by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, October 31, 2005 2:47 P.M. EST

Bring It On!
Once again, all is right with the world. Regaining his footing after the Miers misstep, President Bush this morning nominated Judge Samuel Alito of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Conservatives are delighted, and as Human Events notes, even Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a very liberal Democrat, described his fellow New Jerseyite as "the kind of judge the public deserves--one who is impartial, thoughtful, and fair," and added, "I urge the Senate to confirm his nomination." Lautenberg was prescient; he said this on the floor of the Senate in April 1990, more than 15 years ago.

Lautenberg's enthusiasm probably won't insulate Alito from the usual left-wing smear campaign. Chuck Schumer gave a press conference this morning at which he exploited the memory of a recently departed civil rights heroine:

Like Rosa Parks, Judge Alito will be able to change history by virtue of where he sits. The real question today is whether Judge Alito will use his seat on the bench, just as Rosa Parks used her seat on the bus, to change history for the better, or whether he would use that seat to reverse much of what Rosa Parks and so many others fought so hard and for so long to put in place. Judge Alito's visit to Rosa Parks this morning was appropriate. His record, as I'm sure Rosa Parks would agree, is much more important.

Poor Rosa Parks. Even in death, she can't escape Chuck Schumer.

Blogger Keith Burgess-Jackson nicely sums up why this fight is worth having:

I fired up the plasma television and turned to the Fox News Channel for news of the nomination. There on the screen was Bob Beckel, foaming at the mouth (literally), railing against Judge Alito. This is what's coming, folks. Leftists will misrepresent Judge Alito's rulings, distort his views and values, question his character, and try to make him out to be a fascist. . . . When the American people compare Judge Alito to what's being said about him, they will conclude that leftists are nuts. It's going to be a great show.

If the Democrats are smart--admittedly, an "if" almost as prodigious as Chuck Schumer's ego--they will handle this the way they did the nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts: make some hateful noises as blue imitation meat for the base, but refrain from obstructing the nomination with a filibuster--which would require red-state Democrats and parties to the May compromise to act against their own political interests, and which in any case would be subject to defeat by the "nuclear option." As Sen. Lindsey Graham, a compromising Republican, said yesterday on "Face the Nation" (PDF; text on page 6), "If [a nominee is] filibustered based on ideology and philosophy, that's setting aside an election and the filibuster will not stand."

That is an outcome the Dems would be well advised to avoid. The nuclear option would vaporize the judicial filibuster for good (or at least until a majority of senators agree to reinstate it, which is unlikely since a majority has no reason to filibuster). By contrast, the May filibuster compromise expires at the end of this Congress, in January 2007. The Republicans are believed to have no more than 52 votes in favor of the nuclear option, which means that they would lose the nuclear deterrent if the Dems picked up three Senate seats next year.

Thus if Justice John Paul Stevens were to retire in 2007, the Democrats could actually use the filibuster threat to force Bush to pick a "compromise" candidate. To avoid this, Republicans may want to call their Democratic senators and urge them to filibuster away!

A dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.

The Keystone Angle
The Alito nomination may have interesting implications for politics in Pennsylvania, politically one of the most interesting states in the country. The Keystone State leans Democratic but is a perennial swing state in presidential races: Al Gore carried it by 4.2% in 2000, and John Kerry* by 2.5% in 2004.

Pennsylvania also has two Republican senators. Both were elected in years when the GOP took a Senate majority--Arlen Specter in 1980 and Rick Santorum in 1994--but other than that they have little in common. Specter is from Philadelphia, Santorum from suburban Pittsburgh. Specter is Jewish, Santorum Catholic. Specter is 75, Santorum under 50. Specter is strongly pro-abortion, Santorum strongly antiabortion. Specter almost lost his renomination bid last year to a conservative Republican; Santorum faces an uphill re-election battle next year against a moderate Democrat.

But the pair have developed a symbiotic relationship. Santorum's support helped Specter to a narrow primary victory against Rep. Pat Toomey, and Santorum is counting on help from Specter next year.

Enter Alito. The Third Circuit includes Pennsylvania (along with Delaware, New Jersey and the U.S. Virgin Islands), and in 1991 Alito cast a dissenting vote in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in which he argued for upholding a democratically enacted regulation of abortion. (The case subsequently went to the Supreme Court, which, by a 5-4 vote, agreed with the Third Circuit majority.)

Specter presumably will find Alito's Planned Parenthood views hard to swallow, given his own antidemocracy stance on abortion. But he is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and, as Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics notes, "it's time for Specter to earn that Judiciary Committee chairmanship and to return the favor to the White House for backing him over Pat Toomey in the 2004 PA Senate primary."

