A La. Senator is pivotal in the Alito battle. Here are the numbers.

[Zan_of_Texas]

Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) is speaking publicly against a filibuster of the Alito nomination for Supreme Court.
She says there is more important business the Senate needs to get on with. !!!!!

Ted Kennedy said yesterday during Alito Senate debate: "The stakes could not be higher. This is the vote of a generation."

Rainbow Push writes re Alito: "50 years of civil, human and women's rights advances are at stake - from Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. "

If confirmed, Alito at age 55 could serve out his life expectancy on the court -- 28 years -- in other words, the next SEVEN CONSECUTIVE PRESIDENTIAL TERMS.

Landrieu is one of eight Democratic Senators needed to stop Alito.

PLEASE CALL OR FAX HER OFFICES.

PLEASE -- LOUISIANA RESIDENTS, INCLUDING EVACUEES LIVING ELSEWHERE -- HELP THE NATION!!!

Senator Mary Landrieu (D)
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

You can just say YOU MUST FILIBUSTER. Or, if you want to try to be persuasive, ask to speak to Kevin Avery at [phone]. He is her DC staff person who is in charge of judiciary issues.

Want to fax through a form?
Go to People for the American Way and their Save the Court.org site -- there's a fax option from there: http://www.savethecourt.org/site/c.mwK0JbNTJrF/b.849267/k.CC39/Home.htm


If you want to call their offices in Louisiana:

New Orleans zip code 70130
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Baton Rouge
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Shreveport
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Lake Charles
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Here are some of the groups that have opposed Alito’s nomination thus far:
http://www.nominationwatch.org/2005/12/momentum_agains


Want ammo?

(1)
Alito: What's At Stake
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002314.htm

(2)
Why the Senate should not confirm Alito;
Supreme Court doesn't need a justice who has no interest in restraining `presidential powers'
by Geoffrey R. Stone, January 24, 2006, Chicago Tribune,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0601240222jan24,1,7806633.story?coll=chi-opinionfront-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

(3)
Judge Alito's Radical Views
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
January 23, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/opinion/23mon1.html

(4)
Today's NEW YORK TIMES editorial

Editorial
Senators in Need of a Spine

NEW YORK TIMES
January 26, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/26/opinion/26thur1.html?_r=1&oref=login

Judge Samuel Alito Jr., whose entire history suggests that he holds extreme views about the expansive powers of the presidency and the limited role of Congress, will almost certainly be a Supreme Court justice soon. His elevation will come courtesy of a president whose grandiose vision of his own powers threatens to undermine the nation's basic philosophy of government — and a Senate that seems eager to cooperate by rolling over and playing dead. It is hard to imagine a moment when it would be more appropriate for senators to fight for a principle. Even a losing battle would draw the public's attention to the import of this nomination.

...

The Alito nomination has been discussed largely in the context of his opposition to abortion rights, and if the hearings provided any serious insight at all into the nominee's intentions, it was that he has never changed his early convictions on that point. The judge — who long maintained that Roe v. Wade should be overturned — ignored all the efforts by the Judiciary Committee's chairman, Arlen Specter, to get him to provide some cover for pro-choice senators who wanted to support the nomination. As it stands, it is indefensible for Mr. Specter or any other senator who has promised constituents to protect a woman's right to an abortion to turn around and hand Judge Alito a potent vote to undermine or even end it.

But portraying the Alito nomination as just another volley in the culture wars vastly underestimates its significance. The judge's record strongly suggests that he is an eager lieutenant in the ranks of the conservative theorists who ignore our system of checks and balances, elevating the presidency over everything else. He has expressed little enthusiasm for restrictions on presidential power and has espoused the peculiar argument that a president's intent in signing a bill is just as important as the intent of Congress in writing it. This would be worrisome at any time, but it takes on far more significance now, when the Bush administration seems determined to use the cover of the "war on terror" and presidential privilege to ignore every restraint, from the Constitution to Congressional demands for information.

...

