Sam Alito is a mainstream jurist.

Don’t believe me? Ask the White House.

They’ve prepared a 600-page briefing book on President George W. Bush’s newest nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. They needn’t have bothered to lay out the case so exhaustively. The Spineless Wonders (read: Democrats) have indicated through Senate Judiciary Committee member Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.), that they will not filibuster Alito.

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) isn’t so sure, however, about “Mr. Mainstream.”

“The people that were so enthusiastic about knocking down [prior Supreme Court nominee Harriet] Miers are so enthusiastic about this nominee. We have to find out why are they so enthusiastic this time and what do they know that we don’t know,” Kennedy said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Well it’s simple, Teddy. You see, Justice Miers may not have had enough conservative cold-heartedness to serve the nutcases of the right who are supporting Alito so enthusiastically. So- called men of God like Dr. Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Gary Bauer, Phyllis Schlafly and Dr. James Dobson also very enthusiastically support Alito.

You see, these gentle Christian conservatives have no problem with police strip-searching a 10-year-old-girl (Doe v. Groody, 2004) or with forcing women to get permission from their husbands before having an abortion (Planned Parenthood v Casey, Third Circuit 1991), or with harassment of gay (and other) students in school (Saxe v. State, 2001).

But again, don’t take my word for it. You can trust the Bush White House’s briefing book to put the proper spin on Judge Alito. In the crazy world of Orwellian logic that our government indulges in, Alito wasn’t implying that women were the “property” of their husbands.

Oh, no, not at all. According to the White House, Alito’s 3rd Circuit court opinion in Casey showed “concern for the safety of women.” And, by approving a requirement for spousal notification, he “reflected the position advanced by the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania.”

Thankfully some sanity still prevailed on the U.S. Supreme Court when it heard and overturned the Third Circuit’s ruling on Casey. But just think of what Alito could do when revisiting that ruling on the court now.

But don’t get too sick over Alito just yet — we’ve only started.

In the aforementioned Saxe v. State College Area School District, the 3rd Circuit unanimously struck down a school’s anti-harassment policy, saying it was a violation of the free speech clause in the First Amendment. You can read the school’s policy at the bottom of the case here and judge for yourself.

A group of students who identified themselves as Christians had challenged the policy, saying their religion teaches them that homosexuality is a sin and they think “they have a right to speak out about the sinful nature and harmful effects of homosexuality.”

Alito agreed, holding, in effect, that within a school, it was OK for one student to scream “faggot” into the face of another student — that was part of the freedoms Americans supposedly fought for. Draw a picture of a bomb in a public school, however, and you’ll be arrested, cuffed and thrown in jail in short order.

Of course, in the language of the White House briefing book, Judge Alito was defending the First Amendment.

Strangely enough in their briefing book, the White House cited Alito’s opinion in a unanimous ruling in 2004 that struck down a Pennsylvania law prohibiting student newspapers from running advertisements for alcohol.

“If government were free to suppress disfavoured speech by preventing potential speakers from being paid, there would not be much left of the First Amendment,” Alito wrote then.

But again, one could sense that after all, the students were being prevented from learning effective capitalism by accepting advertising from a legal business. After all, making money generally trumps civil rights in the U.S., so Alito’s ruling here can be properly understood even though the school district may have been horrified by it.

But perhaps the most egregious of all Alito’s rulings was the one in Doe v Groody.

In this case, a 10-year-old girl was strip-searched (with her mother) by police acting on a warrant accusing the father of the family of drug dealing. The warrant, however, specifically and only mentioned the male “Doe” as the person to be searched. The family sued the police.

Police and prosecutors said they believed that police had the right to search everyone on the premises and said that there wasn’t enough space on the warrant to list the people who might have been at the residence during the raid.

Alito was the only judge that dissented in this case, believing that the police should not be second-guessed in their interpretations of search warrants even if it includes the strip-searching of a 10-year-old girl not listed on the warrant.

Alito’s reasoning seems to have more to do with the so-called “War on (some) Drugs” than on legal technicalities. In his opinion, Alito wrote:

“I share the majority’s visceral dislike of the intrusive search of John Doe’s young daughter, but it is a sad fact that drug dealers sometimes use children to carry out their business and to avoid prosecution. I know of no legal principle that bars an officer from searching a child (in a proper manner) if a warrant has been issued and the warrant is not illegal on its face.”

Of course, the majority judges thought the warrant, while not illegal, was specific enough to exclude other family members from strip searches. In the ultimate irony, the majority opinion was written by Michael Chertoff, currently the Director of Homeland Security.

So the world that Sam Alito would like to see crafted from the bench is, therefore, pretty similar to the one that neo- and Christo-fascists want: give the police and government carte blanche to do as they please, further restrict the right to sue, and roll back abortion rights among other civil rights and liberties.

Alito’s rulings and the essentially jovial retelling of them in conservative circles points to a growing meanness in this culture that uses the literacy of law as a mask for its own cruelty (when it suits them, of course). Alito, while exhibiting a “visceral dislike” of the little girl’s strip-searching, nonetheless, fell back on literal interpretation of the law. In addition, Alito, articulating a unique American ethos currently in vogue, holds one must accept some “collateral damage” to effectively fight a “war.”

Even if it means strip-searching a little girl.

So if one judges the political climate of the United States based on the tenets of republican government, that is, that the majority of elected officials represent the prevailing cultural and political beliefs of their constituents, and noting that the Democrats will probably go meekly on Alito, then we must conclude that the White House is essentially correct.

That Judge Sam Alito’s views and decisions are, quite possibly, “mainstream” in the United States.

And that’s probably the saddest part of this whole debate.

Keith Gottschalk

Keith Gottschalk

U.S. Keith Gottschalk has written for daily newspapers in Iowa, Illinois and Ohio. He also had a recent stint as a radio talk show host in Illinois. As a result of living in the high ground...