Meanwhile, National Review's Kathryn Lopez notes that "an Alito battle and confirmation should help Rick Santorum's reelection campaign." This sounds right to us, especially since Santorum's likely opponent, Bob Casey Jr., is also an abortion foe.

* "Remember: Integrity, integrity, integrity."

He'll Stick With Laura
"Bush Is Not Expected to Feel Need to Pick Woman Again"--headline, New York Times, Oct. 28

The Prophet Motive
By some accounts last week was a bad one for President Bush. But it was a very good week for us, at least when it comes to political prognostication. First, of course, came the withdrawal of Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination on Thursday, fulfilling our prediction 20 days earlier on PBS's "The Journal Editorial Report" that she would not be confirmed. (A hat tip to Dan Henninger, who on the same program got even more specific: "President withdraws her, proposes someone else, galvanizes the party.")

Then on Friday came the anticlimactic finale of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle, the indictment (PDF) of Vice President Cheney's now former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of obstruction of justice, false statements and perjury. Our prediction on this, from the July 15 episode of the same PBS program, is worth quoting at length:

Paul Gigot: What kind of legal jeopardy is Karl Rove in, based on what we know now?

Taranto: On a scale of one to 10, Paul, I would say roughly a zero. Look, the allegation is that Rove violated something called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. This is a 1982 law that's meant to shield the identities of covert CIA agents. In order to be a covert CIA agent under this law, you have to be stationed overseas or to have been stationed overseas sometime in the past five years. Joe Wilson in his book acknowledges that his wife's last overseas assignment was in 1997, six years before this so-called leak took place. There's no crime here.

Gigot: It also is true that you must have disclosed the CIA agent's identity maliciously and as part of your normal official government function.

Taranto: You have to have learned it through your government functions, and you have to have disclosed it knowing that the government was taking affirmative measures to conceal it. Now Robert Novak, who first reported this, said later that he had asked the CIA if it was OK to disclose this name. He said the CIA said we'd rather not, but made only--and these are his words--"a very weak objection." So it doesn't sound like the government was taking affirmative measures.

Gigot: Of course, we do have that independent counsel, the Special Counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, who was appointed a couple of years ago, looking into this. Do we know what it is precisely he's looking at? Could he be looking at anything more than whether that law was violated? Something like perjury or lying under oath?

Taranto: Well, as Martha Stewart can attest, sometimes just being involved in a criminal investigation can get you into trouble if you do the wrong thing. So yes, there may be conceivably indictments based on something that arose out of the investigation, even if there is no underlying crime.

And that is exactly what happened. The Libby indictment does not allege that Valerie Plame was a covert agent. Nor is Libby charged with conspiracy, as some Angry Left moonbats had been expecting. Libby's alleged crimes all occurred after the investigation began. The charges against him are serious, but no one should lose sight of the bigger picture: The special prosecutor has apparently found no evidence that anyone was guilty of anything two years ago, back when Joe Wilson was calling for Karl Rove to be "frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." As we've been arguing for two years, this was an investigation about nothing. Call it the "Seinfeld" scandal.

Les Miserables
Scooter Libby picked up some support from an unlikely source: John Kerry**. In a speech on the Senate floor, Kerry said:

Is there no one finding a countervailing proportionality in this case when confronted by our own congressionally created Javert who is not just pursuing a crime but who is at the center of creating the crime which we are deliberating on now?

"Think about it," Kerry continued. "When Mr. Starr was appointed, when we authorized an independent counsel, when the grand jury was convened, the crime on trial before us now had not even been committed, let alone contemplated."

Well, c'mon, you don't really think Kerry would ever choose principle over partisanship, do you? The above comments, of course, were from 1999; here's what he said Friday (last quote):

"Today's indictment of the vice president's top aide and the continuing investigation of Karl Rove are evidence of White House corruption at the very highest levels, far from the 'honor and dignity' the president pledged to restore to Washington just five years ago."

Remember: Integrity, integrity, integrity!

Meanwhile, the far-left outfit MoveOn.org has a petition going:

The Bush administration outted CIA operative Valerie Plame as punishment for her husband's revelations about the Administration's Iraq lies. Today, a top White House official was indicted for obstructing the investigation into that cover-up. The White House will try to pretend that this is not a big deal. With a strong letter to the editor campaign, we can defeat the Republican spin machine and let the American people know the truth: that today's indictment was about the cover-up of Bush's Iraq lies and we demand that Bush clean house of all the liars.

This seems to run counter to the spirit of MoveOn's founding:

MoveOn.org Civic Action was started by Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Although neither had experience in politics, they shared deep frustration with the partisan warfare in Washington D.C. and the ridiculous waste of our nation's focus at the time of the impeachment mess. On September 18th 1998, they launched an online petition to "Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation."

