JE RECUSE

OUI, JE RECUSE Or not.  Maybe the sinking of the Sam Alito nomination won’t come down to a discussion of judicial philosophy or litmus tests.  Maybe Alito’s nomination will be colored by judicial ethics. Or lack of them. [story]

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. said yesterday that he did nothing improper when he ruled in cases involving two financial firms in which he held accounts, although he had told the Senate 15 years ago that he would step aside in matters involving the companies.

YOU SAY YOU’LL DO ONE THING and then you do another.  In most courts, that is called lying.

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING
TELL IT TO THE JUDGE [Simian Brain]  . . .do you think that the Republicans are having an honest debate about judicial power and the elements of American law that they so despise, things like the right to privacy that is enmeshed so thoroughly in the Constitution that the founders didn't even think to write it in?
This is much like the right to own property. Where is that in the Constitution? The only reference to private property in the Constitution is in the 5th Amendment, and it explicitly applies only a low minimum standard that must be met before the state can take your stuff: "[No person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
So Judge Alito, and more importantly Judge Thomas: since the Constitution doesn't specify what constitutes "due process" or "just compensation", do we assume that any state legislature can make that determination, or should we perhaps go to some foreign law to derive meaning to those terms? English Common Law, for instance, which I believe fully defines them in the way that we have come to understand them. [link]

THE HERETIK KNOWS small points like precedent mean nothing and sadly principle means less than the principals.  For better or worse, for the richer more than the poorer,  the law of the land is what the judge says it is.