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November 1, 2005
The Alito Smear: Italian=Mafioso

The anti-Alito gang has already come up with its first smear, and at least this time it doesn't hinge on speculation of the sexual orientation of a five-year-old son of the nominee. No, this time it relates to the ethnicity of the nominee himself, Samuel Alito, and his failure to win a conviction in one Mafia case seventeen years ago. The implication, which even Chris Matthews noted was "disgusting" and "amazingly bad politics", will claim that Alito somehow let one slip away for his paisan. From the first paragraph and then the second talking point, courtesy of Redstate:

While serving as a U.S. Attorney, Alito failed to obtain a key conviction, releasing nearly two dozen mobsters back into society. ...

U.S. Attorney Alito Failed to Obtain Conviction of 20 Mobsters, Saying “You Can’t Win Them All.” Federal law enforcement agencies sustained a major rebuff in their anti-mafia campaign with the August 1988 acquittal of all 20 defendants accused of making up the entire membership of the Lucchese family in the New Jersey suburbs of New York. The verdict ended what was believed to be the nation’s longest federal criminal trial and according to the Chicago Tribune, dealt the government a “stunning defeat.” Samuel Alito, the US Attorney on the case, said, “Obviously we are disappointed but you realize you can’t win them all.” Alito also said he had no regrets about the prosecution but in the future would try to keep cases “as short and simple as possible.” Alito continued, “I certainly don’t feel embarrassed and I don’t think we should feel embarrassed.

This document started circulating, unsigned, yesterday on Capitol Hill and among the press. As has been noted elsewhere, the mouthbreathers who produced it forgot the first rule of e-mailing sensitive Microsoft Word documents -- don't do it at all. The metadata clearly indicates that the author of this goes by the name "prendergastc", most likely Chris Prendergast, who works on the DNC. By displaying the document properties in Word, one finds out that the company holding the license for the copy of Word that created the document is -- the DNC. The last person to edit the document was AdlerD, which Redstate thinks would be Devorah Adler, also of the DNC, and who makes considerably more than Chris Prendergast does. That moves the problem from an out-of-control flunky to one of deliberate smear attempts by the Democratic Party itself.

There's a bit more here, too. The document comes from a template that was created on July 7th, which coincides with the nomination of John Roberts. The document/template title? "how they made their $$, personal holdings, the whole deal". Talk about operating from a playbook! If one needs to see a reason why originalism is not just desirable but at this stage absolutely necessary, it would be difficult to come up with a better example.

I wonder how many Italians want to continue to support the Democrats as long as they have so little compunction about using ethnic smears to kneecap the people they see as their enemies. For that matter, I wonder why anyone wants to support these kind of tactics, and this level of incompetence.

Sphere It Digg! View blog reactions
Posted by Ed Morrissey at November 1, 2005 7:00 AM

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