Kennedy: A Vote Against Alito Is a Vote for Progress

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Kennedy: A Vote Against Alito Is a Vote for Progress
January 19, 2006

Senator Kennedy Delivered This Address at the Center for American Progress today:

“Thank you, Melody, for that generous introduction, and thank you for your vision and effective leadership on so many issues of such paramount concern to the nation. Our Judiciary Committee in the Senate today just isn’t the same without you!

I’m grateful to the Center for American Progress for hosting us here today, and I commend you for the difference you’ve already begun to make. Keep up the great work.

It’s an honor to be here to address all of you on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. As you know so well, the stakes for our nation could not be higher. This is the vote of a generation. If confirmed, this nominee will have an enormous impact on our basic rights and liberties for years and even decades to come.

The Alito hearings, as well as those for Chief Justice Roberts before them, show the need for change in the way we learn a nominee’s views on our laws and the Constitution. Instead of a free and honest exchange of ideas, our hearings have become stylized and choreographed appearances in which nominees are coached to say as little as possible. When it comes to lifetime appointments to the highest court in the land, surely the American people deserve better.

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