I have to say that while I am disappointed with W generally, I think his pick of Judge Samuel Alito was pretty shrewd.

I think the guy is filibuster-proof.

Alito, 55, graduated from Yale Law School where he edited the law review and won tons of awards.

He clerked for Judge Leonard Garth. He's a former deputy assistant attorney general under Reagan and the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

For the past 15 years he's been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.

This is just a really brief resume. The guy is imminently qualified.

After all, he was unanimously confirmed to the 3rd Circuit. Demos and Republicans alike gave him glowing reviews.

I know the Democrats were happy about Harriet Miers, and have been saying all manner of threatening things about Alito. But I think their hands are pretty much tied with regard to his confirmation.

After all, they unanimously confirmed him to the 3rd circuit. They gave him glowing reviews.

The "Gang of 14" as it is called, is a group of seven Democrats and seven Republican senators.

They struck a deal with each other.

The Democrats agreed not to filibuster judicial nominees except under the most extreme circumstances.

The Republicans agreed not to use the "nuclear option." That means they wouldn't change the rules of the Senate to prohibit the use of filibusters for judicial nominees.

You see, with seven senators from each party agreeing to these things, neither side would have enough votes to have their way.

I think the whole "Gang of 14" thing was pretty innovative.

I think it makes it pretty tough for the Democrats to filibuster Alito's nomination.

It would be very difficult for them to make the case that Alito's nomination is one of those extreme circumstances worthy of a filibuster.

He's just not that extreme. Frankly, I think he's pretty much in the mainstream of conservative thought.

Here's a smattering of rulings that give you a sense of his judicial leanings:

• For a unanimous panel, he upheld a lower-court order requiring a school district to allow a Bible-study group to set up an information table at an elementary school back-to-school night. He reasoned that by preventing the group from displaying its literature, the district was discriminating on the basis of viewpoint. (Child Evangelism Fellowship of N.J., Inc. v. Stafford Township School District, 2004)

• For a unanimous panel, he denied standing to a group seeking to take down a municipal holiday display that included a menorah and a crche. Alito said that the group couldn't challenge the display as taxpayers because the items were donated rather than bought by the town. (ACLU-NJ v. Township of Wall, 2001)

• He dissented from a ruling by the 3rd Circuit as a whole that an elementary school did not violate the First Amendment rights of a kindergartner by taking down (and then putting back up) a Thanksgiving poster he'd made that said the thing he was most thankful for was Jesus. The majority decided to throw out the case on a technicality; Alito protested that the child's claim should go forward. (C.H. v. Oliva, 2000)

• He allowed a federal probation office in Delaware to condition the release of a man who had pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography on his willingness to submit to random polygraph tests about whether he'd had impermissible contact with children. (United States v. Warren, 2003)

• He granted the habeas claim of an African-American defendant who sought to introduce evidence that a juror made a racist remark after the jury reached its verdict. (Williams v. Price, 2003)

• He dissented from a decision holding that Pennsylvania could not require women to inform their husbands before getting abortions. Alito argued that because the law only required the husbands to have notice and did not give them a veto over their wives' decisions, it did not pose an "undue burden" for women. This approach was rejected by the Supreme Court. (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1991)

OK, maybe it's just me, but none of this stuff seems evidence of radically conservative thought.

Frankly, I think most Americans would see these decisions as reasonable.

Should a husband know if his wife is aborting his child?

Should a kindergartner be able to say he's thankful for Jesus on a poster at school?

Should a black man be allowed to use as evidence the fact that a juror in his case made a racist remark after a verdict?

I was watching CNN earlier this week and Teddy Kennedy, seemingly sober at the time, was ranting about how Alito was a "radical."

No kidding - a radical. Kennedy really said that.

Honestly, if the Democrats filibuster this guy because he's too radical and extreme for them, I think they paint themselves into a corner.

If, in the Democrat's view, Alito is a radical right winger, it goes a long way toward showing who the real extremists in politics are these days. [[In-content Ad]]