Monday, January 09, 2006

Alito Goes a Long Way: But he's still no John Roberts:

Roberts spoke without notes on his opening day and rocked. Alito speaks from prepared comments and somehow appears to be working off a first draft. Roberts came off as simply too "nice" to have written all those blistering, hateful memos in the '80s. Alito delivers his two "jokes" as though he's docking someone's allowance. It doesn't help, either, that his facial expression throughout the afternoon is one of ferocious, determined impassivity. Unlike Roberts, who'd mastered the boyish "I'm listening" head tilt or the impish "Hey, you're funny!" acknowledgment of every senatorial joke, Alito keeps his eyes fixed somewhere on the middle distance; like while all this is happening around him, he is really very busy recalling a rather violent segment about mating lemurs on Animal Planet.