Now, I realize I'm not the first person to notice this, but a couple of things about this confirmation article. In terms of abortion and Roe, I find myself distinctly unimpressed with Alito's current position on his old DOJ memos. For starters, how on earth is the statement that "The Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion" solely a personal opinion? It's certainly Alito's personal opinion, of course; but it's also his personal opinion about a constitutional question too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't an important element of judicial decision-making supposed to be a judge's personal conclusions on what text, history, precedent, etc suggest the law is in a given matter? Alito doesn't seem to be arguing that things changed after Casey, or that he has come to different conclusions. As far as I can tell, he just wants a mulligan so that he can get confirmed. Not very impressive.

The other thing that I find interesting about this article is the little squib at the end about how some of the pro-Alito forces are going to portray opponents of his confirmation as supporting "an agenda to purge any and all references to religion from our public life." Now, there's several approaches one might take here. There's the easy snarky comment that said anti-confirmation coalition includes several distinctly religious organizations. Given that a great many left-of-center people like Alito's free exercise jurisprudence (if not much else), there's the point that this attack seems to be logically fallacious. But I'm most taken with the idea that these liberal interest groups want to purge religion from public life. Really? How interesting. I hadn't realized that the government was the sum total of public life. Last time I checked, left-of-center types (like, um, me) aren't particularly fussed that Barnes & Noble is playing lots of Christmas music this time of year (other than thinking that Christmas music from 12/1 to 12/25 is going to get a little tiring...). We don't care if Signatures Restaurant puts up a great big wreath outside its entrance. I'm sure that everyone has heard of the giant liberal crusade to eliminate wreaths from the LIRR concourse of Penn Station in New York and the Christmas tree from Rockefeller Center. No? Didn't think so. I don't know very many liberals who get fussed if someone wants to put a nativity scene in their yard, or if Target wants to have a holy day (excuse me, holiday) sale toward the end of every December, or that LiveJournal has adopted a Christmas theme for December. Yet surely these are part of public life for people across America?

There is certainly room for disagreement about the proper contours and extent of the Establishment Clause. One can certainly make a plausible claim that the current church-state jurisprudence goes too far (ISTR my esteemed host making comments in that direction in the past, for one). One can worry that purging references to religion from governmental speech and business create some sort of "Naked Public Square." Yet to say that liberal interest groups want to purge "all references to religion" from "public life," tout court, seems to me to be taking things ludicrously too far.