AP: Only Two Weeks Behind Patterico
The AP reports something that will sound eerily familiar to readers of this blog:
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is lucky that Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is not one to nurse a grudge.
More than a dozen years ago, Specter, then a second-term senator, was so incensed at government plans to close the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard that he filed suit and personally took the case all the way to the Supreme Court before ultimately conceding defeat.
Along the way, Specter, a former Philadelphia district attorney, twice argued the case before a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and got favorable rulings, with one judge dissenting.
That judge, as it turns out, was Samuel Alito.
If this rings a bell, it should. I reported this story on this blog over two weeks ago.
I e-mailed it to a couple of news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, but neither seemed interested. I’m not sure how the AP picked up the story. I may e-mail the reporter to find out.
Unlike the AP, I don’t think it’s definitively settled that Specter doesn’t hold a grudge. I’m willing to assume he doesn’t, but that presumption can be rebutted. For all Specter’s faults — and he has many — he is a canny politician. He wouldn’t necessarily tell the world if he had something personal against Alito.
I, for one, plan to keep a close eye on Specter throughout these proceedings. If he starts to treat Judge Alito the way he treated Robert Bork, this issue should be revisited.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, the “newspaper of record” in my neck of the woods, has its collective head in very deep insertion in the self-colonoscopy mode; e-mailing them anything, from any source that does not already agree with their positions (the source as well as the story) is simply a waste of bandwidth.
My site, the latest story of which is Able Danger, Unable Journalism, has been documenting the failures of the Inquirer in that story. The lead instigator in the Able Danger story is Curt Weldon, who represents a suburban Philadelphia district. If the Able Danger story is false, it might be understandable that other newspapers would ignore it, but, if it’s false, then a Philadelphia-area congressman has either been deceived (at best) or is a complete loon (at worst), and the Inquirer would have a duty to report that. I don’t know that that means that the Able Danger story is true, but it sure smells bad.
Dana R. Pico (3e4784) — 11/16/2005 @ 6:19 amThe Able Danger story is not only true, it’s also more that a little inconvenient for some important folks who don’t want anyone to know about their particular role in it prior to 9/11, and in suppressing information about it now.
Black Jack (ee9fe2) — 11/16/2005 @ 9:31 amIncidentally, if you like this sort of thing, have a look into TWA Flight 800. Talk about cold chills on the back of your neck. Far out, dude.
Black Jack (ee9fe2) — 11/16/2005 @ 9:36 amJack, there is so much stuff on Able Danger that it seems probable to me that there is something out there about which we need to know. But, if there really is something to this, then the Bush Administration has managed to keep this one under wraps far better than they’ve been able to do on anything else that reflects poorly on them.
Dana R. Pico (3e4784) — 11/16/2005 @ 9:59 amPico, seems the Bush Administration, or any Administration for that matter, can keep almost anything on the qt if MSM’s interests happen to coincide. It’s like the dog that didn’t bark, you’re not likely to get up from your trencher if there’s no ruckus in the front yard.
What gets my goat is I don’t see why the Administration would want to keep Able Danger quiet. The failure to act on AD info is on Slick Willy, although the cover-up is at the 9/11 Commission’s feet, and on Jamie Gorelick’s head. Why GWB declines to blast away confounds me.
Black Jack (ee9fe2) — 11/16/2005 @ 11:44 amBlack Jack said:
I’m not certain either, unless there is more to Able Danger that reflects badly on the current administration than we have guessed, or the Administration has decided that it doesn’t matter how bad it makes the Clinton Administration look, that one is gone and the Bush Administration still has three years remaining, or that the administration is worried that no mater how good it comes out looking, the MSM will still turn things against them, or that maybe, just maybe, there really is less here than we think.
Dana R. Pico (3e4784) — 11/16/2005 @ 12:54 pm