Transcript: 1988 Alito Comments on Bork Nomination

[BrklynLiberal]

Below is a transcript excerpt from a 1988 interview in which Samuel A. Alito Jr. commented on the defeat of Robert H. Bork as President Reagan's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito was interviewed on Front Page New Jersey, a public affairs television program of NJN News, New Jersey's public television network. Alito, who at the time was U.S. attorney for New Jersey, was interviewed by NJN News senior political correspondent Michael Aron.

Michael Aron: Are you part of what liberals call the Meese-Bork-Charles Fried-William Bradford Reynolds crowd running the Justice Department?

Samuel Alito: I think that's kind of a pejorative way of putting it. I agree with many of the things that they attempted to do, but I'd prefer to discuss it issue by issue rather than in terms of labels.

Aron: Do you think Robert Bork should have been confirmed?

Alito: I certainly thought he should have been confirmed. I think he was one of the most outstanding nominees of this century.

Aron: Why? How?

Alito: He is a man of unequalled intellectual ability, understanding of constitutional history, someone who had thought deeply throughout his entire life about constitutional issues and about the Supreme Court and the role that it ought to play in American society. I think that if the public had accurately understood the positions that he holds and had made those wishes known to their elected representatives that he would have been overwhelmingly confirmed. But I think that through a sort of a fluke about the way the nomination came up and the kind of campaign that was mounted against him, he was unjustifiably rejected.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/08/AR2006010800528.html?nav=rss_nation/special

[maxsolomon]

1. sorry, his beard was "irresponsible", and a relic of the '60s

the EIGHTEEN sixties.

thanks, i'll be here all week...

[CottonBear]

2. LOL!

:rofl: The beard was simply awful. It made him look like a street person.

[Wilms]

3. And here I thought Bork hated the '60's.

I guess it was only the 1960's that got his beard all twisted in a knot.

[Lefty48197]

4. Bork was the sleaziest "Supreme" Court nominee in American history

Bork was the hatchet man in Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" where he fired the Attorney General of the USA, Elliot Richardson, and then fired the Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus in succession, after each refused to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox.
Apparently, both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had a problem with ethics, blind-justice, rule of law, or some other such nonsense, so they both resued to fire the special prosecutor who was investigating Dick Nixon's Watergate crimes.

Finally, after firing the top two people in the Justice Dept., Nixon went to the #3 man, Solicitor General, ROBERT BORK. Unlike his two former superiors, Bork didn't have any problem with ethics, justice, rule of law, or any of that other crap. Bork readily agreed to fire the special prosecutor, hoping to help Nixon put the entire affair to rest.

Bork was only nominated out of party loyalty as repayment for his role in the heinous miscarriage of justice known as Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. The Democrats rejected Bork's Supreme Court nomination for that very same reason. Because he has no respect for the law.

"Richardson resigned when Mr. Nixon instructed him to fire Cox and Richardson refused. When the President then asked Ruckelshaus to dismiss Cox, he refused, White House spokesman Ronald L. Ziegler said, and he was fired. Ruckelshaus said he resigned.

Finally, the President turned to Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, who by law becomes acting Attorney General when the Attorney General and deputy attorney general are absent, and he carried out the President's order to fire Cox. The letter from the President to Bork also said Ruckelshaus resigned."

"In announcing the plan Friday night, the President ordered Cox to make no further effort to obtain tapes or other presidential documents."





http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/102173-2.htm