More on Scalito: John Cole threatens to hold his breath if the opposition to the nominee gets too vehement:

If I hear one more person state that Alito is in favor of strip searching 12 year olds, or in favor requiring women to notify their husbands if they intend to have an abortion, or in favor of racial discrimination, or whatever, I am going to blow a gasket.

I don't know of anyone who has stated that Alito favors "strip searching 12 year olds" (actually, the referenced case involved the strip-search of a ten-year old girl), or "requiring women to notify their husbands if they intend to have an abortion", or "racial discrimination, or whatever"*. The problem with Bush's latest sacrifical lamb to the high court is that he supports a legal process that permits the strip-searching of children, that forces women to notify their husband before terminating a pregnancy, and that makes fighting racial discrimination harder for our society. Liberals should have no hesitancy in opposing that sort of judicial activism.

*"whatever", although undefined by Mr. Cole, may well be in reference to his eloquent dissent in Riley v. Taylor (3rd Cir.2001) 277 F.3d 261, in which he drew an analogy between a prosecutor excluding black jurors during voir dire in a death penalty case that involved a black defendant, and the election of left-handed Presidents:

According to the majority, however, the "sophisticated analysis of a statistician" is not
needed to interpret the significance of these statistics. "An amateur with a pocket calculator," the majority writes, can calculate that "there is little chance of randomly selecting four consecutive all white juries."

(snip)

The dangers in the majority's approach can be easily illustrated. Suppose we asked our "amateur with a pocket calculator" whether the American people take right- or left-handedness into account in choosing their Presidents. Although only about 10% of the population is left-handed, left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections. Our "amateur with a calculator" would conclude that "there is little chance of randomly selecting" left-handers in five out of six presidential elections. But does it follow that the voters cast their ballots based on whether a candidate was right- or left-handed?

Ibid., at 326-7. And thus, we get to the core of the conservative argument against civil rights: preventing blacks from sitting on juries is about as worrisome as electing left-handed Presidents.