Alito can't remember being a memberof CAP--even though he put it on his
resume job application in order to curry favor with the Reagan administration. He can't be serious...can he?
From the Daily Princetonian:
Samuel Alito '72, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, said Wednesday that he has "no recollection" of being a member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), a group that made headlines in recent weeks after critics said it has advocated far-right, anti-coeducational and anti-affirmative action views. [This isn't something critics allege. It's simply true, which is why even former members, as we'll see in a minute, are doing backflips to try to distance Alito from a group they were all part of]
Alito's statement was made in a document released Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold confirmation hearings on his nomination in January. It comes following scrutiny of comments he made two decades ago in an application for a high-level job in President Reagan's Justice Department.
Alito wrote at the time that he was "a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group." The revelation drew sharp criticism from some observers, who see Alito's past membership in the group as evidence of an extreme conservative perspective.
Though Alito conceded in the judiciary committee statement that the "document I recently reviewed reflects that I was a member of the group in the 1980s," he said: "Apart from that document, I have no recollection of being a member, of attending meetings, or otherwise participating in the activities of the group. The group has no current officers from whom more information may be obtained."
A good lawyer, Alito. He's skirting the truth and knows this is a serious issue. First of all, what is he denying? That he has any recollection of being a member of the group. But what is he confirming? "Apart from that document" means that the document is pretty damning: it says that he had some recollection of being a member of the group back when he thought it would help him out. "Apart from that document" is a signal to future interrogators: I will deny all memory of being in that group, and the document (i.e. the resume in which I listed with pride my membership in CAP) is all you'll ever get from me. And to make sure that interrogators know they're in for a fight, he's made sure that we know that there are no "current officers" from whom more information can be obtained. Of course there are plenty of "past officers" from whom lots of information can be obtained, and we can only suppose that Alito is
really really hoping that information is not obtained from past officers who perhaps know of instances of involvement in the group's activities.
I'm not saying he was involved. My point in these posts is that he declared allegience to a radically reactionary right-wing group devoted to anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian ideals when declaring his allegience would ostensibly help him get a job in a justice department notoriously hostile to goals of racial and gender equality. Not much more needs to be known. Although now that Alito is actually denying having any memory of being in the group, the case for his nomination just got even more difficult to make. In part because every step the radical wingers take to distance Alito from CAP makes things far worse for Alito. First there was Captain Quarter who compared Alito to Ginsburg and her work for the ACLU. But Ginsburg's defense of Nazis was a defense of their constitutional rights to speech and assembly. She never Joined the Nazis. Alito didn't just defend CAP, he
joined CAP and then proceeded to use his membership as a reason to be hired in the Reagan justice department.
Then there's this:
Andrew Napolitano '72, a former CAP board member and friend of Alito's, said the new statement should end debate on the issue. "In my opinion, it's a dead issue, because this was not the type of organization where one attended meetings, or rallies, or participated," Napolitano said Wednesday. "One was either on the board of directors -- which was six of us -- or one was a contributor, which was thousands of alumni, and that was really it."
With friends like these...
Look: his friend seems to be saying that Alito is telling the truth about one thing, at least. He never went to meetings or participated. But that's because nobody in the group went to meetings or participated. They just affiliated themselves with the group while a core of "directors" did all the exceedingly dirty work for which the group is well known. And this is a good thing? Quite to the contrary, it's just as bad if not worse. And it's really worse to deny any recollection of your membership when that denial would be self-serving. Alito, knowing that all he was being asked to do was to support the muckraking anti-minority, anti-woman garbage that the group's board of directors can now take dubious credit for, both lent his support and then, and this is the kicker, reported that he had lent his support when trying to spiff himself up for the Reagan administration.
I appreciate the loyalty of Napolitano (who earlier claimed that there was
absolutely no way that CAP sought to protest co-education, a claim we know now to be laughably false and incomplete to boot (CAP also opposed the presence of minorities at Princeton, or, as captain quarter put it, the "liberalization" of Princeton)). But he is dissembling about the importance of CAP to those who were members, and he is dissembling about what the group did and why it is important to Alito's candidacy.