Meeting with Jon Kyl of Arizona -- the article that Senator Kyl mentioned on the floor that showed the threat to the ROTC came out in February 1985, which would tend to support Alito's recollection. And all of this is off the point -- "they keep plowing the same old ground," and he's not going to talk about his Constitutional views on open questions.

I asked Senator Kyle about the analogy between Kennedy's request to subpoena the private papers of a man involved in founding CAP and hauling all of the ACLU's records into the committee during Ginsburg's hearing. He agreed with my analogy, and noted that Kennedy would have been the first to decry an invasion of privacy. He also said that those kinds of subpoenas would have a chilling effect on political speech.

Most disappointing part of the process: "The innuendos today ... I can't believe that the motivation of my colleagues is to smear, but it will have that effect."

Kyl expects to see a third round of questioning. He expects some further delaying tactics, although there isn't really any good reason for it. He doesn't see a filibuster, at least not a successful one.

Kyl thinks that Kohl and even Biden have been courteous and professional, and that Feingold might still surprise people and vote for Alito. He doesn't want to comment further on Democrats.

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