The Economist on Judge Alito
The Economist, in its usual cheeky style, has some thoughts on the Alito hearing. Specifically, it notes the exchange between Judge Alito and bloviating Senator Ted Kennedy:

Ted Kennedy is deeply troubled by the ethics of the Supreme Court nominee. Between 2001 and 2006, Samuel Alito, who is currently an appeals court judge, accepted $7,684,423 in “donations” from special interests who perhaps wanted the law tweaked in their favour. That included $28,000 from defence contractors, $42,200 from drug firms and a whopping $745,373 from lawyers and law firms.

No, wait. Those are Senator Kennedy's conflicts of interest—or, rather, a brief excerpt from a long list compiled by the Centre for Responsive Politics. The lapse for which the senator berated Mr Alito was considerably less clear-cut.

To avoid conflicts of interest, Judge Alito invests most of his savings in mutual funds, rather than individual firms that might appear before him. He does it through an investment company called Vanguard. Though no rule required this, he promised, when nominated to the appeals court in 1990, that he would disqualify himself from cases involving Vanguard. Twelve years later, such a case came up, but he forgot to recuse himself. When he realised his mistake, he recused himself from a fresh appeal. No one claims that he stood to benefit from his judgment.

The Democrats are showing themselves to be their own worst enemy. Base10's prediction is that Judge Alito will be confirmed 75-25. Remember, this is an official prediction!
- posted by Base10 @ 1:05 PM