Once again I was able to listen to most of the hearings today missing, I think, only the first questioner who I presume was Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. I found the questioning by the Democratic Senators, for the most part, more phlegmatic than I’d expected. Alito’s responses were consistently process-oriented: rather than stating his beliefs he described the process by which he’d reach a decision. This of itself tended to defuse some of the questioning.
It’s official! Russ Feingold is running for president. I strongly suspect that his bull terrier interrogation of Mr. Alito will be rewarded with some attention from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. I thought he landed a few punches, particularly in his point-blank question about the legality of Bush’s violation of FISA.
Otherwise I thought the Democrats’ questioning was banal and the Republicans’ predictably supportive.
Why aren’t the Democrats more successful in painting Alito as outside the judicial mainstream? Several possible explanations occur to me:
- Although he’s personally conservative, he’s not outside the judicial mainstream.
- That’s not what the Judiciary Committee Democrats are attempting to do. That would disappoint a lot of Democratic Party activists.
- Alito is too cagey to let them paint him into a corner and too temperate to rise to the bait.
- The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are too dumb and pompous to pull it off.
The way things look after the first two days is that something dramatic and unexpected would ned to happen to derail the nomination.
ABOUT ITALY
Still now I can’t read in conservatives italian newspapers, the true question about the post communist holding system, called Cooperative LEGACOOP.
Nevertheless it was a very big trouble, last summer, when the postcommunist party insurance company UNIPOL tried to buy one of the most important italian bank, the BNL, against the spanish Bank of Bilbao.
The governor of Bankitalia (Bank of Italy), Antonio Fazio was part of the war, trying to help the Unipol, that is linked to the first postcommunist bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (the oldest bank of the world born in 1472). UNIPOL got 20 billion euros last year, but BNL is bigger a lot. Strange case.
Now the jump to Unipol is broken, the management of Unipol is impeached for many crimes (the top manager Mr. Consorte had 50 millions euros in a Swiss bank). The DS, the post communist party, is accused to have the biggest conflict of interest, bigger than the Berlusconi conflict.
In fact, if the mr. Berlusconi tv broadcast Mediaset (3 channels) has 5600 workers, the red cooperatives have 500.000 workers!
Moreover the DS is allied to the mr. Prodi (the ex UE President) party, the Margherita Party, linked with an other holding of cooperatives, named CONFCOOPERATIVE. Both all the leftist cooperatives have ONE MILLION WORKERS, billing every year 100 BILLION EUROS OF SALES.
But is not this the true question of the postcommunist power. The fact is that almost all municipalities and provinces and italian regions (the some of the single states for USA) are in hands of DS and MArgherita parties. So they can give jobs and work public orders to the cooperatives holding. So thousands of mayors, councillors, and members of regional councils, may lawfully give money to their parties, their parents and friends working in the cooperatives, that do every thing: facilities, roads, buildings, social welfare, supermarkets, upkeeps…
Italy may be conquered by this system, that improve the old leninist State capitalism. What gloomy prospects!
PAOLO DELLA SALA
LINKS
http://www.leguerrecivili.splinder.com/1123860856#5473174
http://leguerrecivili.splinder.com/1136934338#6817879