January 16, 2006

File this one under If you're going to cry for the cameras, at least choose a somewhat plausible moment... During her husband's confirmation hearings Mrs. Samuel Alito burst into tears and fled the hearing room. As if on cue (as if not) the right wing press began gushing with sympathy toward her, and accusations of senatorial brutality toward her husband. And never mind that the tears began flowing forth, during friendly questioning by a republican.

But if you're going to go for the sympathy vote, you probably need a better candidate then a man who can shrug off a warrantless strip search of a child, as Alito did back in 2003. When a lawyer for the family of a 10 year old girl who was strip searched without a warrant in a small Pennsylvania coal town brought their case before the federal Third Circuit Court, Alito snappishly asked him, "Why do you keep bringing up the fact that this case involves the strip search of a 10-year-old child?"

That probably wasn't a rhetorical question. He really was confused as to why anyone would think it mattered that it was a 10 year old child...a girl in fact, who had been strip searched without a warrant. He'd probably blow a fuse to learn that some people think strip searching children is a crime against humanity.

This is what the religious right, America's tin pot moral blowhards, are pleased to call Supreme Court material. They can work themselves into a lather about the emotional damage to children that same sex marriage, they claim, causes. They can burst blood vessels yap yap yapping about how gay people shouldn't be allowed anywhere near children for fear we might molest them. But suggest that strip searching children might, just might, be a tad beyond the bounds of decency and civilized behavior, let alone cause them lasting emotional harm, and suddenly the religious right couldn't care less about the emotional welfare of children. What are you...soft on crime...???

Here's a question for all you theocons out there: What offends Jesus more... hypocrites, or people who brutalize children?

Copyright © January 16, 2006 by Bruce Garrett
All Rights Reserved.

Link