Senators Pitch Slow and Easy to Alito

Let Chris Matthews and the Washington Nationals play hardball. At the Senate Judicary Committee hearing this morning on Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, the dominant game was slow-pitch softball.

It was time for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to grill the nominee on his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, the group Alito belonged to that objected to larger numbers of women and minorities at the school.

"Is it fair to say that you were not a founding member?" Hatch probed.

"I certainly was not a founding member," Alito confessed.

Hatch was not finished. "You were not a board member?"

"I was not a board member."

The man from Utah was relentless. "You were not even an active member of the organization, to the best of your recollection?"

Alito could not deny it. "I don't believe I did anything that was active in relation to this organization," he said.

At this point, Hatch went for the kill. "Are you against women and minorities attending colleges?"

"Absolutely not, senator," the nominee testified, as the gallery erupted in laughter at Hatch.

Even Hatch, smiling, acknowledged his line of questioning was a bit limp. "You know, I felt that would be your answer," the senator said. "I really did."

For all the expectations of fireworks on the first day of questioning of Alito, the mood in the hearing room was flat. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa), and the ranking Democrat, Patrick Leahy (Vt.), asked tough questions, but Alito evaded them with the usual technical answers and legal platitudes. Two of the feistier Democrats, Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) and Joe Biden (Del.) had sharp words for the nominee, but they spent the bulk of their time making speeches. It took Biden 12 minutes to get off a single question to Alito. During his 30-minute round of questioning, Biden spoke about his own Irish American roots and his son's application to Princeton (he attended the University of Pennsylvania instead, Biden said), while still finding time to joke about Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) eyeglasses. With such Democratic filibusters, Alito had less pressure on him to explain himself.