Now We Know Why Bush Picked Scalito

From the Washington Post:

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. once argued that the nation's top law enforcement official deserves blanket protection from lawsuits when acting in the name of national security, even when those actions involve the illegal wiretapping of American citizens, documents released yesterday show.

The context was a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Mitchell for illegal wiretapping conducted in 1970. In fairness to Alito, he did counsel a more narrowly targeted challenge than his superiors in the Solicitor General's office...but for purely tactical reasons, not because blanket immunity would be incompatible with democratic rule.

The White House, of course, says these aren't the droids we're looking for:

Alito supporters noted that the memo does not defend the practice of warrantless eavesdropping, instead dealing only with the question of whether government officials who often must act quickly can be sued for damages when they err. Nor did the memo deal with the question of whether a warrant was necessary to investigate foreign threats.

"Despite Democrats' attempts to link this memo to reports of NSA activities, the two have nothing to do with each other," said White House spokesman Steve Schmidt.

I'll spell it out for Mr. Schmidt: Alito believes (or believed) that officials in the Executive Branch should be able to commit criminal acts with impunity; Bush himself (and countless subordinates) has admitted to committing criminal acts (which he maintains, implausibly, are not criminal...but that's another story) and promises to continue doing so; Alito, as a Supreme Court justice, would have a vote on the final disposition of any potential action (civil or criminal) against Bush, the guy who appointed him. That's the connection, Stevie.

When Bush appointed Miers, a lot of people speculated that his primary reason for appointing a fawning lackey was to get a vote for presidential immunity from any hypothetical prosecution. This isn't a brand new scenario here. The difference now is that the Alito memo makes an immunity scenario a lot less speculative, and the criminal wiretapping makes prosecution a lot less hypothetical.

[That's all, folks]