American Newsreel

Editorializes the San Jose Mercury News on Alito’s confirmation:

To no one’s surprise, the Senate has confirmed Samuel Alito Jr. to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was sworn in shortly after the partisan 58-42 vote.

A last-ditch attempt by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party to filibuster Alito’s nomination in the Senate failed miserably, as it should have. There was no overriding reason to use a filibuster against Alito.

Thanks to a group of seven Republican and seven Democratic senators, the Senate was persuaded not to use the filibuster against court nominees except in extreme cases. The agreement paved the way for a full Senate vote on several Appeals Court nominees and avoided a fight over the use of the filibuster itself.

Too often Democrats used the filibuster against lower court nominees. As a result, many Republican senators threatened to change the Senate rules to eliminate any filibusters on court nominees.

The agreement to use the filibuster sparingly was a sensible one. Unfortunately, 24 Democratic senators and one independent did not agree and voted to filibuster Alito. That was a misuse of the filibuster and a breech of the agreement to use the vote-delaying tactic only in extreme situations.

There is no doubt that Alito has been a conservative judge. But in his 15 years on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Philadelphia, he demonstrated a firm knowledge of constitutional law and was hardly an extremist.

From The Voice of America:

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court in a largely party-line vote. He is poised to become the 110th justice on the high court, succeeding Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Senator Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, announced the vote as he presided over the Senate.

STEVENS: “On this vote, the ayes are 58, the nays are 42. The president’s nomination of Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of New Jersey to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is confirmed.”

The vote fell generally along party lines, with all but one of the Senate’s majority Republicans voting in favor of Judge Samuel Alito. All but four of the Democrats voted against the nomination.

The lone Republican who opposed Alito was Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who is facing a tough reelection battle this year in the Democrat-leaning state.

The confirmation vote culminated weeks of often bitter, partisan debate over the nomination at the start of the mid-term election year.

From The Olympian in Olympia, Washington:

In a Hollywood museum specializing in erotica, there lies a grainy tape of a woman having sex with a man on a couch. The museum says it’s widely believed, though denied by her estate, that the woman is Marilyn Monroe, circa 1948.

Fast-forward some 60 years, past Rob Lowe and Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton. The latest celebrity sex tape contains 14 minutes of seriously hard-core action between actor Colin Farrell and a former Playboy Playmate, punctuated by dialogue such as: “Where’s the zoom on this?”

But like his predecessors in the genre, Farrell’s career is not likely to be harmed at all. In fact, it could even get bigger. It seems what we expect from our celebrities is radically different from what we expect from, say, our politicians. Or ourselves.

“The public is very forgiving,” says Kate White, editor-in-chief of Cosmpolitan. “And very intrigued. It’s not like, ’Oh no Colin, not you!’ ”

Well this ought to give the homophobes in the White House and Congress heartburn this morning.

Brokebrack Mountain, director Ang Lee’s story about two gay cowboys, leads the Oscar nominations.

This will, no doubt, result in the American Family Association and other gay-bashing conservative organizations calling for a boycott of the Oscar telecast.

Coretta Scott King, window of Dr. Martin Luther King, is dead at 78.

Exxon capped a record year with a quarterly profit of $10 billion (yes, that billion with a “b”).

Let’s see. Mr. and Mrs. America need a second mortgage to pay for a tank of gas and big oil keeps raking in more and more big bucks. An oil man is in the White House.

You don’t need a doctorate in economics to see the truth here.

From Reuters:

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, on Monday reported a quarterly profit of more than $10 billion, capping a record year dominated by a surge oil and gas prices.

The results pushed up Exxon’s profit for the year to a staggering $36.13 billion — bigger than the economies of 125 of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank. Profit was up 42 percent from the record results of 2004.

The record earnings are expected to spur calls from politicians and consumer groups for special taxes on Big Oil, as U.S. drivers fume over high gasoline prices.