A filibuster is a radical tool. It's easy to see why Democrats are frightened of it. But from our perspective, there are some things far more frightening. One of them is Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court.

[Anita Garcia]

1. NAACP

The NAACP National Office is discussing the possibility of conducting a demonstration at Senator Landrieu's office in New Orleans on Friday January 27, 2006.
I will post information here as soon as La. NAACP President Johnson lets me know the time.
I posted "NAACP URGENT ACTION REQUEST" in Alito thread.

[Wordie]

3. Welcome to DU, Anita Garcia!

:wave:

[Anita Garcia]

6. Demonstration Today at 4:00 PM

3:30 PM
234 Loyola Ave. (NOLA NAACP President Danatus King's office) - Press Conference
4:00 PM
Demonstration outside of Sen. Mary Landrieu's NOLA office.

[Wordie]

2. Possible arguments with which to approach Landrieu?

I wonder if there are arguments that could convince Landrieu. For instance, Judge Alito subscribes to the theory of the unitary executive, which says the Constitution vests more power in the president than has traditionally been the case in our country. It would seem to me that if some LA people could write to her and frame the issue in that way, that there might be a chance of convincing her that Alito would not be good for Louisiana. After all, she might not think Bush has done such a heck-of-a-job so far.

Here are some resources regarding the unitary executive theory:
First, an article from the Wall Street Journal, published on the Northwestern University School of Law website:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/news/article_full.cfm?eventid=2372

Another article, from Consortium News, an independent news site:

Alito & the Ken Lay Factor

By Robert Parry
January 12, 2006

The “unitary” theory of presidential power sounds too wonkish for Americans to care about, but the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court could push this radical notion of almost unlimited Executive authority close to becoming a reality.

Justice Alito, as a longtime advocate of the theory, would put the Court’s right-wing faction on the verge of having a majority committed to embracing this constitutional argument that would strip regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, of their independence.

If that happens, George W. Bush and his successors would have the power to instruct these agencies what to do on regulations and enforcement, opening up new opportunities to punish enemies and reward friends. The “unitary” theory asserts that all executive authority must be in the President’s hands, without exception.

The Supreme Court's embrace of the “unitary executive” would sound the death knell for independent regulatory agencies as they have existed since the Great Depression, when they were structured with shared control between the Congress and the President. Putting the agencies under the President’s thumb would tip the balance of Washington power to the White House and invite abuses by letting the Executive turn on and off enforcement investigations.

For instance, if the “unitary executive” had existed in 2001, Bush might have been tempted to halt the SEC accounting investigation that spelled doom for Enron Corp. and his major financial backer, Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay. As it was, the relative independence of the SEC ensured that the accounting probe went forward and the fraudulent schemes propping up the Houston-based company were exposed.

Direct presidential control of the FCC would give Bush and his subordinates the power to grant and revoke broadcast licenses without the constraints that frustrated Richard Nixon’s attempts to punish the Washington Post company for its Watergate reporting. Bush also would be free to order communication policies bent in ways that would help his media allies and undermine his critics...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/011106.html

And here is a very important analysis of the possible effect of Judge Alito's confirmation on the environment:

More Important Than Roe

Bush’s appointment of John Roberts and, now, of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court has predictably resurrected our perennial national debate over abortion and Roe v. Wade. While undeniably important, this emotionally fraught subject has distracted attention from a matter of greater consequence, albeit one unlikely to capture the public imagination: namely, a little matter called the Commerce Clause.

If your mind immediately begins to founder in boredom with that alliteration, consider that this small clause underlies more federal regulation and more powerfully affects everyday life than does any other provision in the U.S. Constitution. You need not be terribly interested in business or commerce to care about laws dependent on this clause: if you care about laws against racial discrimination, laws prohibiting exploitation of child labor, laws providing for a minimum wage, or laws limiting private access to machine guns, you should be concerned about the Commerce Clause. If you give a damn about environmental protection, you should be more than concerned.

