Here is an interesting slice of authoritarian cake, from the Denver Post:

Washington - Cai Luan Chen was 19 when he fell in love with Chen Gui.
Gui was just 18, and China's oppressive population laws forbade them from marrying until they reached their 20s. So Gui moved in with Chen and his parents and a year later discovered she was pregnant.

The Chinese government ordered Gui to have an abortion. Officials came to the house and beat Chen when he wouldn't tell them where Gui was hiding.

Chen and Gui fled. She was hunted down and forced to abort the child in her eighth month of pregnancy. He made it to America, where he asked for political asylum, citing a U.S. law that protects couples fleeing China's abortion policies.

Judge Samuel Alito turned him down.

‘Poor fellow, he suffers from files.’
Aneurin Bevan

But the Chen case illustrates that Alito's defining characteristic may not be his politics or religion, but rather his deference to power. In his professional career, Alito has had just one employer: the U.S. government. Before becoming a judge, he was a federal prosecutor and Justice Department attorney. Even in an abortion-related case like Chen vs. Ashcroft, he sees things through the prism of government authority.

I like to remind people that we made great strides under the Warren court, appointed to serve (and rule) by a Republican but Warren had been Governor of CA, the broad sweep of the citizenry was not absent from his mind.

Back to Scalito:

"He rules in favor of institutional actors and defers to agency decisions in many settings while showing skepticism toward individual litigants' claims," a group of students and professors at his alma mater, Yale Law School, concluded after studying his career.

Alito, writing for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in 2004, sided with the INS.

The Board of Immigration Appeals' interpretation of the law "contributes to efficient administration and avoids difficult and problematic factual inquiries," Alito concluded.

"A rule is not irrational just because it is underinclusive," wrote Alito. And so it was "reasonable" to send Chen back to China.

The law is a tough business. Federal judges get paid big salaries to break people's hearts; it's part of the job. Perhaps the first immigration judge did get it wrong.

Yet anti-abortion and pro-choice senators alike should ask themselves whether they want someone with the inclinations of a lap dog or a watchdog. Especially at a moment when the White House is asserting new executive powers.

Now if we had a fiesty, populist, raring-to-go opposition party we could say, Bring It On (and not just weak PR crap in the phrase). So many ways to argue so many issues w/r/t Sam Alito... looked at one way, the man is a gift... from the pagan gods, if one wishes to explain a few things to the electorate.

BUT we have Lie down, Fall down Cream Puff Political Party:

Merritt's Bakery, cream puffs 1.35 ea.

Not a lot of strength on view.