The Alito autopsy

The Alito debacle was one of the most depressing and frustrating events to have to witness. Although one would love to move on and pretend that the whole sordid episode never happened, there is value in understanding exactly what occurred and why. As usual, the blogosphere offers infinitely more penetrating and informed analysis than anything that can be found in the media. I highly recommend three quite different but incisive takes on the whole affair:

(1) Pam Spaulding details with depressing insight the central problem: the total impotence of Democratic Senators who, though well-intentioned, were, with rare exception, unwilling to fight and incapable of doing so even if they wanted to.

(2) Barbara O’Brien at Mahablog points out some of the potent and obvious weapons that the Democrats could have used by inexplicably did not.

(3) Scott Lemieux highlights an under-discussed though highly significant problem: the scads of people who claim that they are "libertarians" or who believe in a restrained federal government and yet continue to offer up blind loyalty to a Bush agenda which could not be any more opposed to the principles they dishonestly claim to believe in.

This corruption leads them to support the nomination of someone to the Supreme Court who sees the Constitution as a springboard for expanding government power rather than the safeguard against government power which it was intended to be. We can call this sad affliction, for the sake of convenience, the Instapundit Syndrome.

--posted by Glenn Greenwald