Remarks by Senator John Kerry on His Opposition to Judge Alito’s Nomination to the Supreme Court
“Mr. President. Today, we face perhaps one of the most important choices we will make as Senators. A choice that will affect the direction of our country for the next several decades. President Bush has nominated Judge Samuel Alito to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the United States Supreme Court.

He has nominated a man who consistently defers to the government action regardless of how egregious it may be; a man who erects rather than breaks down barriers in the area of civil rights, a man who, to this day, has never retreated from his declaration that the Constitution does not protect a woman’s right to privacy, a man who has demonstrated a persistent insensitivity to the history of racial discrimination in this country and, was even, at the government’s request, willing to ignore overwhelming evidence that African Americans were intentionally stricken from an all-white jury in a black defendant’s capital case.“

And who will this nominee replace? He has been nominated to fill the seat of the Court’s swing vote—a woman who has upheld affirmative action programs, a woman who upheld the right to choose, a woman who upheld state employees’ rights to the protections of the Family Medical Leave Act, a woman who recognizes that a declaration of war is not a ‘blank check’ for the President’s actions. A woman who decides each case narrowly on the facts presented, keenly aware of the greater impact her decisions have.

“We are being asked to confirm a nominee who will shift the ideological balance of the Court dramatically to the right. We are being asked to confirm a nominee whose views will undermine the balance of power that I believe keeps our country strong. For these and other compelling reasons, I oppose this nomination.

QUOTE OF THE DAY ... Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. President Abraham Lincoln