From the Boston Globe, another article on how Justice Kennedy will be the new swing vote on the Court. This piece says that partial-birth abortion and affirmative action could go down the drain.
Tag Archives: alito
Alito and Crosswords
Alito will be great – for crosswords:
I mean, “Alito”? It’s a fantastic name for crosswords — a mere five letters long but brimming with regularly used consonants and vowels (and how generously alternating they are!). Alito, if confirmed, might find himself as the next Eero Saarinen (for years, the hottest architect on the crossword scene) or the next Ernie Els (the hottest crossword golfer, although Michelle Wie is creeping up on him).
Of course, cruciverbally speaking, everything would also have been just fine with a Miers appointment. Except that Miers, one could argue, was an even better find than Alito. Her last name, too, offers a compact, easy-to-intersect set of letters that would work well in crosswords, but the variant spelling of her middle name, Ellan, makes her the double threat that Alito is not.
Alito, Kennedy, Gays
Here’s an interesting post touching on Alito, gay rights, and Kennedy becoming the new swing justice. See the comments as well. Of course, Kennedy’s becoming the swing vote merely means that the Court will move to the right, not that Kennedy will move to the left, but Balkin notes that Kennedy “supports gay rights claims a bit more than O’Connor.” One of the commenters notes that in Lawrence, O’Connor’s concurrence was limited to the issue of equal protection, whereas Kennedy’s majority opinion was broader, focusing on due process and liberty while also incorporating O’Connor’s equal protection argument.
Another commenter thinks that Chief Justice Roberts might be a swing vote on gay rights.
Finally, here’s a piece on Alito and a couple of gay harrassment cases.