Guest Blogged by Pokey Anderson

Just down the road from Mount St. Helens, there's an unexpected eruption. The small southwest Washington town of La Center is having a political eruption --- its state legislator is embroiled in a sex scandal, details of which are still unfolding.

This time, there's no resorting to the time-honored "wide stance" defense, and no encrypted toe tapping in an airport public restroom. This time, there is no explicit text messaging to a Congressional page from a member of Congress, then co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, while a bill is being debated on the floor of the Capitol.

This time, the stage is a booth in back of an X-rated video store, and then a room in the nicest hotel in Spokane, Washington.

This time, there's a lawmaker wearing black sequined lingerie...

Compiled and Guest Blogged for The BRAD BLOG by Pokey Anderson, co-host of "The Monitor", a weekly news and analysis show at KPFT Radio in Houston.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Too late to filibuster Alito? Not if what Senator Dick Durbin says is true.

In her first BRAD BLOG Guest Blog, Pokey Anderson lends the Dems a hand, by helping them build their case...

ALITO'S EXTREME VIEWS ARE OUT OF STEP WITH AMERICANS
Samuel Alito, if confirmed, could serve on the US Supreme Court for the rest of your life. At age 55, his life expectancy from now is an additional 28 years or, in other words, the equivalent of 7 presidential terms. Instead of occupying a centrist position, like Sandra Day O'Connor, he would move the court far to the right.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor "provided the swing vote 77 percent of the time. If confirmed, Alito would tip the high court's delicate balance radically to the right. Nearly always favoring the government, corporations and universities, Alito has ruled against individual rights in 84 percent of his dissents."
-- Marjorie Cohn, "Alito Sounds Death Knell for Individual Rights", t r u t h o u t, January 10, 2006

With Judge Samuel Alito, the Senate Judiciary Committee faces its most consequential Supreme Court confirmation hearing in a generation. Not since Robert Bork has the Senate encountered a nominee whose long record and fully articulated views so consistently challenge decades of progress on privacy, civil rights and control of corporations. And never in memory has a single nomination so threatened to redirect the Court as Alito's. [His] fifteen years of rulings ... demonstrates that Alito is at odds with the interests of ordinary Americans.
-- "The Case Against Alito", The Nation, editorial | posted January 5, 2006

Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, in Senate Judiciary Committee testimony, places Alito to the right of Justice Roberts, and between Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
-- New York Times, January 12, 2006

"After a careful study, University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein described Alito's record of appeals court dissents as 'stunning. Ninety-one percent of Alito's dissents take positions more conservative than his colleagues...including colleagues appointed by Presidents Bush and Reagan.'"
-- "The Case Against Alito" The Nation, editorial | posted January 5, 2006

"The debate over Judge Alito is generally presented as one between Republicans and Democrats. But his testimony should trouble moderate Republicans, especially those who favor abortion rights or are concerned about presidential excesses."
-- "Judge Alito, in His Own Words", NY Times Lead Editorial: January 12, 2006

WHAT IF ALITO IS DEFEATED? WON'T THERE JUST BE A WORSE NOMINEE?
"The White House is banking on fear that if this second nominee goes down, Bush will nominate someone even worse. This argument ignores history: When in 1969-70 President Nixon nominated and lost both Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell, the result was not "someone worse" but the pragmatic, humane Judge Harry Blackmun, who later wrote Roe v. Wade; when Bork was Borked, his replacement was Anthony Kennedy, who in 1992 joined fellow Reagan nominee O'Connor to reaffirm Roe. Alito defeatism also ignores today's political climate: As the midterm elections draw closer, as the Iraq War scandals deepen, Senate Republicans are falling over one another to distance themselves from the Administration and the far right."
-- "The Case Against Alito" The Nation, editorial | posted January 5, 2006

ISN'T THIS NOMINATION A SHOE-IN? A DONE DEAL?
No. It's not. Inside sources are telling me the situation is quite fluid...