The article then goes on to say that there is a danger that we will lose such oversight, as these issues have been overshadowed by others, such as abortion, gay rights and separation of church and state. But the conservatives have been slowly dismantling the protections of the commerce clause, and that the decisions rendered by the new justices will be crucial in determining whether such a trend continues.

The predictable conservative retort is, “If the constitutional text, strictly interpreted, does not suit you, pass a constitutional amendment!” All well and good unless you acknowledge the real world power of vested economic interests which are more than equipped to prevent the overwhelming legislative will needed to amend the Constitution. In the real world, if conservative jurists succeed in paring back the Commerce Clause, it may be a generation or more (if ever) before the needed power to protect the environment is brought back into existence. In that time, species and habitats will have been lost forever, aquifers and waterways will have been drained and polluted beyond repair, and the only world we have will have been unalterably impoverished. These are wounds that no amount of time will heal.

As an appellate judge, Alito dissented from a ruling upholding federal regulation of machine guns as a legitimate exercise of the commerce power. His dissent went beyond the apparent requirements of existing Supreme Court precedent, and pushed for a narrow view of the Commerce Clause that could render rational environmental protection unconstitutional (to say nothing of rational regulation of automatic weapons). Further, in his testimony before the Senate, Alito has described his judicial philosophy in classic, originalist terms—terms that would freeze the Commerce Clause in an eighteenth century milieu utterly inappropriate to governing in the modern world.

It is a shame that Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been largely reduced to perfunctory affairs, where predictable questions elicit predictable evasions and little genuine discussion. Ideas matter, judicial philosophies matter, and we owe it too ourselves and to future generations to take some care about those we place on the Court. If, as now appears likely, Judge Alito is confirmed, the consequences may be far more dire and long lasting than even an outright reversal of Roe v. Wade. At stake is the real world—a world that will long outlast every person now living, every outrageous abuse of civil rights in the current generation, every contemporary injustice. In the long march of time, what we do with that real world, and the state we leave it in, will dwarf all other issues in moral significance. We should not forfeit the constitutional right to sane environmental regulation because of some quaint attachment to eighteenth century understandings, and we should not confirm any Supreme Court appointee who might give us that result.

The article also makes this point:
...the Supreme Court itself recently invalidated certain protections of critical wetland habitats under the Clean Water Act on a statutory basis, while hinting strongly that it had construed the statute narrowly to avoid a potential constitutional question—namely, whether such legislation, construed broadly enough to permit protection of these wetlands, would exceed the scope of Congressional authority under the Commerce Clause.

http://www.etymos.com/ (It's very much worth reading the entire article. Scroll down a bit. It's the January 24th entry.)

I can understand Landrieu's hesitancy to join the filibuster effort, as she may feel that doing so would somehow risk the effort to repair NO. The opposite may be the case however; if confirmed, Judge Alito might be unlikely to support any efforts to, for instance, force the federal government to take better care of NO, as the unitary executive theory would say that the Constitution grants the president to make those decisions totally on his own. So I hope that someone belonging to this forum might try to make the argument to her.

[Anita Garcia]

4. I will!

I've saved your arguments as well as some others that I have found here.
I will put them all in email to President Johnson. I will be talking to him today. With his approval, I will forward them to Senator Landrieu's staff as from NAACP. We are tentatively planning demonstration today in NOLA at her NOLA office. Tomorrow morning we have NAACP State Conference meeting in Baton Rouge. We may decide then to have even more NAACP State Conference actions. I will let you know.
Thanks for the work!

[Wordie]

5. Oh, thank you so much.

:yourock:


Thanks...glad to have you here at DU, Anita Garcia!

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

7. Fear

If they only fear for theirselves and their political standing ,than they cannot effectively serve the people. The intrest of the people can only be served threw the long run .It is not the pocket or the purse of the here and now that preserves the path to the future.A loaf of bread is what is required,The preservation of a way of life is worth fighting for.With or without a loaf of bread.If they cannot reflect our core values, than they do not deserve to serve.