The Daily Background

All right, here it is. Yesterday, in a Site Update, I promised I’d have an Alito Roundup, and explained why I didn’t have one yesterday. Thursday was Alito’s last day of confirmation hearings. Alito has not been Okay’d or rejected yet though. Without further, letttttttt’s go:

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- The American print media is calling it already over, with articles such as AP’s “Alito Appears Headed for Confirmation.” Oh well, I guess we can always rely on the foreign press. Say, what is Reuters’ take (Reuters is the British equivalent to AP)? Oh. It’s “Alito seems headed for confirmation .” And they say American press and foreign press is so different. Firedoglake wrote a great post on this subject, and AMERICAblog offers some thoughts on the media’s analysis.

- Also according to AP, “Judges’ Endorsements May Be Alito Conflict.” In addition to those judges who are endorsing Alito, there’s another fellow who’s making some waves. Firedoglake has the dirt.

- Remember the Princeton racist group angle? Justin Frank slams on it.

- Today, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin asked that a list of people who prepped Alito for the hearings. ThinkProgress obtained a copy of the list, and cited Feingold’s concerns about how the NSA-Wiretap Scandal factored in. In addition though, Scott Shields of MyDD wonders about the list’s lack of a certain person, and what this could mean.

- Bill Scher has a list of three things we’ve learned about Alito during the hearings.

- The Lieberman angle. You might have heard that Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was open to a filibuster to block Alito’s confirmation. You might also remember Daily Background coblogger Dylan Matthews refer to Lieberman as a “general bane of progressive Democrats’ existence.” So you might (rightly) be wondering why the hell he’d be using the word filibuster, especially when practically nobody else is. It’s a good question. And I’m guessing that it has to do with this: he’s probably betting that Dems won’t rally a filibuster, and is probably only bluffing when he says he’d be open to it. Just trying to act more like a Democrat to look better when re-election time comes around later this year.

- Blogger Matt Stoller points to Peter Daou’s new essay, titled “THE (Broken) TRIANGLE: Progressive Bloggers in the Wilderness.” Now, what the hell does that mean? It means that bloggers are still isolated from the Democratic Party mainstream. Daou tells us how the hearings should have been handled by Dems.

- Finally, and I’ve tried to make this a regular feature of these Alito Roundups, I’ll end with humor. Danny Miller compares Alito to Roberts in terms of… Film Favorites? Well, that’s one way to go about things.

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Want more Alito news? Check the Alito Archives.

A further note; this is the last scheduled Alito Roundup, but I promise I’ll still be bringing you news about Alito’s confirmation hearings, only probably not in Roundup format (though I’ll make an exception for when the final decision is made on his confirmation). If Alito is confirmed, as the print media is expecting, we’ll be covering his impact on the Supreme Court as things develop.

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