounds of national security, an issue that has flared anew and could complicate his Senate confirmation next month.

As a Reagan administration lawyer, Alito faced a pending Supreme Court case that tested whether the U.S. attorney general could be held liable for having ordered an illegal wiretap.
...
In 1970, Mitchell ordered the FBI to wiretap the telephone of a Haverford College physics professor who was a member of a radical anti-Vietnam War group. The FBI believed the group had plans to blow up tunnels under the nation's capital and possibly to kidnap then-national security advisor Henry A. Kissinger.
...
He relied on a 1972 Supreme Court ruling that rejected Nixon's claim that the president had the power to order warrantless wiretaps to protect national security. In a unanimous decision, the justices said the 4th Amendment forbade wiretaps without a judge's approval, even when there were domestic threats to the nation's security. The court noted it was not ruling on the "president's surveillance power with respect to the activities of foreign powers, within or without the country."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-alito24dec24,1,7614906.story?coll=la-headlines-politics