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Saturday, January 14, 2006

Alito, CAP and Princeton

The Alito hearings will be remembered for the acrimony they displayed by Democrats on the Judiciary committee, and how this acrimony rebounded on old frauds like Kennedy and Biden.

But despite that fact that committee members dominated the proceedings – some took most of the time allotted to them for questions in long winded diatribes – there were a few moments for the Alitos that are memorable.

The most famous was Mrs. Alito leaving the room in tears as a result of the insulting and humiliating accusations hurled at her husband.

But judge Alito himself made a comment that was very revealing. Alito spoke warmly about the New Jersey community in which he grew up. There were few college graduates, and he went to public schools. But then he went 12 miles down the road to Princeton, where, he said, "I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn't help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community."

The link is to an article by Terry Eastland of the Weekly Standard. He went on to say that “And then there was Alito's testimony about ROTC at Princeton. He well remembered that his ROTC unit was expelled from campus during his junior year and that he had to go to Trenton State College to finish his ROTC classes. And he commented as to how that was "a very bad thing for Princeton to do." Not bad, but very bad.”

Read the whole thing.

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