As a matter of truth in advertising, shouldn't they change their name to DwellOn.org?

** Fop cit.

Everyone Else Is Caught in Between
"Libby at Center of Case; Reporters in Middle"--headline, USA Today, Oct. 31

'Basic' Instinct
The Boston Globe reports that the Democrats have offered "outlines of a new national security message built on plans to reduce US troops in Iraq and sharply increase security spending at home." This is uninteresting in itself, but get a load of this quote:

Clinton administration secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright delivered a report to top Democratic congressional leaders calling for a 50 percent increase in federal spending on homeland security, the creation of a domestic intelligence agency, and a Cabinet-level ranking for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

''We are all looking at the Iraq issue, how to make America safe and not leave the situation in complete chaos," Albright added, echoing many of Kerry's themes. ''The Democrats are basically supportive of the troops. We would like to see an Iraq that is stable and relatively democratic."

The Democrats basically support the troops. What more could the troops ask for? And don't you go questioning the Democrats' patriotism, either. They love America, even if they're not "in love" with it.

Homer Nods
Several readers wrote to inform us that we goofed in saying a Utah National Guard lieutenant was planning to "re-enlist." Apparently only enlisted men re-enlist; commissioned officers serve until they retire, resign, die or are discharged.

The Media Must Lay Down Their Arms!
"About 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been reported killed by the media."--St. Louis Instead of War Coalition Web site, Oct. 27

What Would We Do Without Volcker?
"Volcker: U.N. Scandal Exposes Corruption"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 28

Maybe Because Streetcars and Buses Weren't Invented Yet
"Why was there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the first place? "Racism" some will say--and there was certainly plenty of racism in the South, going back for centuries. But racially segregated seating on streetcars and buses in the South did not go back for centuries."--Thomas Sowell, Oct. 27

How He Got Into Ill-Fitting Clothes I'll Never Know
"[Roy] Horn, 61, was mauled on stage by one of his 380-pound white tigers during a 'Siegfried & Roy' show at the Mirage in 2003. He is still in rehabilitation, he told the Las Vegas Sun earlier this month, and suffers partial paralysis after being attacked by Montecore, the white tiger he still visits, allegedly in ill-fitting clothes."--CourtTV.com, Oct. 26

What Would We Do Without Teachers?
"Teacher: Reading Leads to Learning"--headline, Billings (Mont.) Gazette, Oct. 25

What Would Surfers Do Without California Towns?
"Never Surf a Tsunami, California Town Says"--headline, Reuters, Oct. 28

You Don't Say
"Sex is a normal, healthy part of life, but it may become a problem when it interferes with your daily routine."--HealthDayNews, Oct. 28

Bottom Story of the Day
"Frost Kills Tomatoes, Flowers in Area"--headline, Toledo Blade, Oct. 31

Monsters Have Rights Too
It's Halloween, and the New York Times reports that some people are feeling put upon:

In Westchester County, high-risk sex offenders on probation will be required to attend a four-hour educational program on Halloween night. In New Jersey, state officials are instructing paroled sex criminals not to answer their doors if trick-or-treaters come knocking. And in counties throughout Texas, parolees with child contact restrictions are being told to stay away from Halloween activities, even family gatherings.

All across the country this year, local and state authorities are placing registered offenders under one-night curfews or other restrictions out of fear that in only a few days, costumed children asking for candy will be arriving on their doorsteps.

Is this unreasonable? The ACLU thinks so:

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the new initiatives were a "headline-grabbing response to a serious public health and safety issue" and failed to differentiate between sex offenders whose crimes were against adults and those who focused on children.

Yeah, so your daughter's going trick-or-treating and the guy down the street's a rapist. No big whoop--after all, he's only ever been convicted for raping adults! Oh well, we guess the ACLU deserves credit for doing its part to help make Halloween scary.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Segal, Brent Silver, Nathan Wirtschafter, Paul Dyck, Mike Cherepov, Ruth Papazian, Tom Linehan, William Schultz, Vincent Flynn, Richard Belzer, Darren Gold, Don Burton, Dave Tinkle, Charles Coffin, Steve Conklin, Don Mau, John Schroeder, Andrew Robinson, Brian Blum, Leonora LaMantia, Mark Fisher, Ben Marsh, C.E. Dobkin and John Murray. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Christopher Hitchens: The Plame kerfuffle has made hypocrites of just about everyone.
• John Fund: The Miers denouement shows the power of the new media.
• Richard Miniter: The myth of "suitcase nukes."