Even though the latest CNN poll indicated the American people support Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, and the same poll indicated that barely a third would support a Democrat filibuster, all of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have voted against Alito.
The politicization of the confirmation process the Democrats began when they first turned bork into a verb thus continues.
Of course, the confirmation process has become so politicized precisely because our courts have become so politicized. We have allowed nine old men and women in robes to elevate themselves into a super-legislature in which they exercise privileges they deny to our elected representatives.
I wonder what the founders would think of our modern Supreme Court as it happily goes about the business of, as Justice Scalia put it, "Day by day, case by case, ... designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize." My guess is that many of them would agree with Judge Bork that the courts have taken sides in the "struggle between the cultural or liberal left and the great mass of citizens who, left to their own devices, tend to be traditionalists. The courts are enacting the agenda of the cultural left." And even among those founders who would take the other side of the culture wars (Jefferson?), there might be some who would recognize that their cherished checks and balances are breaking down as the Court becomes less and less accountable. (Quotes taken from Richard Neuhaus' review of Bork's latest book: Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges.)
