We’re an hour and a half into the hearings and I need to hear no more. It’s all about the Dems beating dead horses. Over and over again. Unitary executive. CAP. Vanguard. Vanguard. Vanguard.

John Podhoretz marvels: “A Kennedy who has never known a moment’s worry about money is now grilling a lifelong middle-class public servant with no family fortune from New Jersey about the public servant’s mutual fund — which, if memory serves, was and is the world’s most popular mutual fund, currently serving more than 18 million investors. Teddy Kennedy, by contrast, is showered with money from his family trust. Have you no shame, Senator, at long last?”

No, he has no shame. As Kim du Toit e-mails me: “Expecting the Democrats to feel shame for any of their actions is like expecting vultures to feel shame for eating carrion. The emotion is alien to both species.”

Debra J. Saunders has a modest proposal, which I heartily endorse:

If by some bizarre twist of fate, the Senate fails to confirm Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, I have a suggestion for President Bush’s next pick: Ted Kennedy. After all, if some Democrats can make a federal case out of Alito’s membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton — targeting his inclusion of that membership in a resume he submitted 20 years ago and his failure to remember being in the group — then I’d like to see how they tackle Chappaquiddick.

(For you kids, the Massachusetts senator drove a car into the drink in Chappaquiddick in 1969. Kennedy swam away, passenger Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, drowned. The accident was tragic. Kennedy’s behavior afterward, however, was criminal. Rather than rushing to police after the 11:15 p.m. accident so that they could try to rescue Kopechne, Kennedy went back to his hotel. He did not call police until the next morning. Kennedy said he delayed because he panicked and was in shock. Many suspect that he spent those hours trying to construct an alibi. After an investigation probably less intense than the Democrats’ vetting of Alito’s resumes, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. A judge sentenced Kennedy to two months, suspended.)

I’ve never understood what senators were thinking in allowing Kennedy on the Judiciary Committee in the first place. While Kennedy seems to consider himself a champion for the little guy, he is a walking tribute to a system that, in its low moments, allows the rich and powerful to get away with crimes that would put others behind bars. He is a discredit to the system.

In 1991, Kennedy had to scrunch down in his seat when his colleagues accused now-Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.

On Wednesday, Kennedy seemed like a crazy man when he suggested that the committee subpoena records relating to Alito and the Princeton alumni club. I know some people who don’t buy Alito’s “no specific recollection of that organization” answer. For my part, the older I get, the more credible I find it when other people claim lapses of memories.

In the end, this is all about smear…

Speaking of endless smears, reader David A. points to the Daily Kos miscreants accusing Mrs. Alito of “staging” her tears.

Says one commenter: “She should go fuck herself.”

Says another:

I’m GLAD she was reduced to tears. These hyper-pampered Stepford wives have never endured anything more stressful than making it to Saks Fifth Avenue before it closes. If seeing her poor widdle hubby getting caught in an avalanche of lies about his not-exactly-concealed racism triggers the weeping-willow response, I’d venture to say Martha needs to get out a little more. Maybe visit a black neighborhood or two and get acquainted with a few strong women who DON’T burst into tears while DAILY dealing with hardships that Martha’s fragile, feeble mind could not even conceive of. What a phony, fraudulent, sheltered twit.

Vultures. Disgusting, evil vultures.

More at ABP if you can stand it.

Reader Karen B. writes:

Vultures, although unpleasant looking and carrion eaters, serve a truly valuable purpose in nature (our roads would be chock full of dead deer without them), and act without malice. Please do not insult vultures in such a manner.

***

Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker:

Yesterday, even those unconcerned by politics paid attention because of the human drama. A new iconic incident has just entered our political tradition. Political affiliation is both an intellectual and an emotional matter. It requires a level of intellectualizing beyond the capacity of most of us to affiliate oneself with a repulsive waddling-fat bully.

It took the GOP decades to recover from the damage inflicted by the lasting imagery of McCarthy the bully. Anti-communism, fairly or not, became stigmatized for a generation.

It was anti-racism fanaticism, the attempt to tar Judge Alito as a bigot, which was at the root of yesterday’s drama. If anything, the average American today has more personal experience of being impugned as a racist than the 1950s American had of being impugned as a communist. Voters have far more to identify with in Alito than they ever did in the McCarthy hearings.

The only question now is how long it will take the Democrats to understand the disaster they have created for themselves.

***

Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics asks “How Many Dems Could Be Confirmed?”:

Not Ted Kennedy: for obvious reasons.

Not Joe Biden: he has a plagiarism problem.

Not Dianne Feinstein: she’s had a Guatemalan houskeeper issue, was fined $190,000 in 1992 for failing to properly report $3.5 million in campaign expenditures, and her husband runs a company that scored a $600 million Iraq war contract in 2003. Imagine what the Dems would do with this last one.

Not Charles Schumer: two of the people under his employ at the DSCC are currently being investigated for illegally obtaining Michael Steele’s credit report last year. In 1983, Schumer narrowly escaped indictment for misusing state funds in his 1980 Congressional race. The U.S. Attorney in the case, Raymond J. Dearie, actually recommended that Schumer be indicted, but the Reagan Justice Department turned down the request citing “lack of jurisdiction.”

Not Dick Durbin: he would never get around his pro-life past. Durbin is on the record in the 1980’s saying that he “believed that Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided” and that “the right to an abortion is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.”

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Previous:

Shame, shame on the Dems
Video: Clash of the windbags
Alito Watch: Biggest Senate windbag
Alito Watch: Day 2
Big lie: Alito is a racist (added video)
All things Alito

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