Remember Senator Orrin Hatch's great performance during the Clarence Thomas confirmation proceedings?
In between pouting and childish tantrums he managed, with help from Arlen Spector, to trash Anita Hill when it was later confirmed by David Brock, who was helping lead the smear brigade and later turned on the radical right, that the law professor was telling the truth.
It was Hatch who hatched a booby hatch theory that Hill's testimony describing devout rightist Thomas's penchant for pornography stemmed from plagiarizing the famous seventies' book and later film, The Exorcist. Hatch ultimately got his wish to have Thomas confirmed, where he has become a reliable rubber stamp marching to the tune of the patriarch of judicial reaction, Antonin Scalia.
Cross Hatch's path by daring to take an opposing view and he is quick to label you a "propagandist", a classic case of being called ugly by a frog. He is currently singing his familiar tune again pertaining to Samuel Alito, Jr.
"Under any reasonable, objective or traditional standard, the Senate would overwhelmingly confirm this exceptional nominee," the Utah solon declared in his traditional holier than thou fashion.
Remember, this is the same Orrin Hatch who comprised a proud part of the wrecking crew seeking to throw Bill Clinton out of office for lying about an extramarital sex act on an affidavit in a civil case.
The Alito nomination is the latest Cheney-Bush power play to put into place a unitary government, also known as dictatorship through most of the world.
John Roberts has fit comfortably into the strategy mix by joining the Scalia-Thomas partnership. Alito's record as unswerving "champion of the upper dog" would add one more compliant rubber stamp to the Cheney-Bush judicial strategy push.
Hatch and Senator Bill Frist are loudly lamenting that the Democrats are playing politics in opposing Alito at all, and really oppose his view of opposing unwarranted judicial activism. In short, they are bullish on Ronald Reagan's New Federalism.
What happened to New Federalism in the tumult following the 2000 presidential election? The Florida Supreme Court actually interpreted the law in accordance with the state's constitution, which declared that "voter intent" was the prevailing electoral standard.
Hatch was in the forefront in nitpicking the counting of votes in which punches in punch cards were not punched all the way through. He saw foul play in such circumstances where any fair-minded person with common sense saw that this was a consequence of older voting machines that were not replaced by the likes of Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
In this case New Federalism counted for nothing as the Florida Supreme Court's decision to allow the vote recount to continue was terminated and the election handed to Jeb's brother George.
Scalia and Thomas stood in the forefront as New Federalism was ignored and the U.S. Supreme Court decided what Florida courts could and could not do. It was the only time that the Scalia-Thomas duo ever extended its reach into such a controversy, deciding in other instances that such matters resided within the purview of state and local authority, even in cases of egregious violations of civil rights.
So much for integrity on the part of Hatch and the crew he demagogically shills on behalf of, the Cheney-Bush Junta with its unceasing lust for power.