Data Does Sammy

The population of the United States is 28% Roman Catholic and close to 50% male. One can assume, rightly or not, that approximatly 14% of the adult population is composed of male Roman Catholics. The overall population is 75% white. While the Roman Catholic church in the US is less white than much of the population, I'll use the simple method of applying that proportion. So by my rough estimation 10.5% of the population is composed of white Roman Catholic men.

At present 44.4% of the members of the Supreme Court are white Roman Catholic men (Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas) . If Mr. Alito is confirmed, 55.5% of the members of the court will be white Roman Catholic men.

What's up with that? Did the evangelicals suddenly become admirers of what an ancestor called papists?

I'm not even going to rant yet. I'm sorry that he's such an ass. I'm sorry that Mr. Bush treated Ms. Miers so shabbily. He used her then tossed her aside. I'm sorry Mr. Bush is such an ass. I'm sorry that the only woman/minority he could find for the court was totally unqualified. But I'm glad that he drew the line clearly.

Someone I know today longed for vigilante crucifixions. But there may be no need. With Mr. Alito on the court, we can all have our own personal machine gun collections.

Jeffrey Rosen, TNR, quoted by Real Clear Politics: What should be far more troubling to Senate Democrats, however, is Alito's 1996 dissent from a decision upholding the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting the possession of machine guns. Applying the logic of the Constitution in Exile for all it's worth, Alito insisted that the private possession of machine guns was not an economic activity, and there was no empirical evidence that private gun possession increased violent crime in a way that substantially affected commerce--therefore, Congress has no right to regulate it. Alito's colleagues criticized him for requiring "Congress or the Executive to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute." His lack of deference to Congress is unsettling......