release

The Alito hearings took a particularly nasty turn this week when Senator Kennedy used his 30 minutes of questioning time to attack the nominee for the positions taken by a group - Concerned Alumni of Princeton - he once belonged to. No one, including Senator Kennedy, believes that Judge Alito had anything to do with these position statements himself, and no one can find any evidence to counter Judge Alito’s current statements that he does not support, nor would he ever have supported, CAP’s positions on race, gender, and sexuality. No one has been able to show Alito himself to possess even a hint of bigotry, and I doubt that even Senator Kennedy believes it to be there.

Yet, rather than judge the individual for his own words and deeds, for who he is and what he expressly endorses, Senator Kennedy and some of his colleagues have chosen to judge the man by the acts of the group. In the American legal tradition, guilt by association is something we have chosen to reject. Conspiracy, the crime that comes closest, requires a positive act or agreement by the individual to participate in some illicit act of the group’s imagining. So why, besides the shameful and obvious answer, does Senator Kennedy resort to it now?

The problem with guilt by association is that it’s inherently unfair. What would happen if we turned the tables on the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts?

• In 1964, members of the Democratic Party, in particular its members in the United States Senate, opposed passage of the Civil Rights Act. Kennedy was then a member of the Democratic Party and knew of those efforts to oppose the CRA. Despite that, Kennedy has remained a member of the Democratic Party, and has made several public statements since then boasting of his affiliation with the group even today.
• In 1969, with full knowledge of the efforts of Senate Democrats to stop the passage of the CRA, Kennedy sought and gained entry into the United States Senate, where he aligned himself with the Democratic Caucus. He has never disavowed his affiliation with the U.S. Senate, with the Democratic Party, or with the Democratic Caucus.
• Kennedy has been refused the right to travel by air because his name appears on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Terror Watch list. Kennedy is Irish and hails from Boston, a hotbed of support for the terrorist wing of the Irish Republican Army.
• Kennedy, a Roman Catholic and Boston native, attends services and grew up in the Archdiocese of Boston, recently notorious for allegations of a decades-long history of child abuse. Kennedy has not renounced his membership in the Church and his official Senate biography boasts of his continued affiliation.
• In 2001, Kennedy used his influence in the Senate to collaborate with President Bush on a major education reform initiative known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. President Bush is an outspoken advocate of school vouchers, which use public funds to subsidize private and religious education of children.
• Kennedy is a known associate and supporter of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who has reportedly accepted almost $66,000 in donations from clients of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff from 2001 through 2004.

See how easy and unfair it is to tar a public figure by association? A clever attacker can make even the most gentle of souls look like a bigot, a hypocrite, a criminal or worse, regardless of the truth. Senator Kennedy has dishonored himself and the Senate by adopting such tactics in confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court justice. For that, Senator Kennedy should be ashamed.