On to Bush's Next Nominee

From Advocate.com

Alito advocated discrimination against HIV-positive Americans

Samuel Alito, nominated by President Bush Monday to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, helped write a U.S. Justice Department opinion in 1986 that said employers should be able to legally fire HIV-positive employees because of their infection, The Washington Post reports. Alito was working in the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel when he helped write the opinion, which stated that "fear of contagion, whether reasonable or not," was reason enough for an employer to legally fire an HIV-positive worker. The opinion went on to state that discrimination based on insufficient medical knowledge was not prohibited by federal laws that protect the disabled.

"We certainly did not want to encourage irrational discrimination, but we had to interpret the law as it stands," Alito later said of the opinion, according to the Post.

The rest of the article is here.

Two things strike me. First, that this ruling was written only 5 years or so into the epidemic and it was almost 20 years ago. However, some people continue to hold on to and practice similar sorts of prejudices even today. Second, while the article reports what happened, upon thinking what it indicates about the future, it provides little upon which to judge the candidate's suitability for office.

While the right will say "see, they are using scare techniquesbesmircherch the reputation of yet another Bush appointee," the fact is give then inability to predict the future, what else do we have to go on besides past performance. (And isn't this what employers do when they make hiring decisions every day?)

If we trusted our President, maybe we would be more willing to trust his nominees. However, as each scandal erupts, it becomes clearer that the current administration will use any means at its disposal, even outright lies, to push its agenda down the throats of the nation and the world. One only has to wonder what this portends for the Court.

It's impossible to say if Alito will help Roberts and the other conservatives on the Court to roll back protections gained in the recent past. But given something as cold, callous, and calculating as a written declaration rationalizing irrational discrimination against someone because of fear and declaring that a legal actinstillstils little hope.

Last, interpretation is just that. Some act as if it is all magically written somewhere in very simple black and white so that everyone can understand it as one understands the story of "Jack and Jill." Over how mmillenniaenia have Christians and their Jewpredecessorssors have argued over the meaning, the interpretation, of the scriptures?

Are we prepared to let those who believe that the earth was actually created in only 6 days of 24 hours each and that the planet is really less than 5000 years old go to work on our laws as well? I don't mean to imply that Alito is or isn't a Biblical literalist, but the point is that everything is subject to interpretation and the beliefs one brings to the job will always affect those interpretations.

One must wonder if he would have reached the same decision if he had known, loved, and worked with people with HIV/AIDS or if he had been asked to rule on the firing of a cancer patient because of irrational fears.