Dems on the Go-Go

Vacation...all I ever wanted!
Vacation...had to get away!

Via John at AMERICAblog comes this dire snippet from a Sunday Times article:

Democratic aides said there had been even less strategy than usual in trying to coordinate the questioning by the eight Democratic senators. The situation was complicated because senators and staff were out of Washington before the hearing.

I was pretty outraged, until I found out they couldn’t be reached by email, fax, phone, or any other modern means of instant communication because they were in Australia doing individual walkabouts in the outback. Apparently, Karl Rove suggested to them it would be a good teambuilding activity.

Twits.

Last Friday, Pam excerpted a transcript from an episode of Anderson Cooper 360 on which Alan Dershowitz appeared. Based on Alito's claim that his personal views have no bearing on how he would rule on cases, Dershowitz suggested a line of questioning that, as Pam noted, "would have blown the hearings wide open."

DERSHOWITZ: Well, you know, if I were a senator, I'd ask them the following question. I would say, "You have said that your personal views are utterly irrelevant to how you will decide cases. We don't agree with you on that. But since you've said that, let's ask you some really hard questions about your personal views."

"Is your mother right when she says that you personally strongly oppose a woman's right to choose abortion? What do you personally think of gay rights? What do you personally think of affirmative action?"

He couldn't say, "Well, I can't give you those answers because it will come before me." No, no, no, no. You've told us that your personal views are irrelevant. We think they're relevant, so give us the answers. I think it's a very, very hard question for him to duck.

[...]

Some of the best appellate court judges tell us in advance what their views are. There is nothing inconsistent with a judge expressing his views but keeping an open mind. And they ought to demand of every nominee, Republican or Democrat, "Tell us what your current views are or what your past views were."

[...]

Senators don't know how to ask these hard questions.

Even if they knew how, they weren't prepared.

Do I sympathize with Senators needing a vacation? Yes. And yet I don't think I've ever had a vacation from work during which I wasn't called at least once by my employer. I was called on my honeymoon. I was called when out of town for my grandmother's funeral. I had a boss who used to like to call me to brainstorm at 2am. (I didn't accommodate him, but it didn't stop him from ringing anyway and leaving rambling voicemails on my answering machine.) And I don't think my situation is that unusual. Lots of people can't ever totally get away, and most of us don't have the very future of the country depending on us.