Would You Hire this Guy?

I have been studiously avoiding watching any of the Alito hearings. Paying attenton to politics makes me a bit crazy lately, but I do get pinged a lot with emails, etc, from friends who are dyed-in-the-wool political addicts.

I don't particularly like Alito, based at least in part on the fact that Bush does like him (which means that he is probably a right-wing nutjob with minimal qualifications), so I will admit immediate and rather virulent bias. Pretty much my reaction to anything that's going on right now. But, one thing caught my eye in the transcripts and stuff that I've seen of Alito's sessions.

He has been questioned hard on papers and opinions that he wrote in job applications when he was a young lawyer and many of the memos he wrote in prior jobs. Some of these opinions are quite extreme. Alito's explanation? He only wrote those extreme views at the time to get the jobs.

I would NEVER hire this guy for any job that required him to actually make judgements. He's not capable of doing it. He panders to power. Either he lied to get the job, or he's lying now. Which one is it? He'll say what will get him what he wants, and if he's in the pocket of the conservatives (like they seem to believe) he can be expected to continue acting the way they want him to, to get the job. Will he write opinions to keep his political supporters happy? It's one thing to "butter up the boss" for a new job, quite another to sign on to parrot whatever the boss wants in order to get a job. You cannot convince me that he isn't going to do the same thing on the court.

It's also amazing that a man proposed to the highest court in the land has such a hard time remembering things, and seems to be more intersested in babbling talking points than actually answering questions. These sessions are usually just mutual masturbation, anyways, but the additional fact that Alito had a 'coaching session;' with some of the senators who sit on the judiciasry committee before these hearings is also unethical. Do they think we won't notice?