Mitt Romney shows how truly nutty and anti-woman he can be in today's USA Today article:

"There's a lot more to being pro-life beyond appointing conservative justices."

"That, I will do," promised Romney. "I like Roberts and Alito, I like Thomas and Scalia. I like that kind of thinking on the bench, and that's the kind of justice I will appoint."

That makes if official. The Christian religious extremism we have seen under Bush would be replaced by Mormon religious extremism under Romney.

Don't assume Romney is a moderate because he was Massachusetts' Governor. The real Romney is far, far to the right.

I sent the DSCC the following letter and used their pre-paid envelope to do it.

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I am shocked and horrified that the Senate Democrats failed to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court despite the fact that there are more than enough Democrats in the Senate to accomplish the task.

They should be ashamed of themselves. Every Senator who voted against the Alito filibuster violated his or her oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. There is no excuse for this dishonorable and unpatriotic behavior.

It also represents a failure of the Democratic Party as institution. The Democratic Party constantly pays lip-service to its core constituencies while caving to the Religious Right and corporate donors. Symbolic votes by some Democrats against Alito are not enough. The party as an institution has an inescapable patriotic duty to do everything in its power to block dishonest and dangerous extremists like Alito from the US Supreme Court.

How many times will the Democratic Party betray me as a gay man, an atheist, a liberal, and an American? How many times will so many Democrats kick me in the teeth and then expect me to say “thank you” and write them checks? Do you really think I want a penny of my money to go to supporting people like Robert Byrd who embraced many of the KKK's core values (e.g. racism, sexism, homophobia, and Christian supremacy) by voting to confirm Alito?

Instead, I will give money to Green Party candidates who are running against Senators who did not vote for the Alito filibuster.

Please take me off of your mailing list.

Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island generally has marketed himself as a moderate, pro-choice Republican. Yet, his voting record on the Bush Administration's judicial appointees strongly contradicts the marketing. Chafee has voted for all of Bush's appointees, no matter who extreme and rabidly anti-choice those appointees might be.

The biggest test will come with the Alito Filibuster. If Chafee votes against the Alito Filibuster, it will prove that Chafee is a right-wing extremist dedicated to eliminating the right of women to choose on abortion. No amount of spin will fool informed voters and donors after this one.

Contact the Chafee Campaign and demand that he vote for the Alito Filibuster.

info@chafeeforsenate.com
Phone: (401) 921-1920 Fax: (401) 921-1980 Email: info@chafeeforsenate.com

Former Ku Klux Klan member Senator Robert Byrd has officially disavowed the KKK for years. Yet, there have been published reports that Byrd will oppose a filibuster against Samuel Alito and may actually vote to confirm Alito to the Supreme Court.

This is disturbing. Alito embodied the racist, sexist, and homophobic values of the Ku Klux Klan throughout his adult life. Even worse, Alito often has used his position as a federal judge to violate statutes and the US Constitution in order to promote those bigoted values.

If Byrd does not support the filibuster of Alito, he will be making it clear that he may no longer be a card-carrying member of the KKK, but that a part of him will always cherish the KKK's values.

You can join in MoveOn.org's efforts to stop the nomination of Samuel Alito, a militant, anti-American fundamentalist, to the US Supreme Court.

Send letters to your Senators!

Here are some quotes from MoveOn's email on the subject.

AFL-CIO

We are compelled to oppose [Alito's] nomination to be an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. ...Judge Alito's decisions and dissents show a disturbing tendency to take an extremely narrow and restrictive view of laws passed by Congress to protect workers' rights, resulting in workers being deprived of wage and hour, health and safety, anti-discrimination, pension and other important protections.

NAACP

"We have undertaken an extensive review of Judge Alito's civil rights record spanning his career as a lawyer and a judge...As a result we have concluded that Judge Alito's confirmation would cause a substantial shift in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on civil rights and that his confirmation would be to the detriment of the nation. Thus, we are compelled to oppose his nomination.

Sierra Club

In the first such move since the Bork nomination of 1987, on December 20 the Sierra Club joined with other national environmental groups to urge Senators to oppose the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. Americans deserve mainstream, independent Justices, with unassailable integrity, who will protect individual rights and freedoms. Unfortunately, Judge Alito's opinions and other statements, combined with a disturbing lack of candor since being nominated, show that Judge Alito cannot be trusted to protect those rights and freedoms.

NARAL Pro-Choice America

Samuel Alito, Jr. of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is an anti-choice jurist. As a member of the three-judge panel that heard Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey before the case went to the Supreme Court, Alito wrote a dissent in which he argued to uphold even more abortion restrictions than the Supreme Court eventually upheld in its now-famous decision. Alito, who has been called "a favorite son of the political right," would likely vote to eviscerate or eliminate the protections of Roe as a member of the Supreme Court.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

According to Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., the First Amendment puts
few limitations on politically powerful majorities' ability to use the
machinery of government to advance their religious views, even at
the expense of the religious freedom of minorities. Replacing Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor with Judge Alito would fundamentally alter
First Amendment law and immediately put at risk many of the crucial
protections for religious minorities that the Supreme Court has
recognized and consistently enforced over the past sixty years.

The Human Rights Campaign

As a Judge, Samuel Alito struck down a school policy that protected gay students from harassment. He is far to the right of Justice O'Connor on due process and reproductive rights. Judge Alito's narrow view of Congress would dangerously threaten Congress' power to enact non-discrimination legislation protecting citizens and has failed to distance himself from a group that advocated discrimination of which he was a member. In short, Judge Alito is the wrong choice for the Supreme Court.

People for the American Way

Samuel Alito has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since his appointment by the first President Bush in 1990. In that time, Alito has compiled an extensive, extreme right-wing judicial record on numerous matters of importance to the protection of the rights and interests of ordinary Americans—a record that has earned him the nickname "Scalito" for his ideological resemblance to Justice Antonin Scalia. Alito's judicial opinions demonstrate that he is an out of the mainstream opponent of fundamental legal rights and protections for all Americans and must not be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

The Republicans who supported the "nuclear option" compromise promised to support the judicial filibuster when it is used for extraordinary circumstances.

The nomination of a dangerous, anti-constitution extremist like Alito to the US Supreme Court is an extraordinary circumstance, and the GOP knows this. Yet, two GOP Senators, Mike DeWine and Lindsey Graham, have announced that they will support abolishing the judicial filibuster in the so-called “nuclear option” if Alito is filibustered.

The Democrats who trusted these Republicans were betrayed by cold, calculating, liars.

Progressives waited way too long to fight the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court and then as Chief Justice. It is critical that people stop the nomination of Alito, another dangerous religious extremist. MoveOn has an online petition that people need to sign as quickly as possible.

http://www.moveonpac.org/stopalito/

For more information, the Alliance for Justice has an excellent report on Alito.

http://www.supremecourtwatch.org/AlitoPrelim1031.pdf