| Watch for Media Action Line |
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January 10, 2006 |
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
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 RUSH: I'm looking ahead today to the media's "action line," that which will move the story forward after the Alito hearings conclude, and they will go through the night tonight. They are scheduled to take a dinner break from six to seven and go somewhat into the evening tonight for your viewing pleasure at home. Now, sometime during that six to seven p.m. dinner break, the media will come up with the story line, the action line. "What is it that moves the story forward?" Well, the only thing that will move the story forward from their standpoint is: "Alito ran into trouble. A nomination is not secure. What are the possibilities this will crash and burn for the president?" That's the action line. Anything that doesn't advance that story line is not news. So you got two possibilities here: "Liberals tried every smear innuendo they could muster but Judge Alito parried them quite effectively," or, "Judge Alito avoids satisfactory responses to penetrating liberal questions; liberals demand more specificity in coming days." Which of those two do you expect will be the action line of the media tonight?
Well, you know it's not going to be, "Liberals tried every way possible to trip Alito up, but he handled them masterfully." It's going to be something along the lines of, "Judge Alito avoids satisfactory responses." You'll have Biden out there, and you'll have Leahy out there, if they've not been out there already. Kennedy out there saying, "Well, I was not really pleased with some of the answers. We need more clarification from Judge Alito. He side-stepped some of these important questions. That's the reason we have hearings. We'll get to the bottom of this. Give us time. We'll have our witnesses coming up. We'll get to the bottom of all this. I thought it was very interesting that Judge Alito thought it necessary to skirt around some of these very important questions he was asked today. We didn't hear what we wanted to hear and so we're enthused about our possibilities." It will be something like that. That's what the senators will say. So to just cut to the chase, let me give you the story line: Strip Search Sam Beats the Rap; Kennedy Tries But Can't Bring Out the Truth.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mr. Snerdley has a friend at the Alito hearings today in one of the pro-Alito groups that's there, and Snerdley just talked to her on the phone. She said the media is grumbling during the breaks because there's no story -- proving my point. There is a story. Alito is running rings around the Democrats, but that's not the action line. That's not what moves the story forward. What moves the story forward is: "Alito screwing up, admitting that he is going to overturn Roe vs. Wade and he believes in strip searching little ten-year-olds and he's a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe and the Democrats have proven it." That's the story line, but they don't have it because it hasn't happened, so to them there's no story.
END TRANSCRIPT |
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Read the Background Material... |
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IndependentCourt.org Ad: "Privacy"
(On Screen: Images of a phone, a medical bed, a neighborhood, and then of Sam Alito with President Bush)
Announcer: Your private conversations. Your personal decisions. If you don’t want more government interference, you don’t want Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court. (On Screen: A steady side view of Alito facing a scrolling image of several hard-hat covered heads) Announcer: An independent analysis found Alito often goes out of his way to narrow the scope of individual rights.
(On Screen: pictures of phones)
Announcer: He supported making it easier for government officials to get away with illegal wire tapping. Alito even voted to uphold the strip search of a ten year old girl. Your rights. Your privacy. Can Samuel Alito be trusted to protect them?
Headline: Anti-Alito Ad Uses Selective Quotes
Subheadline: It didn't quote the part saying he's seen as restrained and nonpartisan.
Source: FactCheck.org
Date: January 10, 2006
By: Justin Bank
Summary
IndependentCourt.org, a project of the Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary, released an ad suggesting that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito would endanger privacy rights. It says "an independent analysis found that Alito often goes out of his way to narrow the scope of individual rights." The ad fails to note that the same study also says Alito has a reputation as "a restrained judge who follows the law, not his personal beliefs," and that he is a "near absolutist" on the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
The ad states that Alito once favored "making it easier for government officials to get away with illegal wiretapping," and as a judge voted to uphold the strip-search of a 10-year-old girl. We furnish details of those cases.
Analysis
The liberal coalition IndependentCourt.org released a second 30-second ad on Jan. 6th as part of a six-figure media buy opposing the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. We reviewed their first ad here .
This ad expresses concerns about Alito's record on government eavesdropping and privacy of medical decisions, showing images of a telephone and a hospital bed as an announcer says, "If you don't want more government interference, you don't want Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court."
Selective Quotes
The ad states that "an independent analysis found Alito often goes out of his way to narrow the scope of individual rights." This refers to an analysis by journalists Stephen Henderson and Howard Mintz of Knight-Ridder, which appeared in several newspapers. Their study was indeed "independent" as the ad states, and the authors did in fact conclude that Alito "rarely supports individual-rights claims." But the authors also said Alito has a reputation as a "scholarly, restrained judge who follows the law" and not personal or political beliefs in his rulings. The authors further describe Alito as a strong supporter of free speech and religious freedom. Here is more of what they said:
Henderson and Mintz: Liberal and conservative supporters alike describe the quiet, scholarly Alito as a restrained judge who follows the law, not his personal beliefs . Those who have worked closely with him, including former law clerks and fellow judges, say they can't think of a case in which he took a partisan political stance.
. . . A review of Alito's work on dozens of cases that raised important social issues found that he rarely supports individual-rights claims.
The primary exception has been his opinions about First Amendment protections. Alito has been a near absolutist on free speech, and he has been equally strong on protecting religious freedoms.
. . . In other areas, Alito often goes out of his way to narrow the scope of individual rights, sometimes reaching out to undo lower-court rulings that affirmed those rights.
Getting Away with Illegal Wiretapping?
The ad also says Alito had "supported making it easier for government officials to get away with illegal wire tapping." It is true that Alito once wrote that the US attorney general should have absolute immunity from being sued for authorizing domestic wiretapping without a warrant in national security cases. Alito did so in a memo written in 1984, while serving as an assistant to the Solicitor General in the Reagan Administration:
Alito: I do not question that the attorney general should have this immunity . . . But for tactical reasons, I would not raise the issue here . . . In my judgment, this is not the case to choose . . . The government's interests do not demand that this issue be advanced now. There are also strong reasons to believe that our chances of success will be greater in future cases.
Despite Alito's advice, the Reagan administration asked the Supreme Court to rule that the attorney general cannot be sued for authorizing a national security wiretap without a warrant, and lost.The high court ruled in Mitchell v. Forsyth that former Attorney General John Mitchell didn't have automatic immunity from lawsuits stemming from his ordering of a warrantless wiretap in 1970. Mitchell had ordered eavesdropping on a group that the FBI believed was hatching a plot to kidnap national security adviser Henry Kissinger and to blow up heating tunnels in Washington DC.
Strip Searching a Ten Year Old?
The ad also says Alito "even voted to uphold the strip search of a ten year old girl." We dealt with this in our Nov. 21 article reviewing an earlier ad by this group. Alito did file the sole dissent in Doe v. Groody, opposing a Pennsylvania couple's right to sue local police officers who searched their home, themselves and their 10-year-old daughter for methamphetamines on the basis of a warrant that only specified a search of the premises. Police argued that they had applied for a warrant to search "all occupants" of the house, based on a tip from an informant claiming to have bought drugs at the house, and that they believed that the warrant permitted a search of the girl even if "occupants" weren't specifically mentioned.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the lawsuit to go forward – with Alito filing a dissenting opinion. He said that even though he had a "visceral dislike" of such intrusive searches, a "commonsense and realistic" reading of the warrant and the application gave the officers the impression that "all occupants" of the home were to be searched, and that they were acting within their professional duties in searching the wife and girl.
 Rush Monologues, Hours of Audio and the Facts to Back It All Up:
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