It's 1:51 and Sen Kohl's heart doesn't seem to be in it. Many sighs. Follows up Alito's answers with a nonsensical "Very good . . . Now . . ."
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It's 1:17 and Sen Kyl is methodically eviscerating all the Kennedy-Leahy-Biden allegations from this morning.
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It's 11:51 and Sen Biden gets gasbag of the day award. It would be interesting to see how many minutes he blathered endlessly on and how many minutes Alito actually got to spend in answering.
Also, did you notice Biden's tactic? He presents all these allegations against Alito, never gives Alito a chance to answer, waves off Alito's protestations with a "you know more than me, judge," but then concludes, "still that's how it looks to me." Guilty until proven innocent. Brilliant!
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It's 11:46 and it's slowly dawning on me. Biden's "subtle discrimination" is an attempt to paint Alito as a bigoted racist misogynist Nazi homophobe. How sad. Since there's no overt evidence (such as acts committed) to demonstrate Alito is racist (indeed quite a bit of evidence to the contrary), Biden knows he has to make it up. Subtle discrimination. AKA: Thought crime.
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It's 11:39 and is it just me, or is Sen. Biden expounding on thought crimes (i.e., how discrimination really does work)? Double-plus ungood.
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It's 11:37 and Mrs. Alito is awake and alert. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, she's flashing daggers at Sen Biden from those bespectacled peepers.
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It's 11:30 and the Democrats are playing their losing hand again: Let's replace O'Connor with another O'Connor. I submit that Alito will get unanimous confirmation if he will just say, "Senator Biden, you know you're right. I am another Sandra O'Connor trapped in a Samuel Alito body--sorry honey. I will be that man, er, woman, you want me to be."
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It's 11:24 and Sen Biden is speaking. Does anyone have a cheese grater handy? I want to shave my head bald with it.
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It's 11:16 and is that short- and dark-haired woman in the turquoise sweater-blouse combo over Alito's right shoulder his wife? [Quick webcheck: It is.] Man, does she look bored. Can you imagine what's going on in her mind? "Remember: Just focus on the back of Sammy's head and look interested. But gaaawwwd, this is soooo boring! Is that a couple of flecks of dandruff I see on his collar? Did he not use his T-gel this morning! I told him . . . ! *Sigh* Oh heavens, can we just get this over already!"
Wait a minute! I just caught it! Her eyelids were falling. Let's see if she drops off on national TV.
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It's 11:11 and I just had a very frightening experience. I took a phone call and returned to the hearings. Alito was speaking and . . . HE . . . SOUNDED . . . JUST . . . LIKE . . . SCHUMER! Aaaaaugh!
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It's 11:07 and I just have to say, legal Latinese is very very cool! Can you say stare decisis?
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It's 11:03. A question: Why is it, when Democratic senators are questioning (or is it accusing) Judge Alito, it always comes across as "executive branch very very bad" and "judges who don't think the executive branch is very very bad are very very very bad"?
Further: Why is it, when Republican senators are questioning (or is it monologuing?) Judge Alito, I always feel like I'm back in my 8th grade civics class? Did you know that we have three co-equal branches of government? Wow!
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It's 10:48, Sen. Ted Kennedy is speaking, and there is no hope of a question coming any time soon.
Oops. Spoke too soon. It's 10:49 and Alito is answering.
But wait a minute! Doesn't that mean Sen. Kennedy is NOT speaking? The outrage! Someone shut that windbag Judge Alito up!
Posted by Clifton at January 10, 2006 01:22 PM | TrackBack"It would be interesting to see how many minutes [Biden] blathered endlessly on and how many minutes Alito actually got to spend in answering."
Your prayers are answered! I wrote a not-completely-tongue-in-cheek blog post with a statistical analysis of that very question.
The result:
"Roughly speaking, the nominee got in edgewise one word for every four that meandered out of Biden's yap." So your intuition is correct.
Biden is the biggest gasbag on the committee, but the competion for that honor remains fierce.
You can read my post, showing the gasbag ratio for all 18 senators on the judiciary committee, here.