McCain Pal Sam Alito Wanted To Keep Michelle Obama Out of Princeton

Yesterday McCain stated his position on judges:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Tuesday he would appoint judges in the mold of conservatives John Roberts, Samuel Alito and former Chief Justice William Rehnquist if he were elected in November....

"I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist -- jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference," McCain told an audience at Wake Forest University.

In his speech, McCain slammed what he called "judicial activism" in court appointments, and criticized Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for voting against the nominations of Roberts and Alito.

Clearly McCain loves these right wing justices, including Sam Alito. Perhaps part of his 2008 campaign will be to knock Obama over the head with his opposition to Alito, who McCain says is of the "highest caliber".

But let's not forget who Sam Alito is. Before he became known as "Little Scalia" for his brain-dead conservatism, before he began his mission of destroying liberty and equality in this country, Alito was once a college student at Princeton.

Shortly after graduating Princeton, Alito proudly joined a little organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP). I'll let Hilzoy (who attended Princeton around the same time) explain what CAP was all about:

CAP was not about opposing affirmative action. It supported quotas that favored white men. CAP was about opposing the presence of women and minorities at Princeton. Period. Moreover, its tactics were despicable. In retrospect, it was one of the first instances of what has now become a familiar pattern: an extremely well-funded organization dedicated to spreading lies about some opponent in an effort to force that opponent to change course through the sheer volume of vitriol and harassment that a lot of money can buy. Samuel Alito pointed with pride to his membership in CAP in 1985.

Now why would Obama possibly have reason to oppose this guy? As it just so happens, Obama's future wife Michelle Obama graduated from Princeton in 1985. The exact same year that Alito championed his role in an organization designed to keep blacks and women (and especially black women) out of Princeton.

In other words, Alito is an out-and-out racist who wanted to keep people like Michelle Obama from attending his school, simply because of her sex and her gender. Alito has since claimed that he didn't know what the group was about, or joined it for other reasons, but you can't be in a group for 13 years and not know what their founding mission is. I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.

So long story short, I understand why Obama wouldn't want to put this guy onto the Supreme Court. It's bad enough that Michelle Obama had to face racism from her own white roommate while at college. Additional discrimination from CAP sympathizers like Alito, who despised her very presence at the school, must have made things even tougher.

But the story doesn't end there. Andrew Sullivan, who has his ear to the right wing grapevine, said this yesterday:

Wright is a grenade that will fizzle. The right will try other gambits - the Ayers crap and if that doesn't work, look for them to take aim at Obama's wife.

It's almost funny when you think about it. Why are Republicans so afraid of Michelle Obama? First Alito tries to keep her out of Princeton, now the GOP wants to smear her and slime her to keep from becoming First Lady.

Part of the reason, they will say, is because she wrote this in her Princeton thesis:

"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."

But if you know about CAP, if you know that Princeton didn't accept women until 1969, if you know that most blacks were excluded until the late 60s, and if you know that Michelle Obama's white roommate wanted to change rooms out of plain ol' racism, then her thesis makes total sense. If anything, she sounds quite dignified and intelligent while discussing her status as a second-class citizen on that campus.

Second, Republicans are mad that she said this a few months ago, while talking about the changing tide in American politics:

For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.

Sure, ripped out of context it sounds bad. In a politics where every phrase must be politically correct even when looked at in isolation, it was poorly phrased. But let's be honest -- has there really been a whole lot to be proud of the last 25 years? The 1992 election was cool, as was the 2006 election, but all the other ones involved Republicans winning one branch or another. Americans themselves have done plenty of great things, but that's not what Obama was referring to. American politics, honestly, has been in the crapper since the 1960s. Since the Civil Rights Act and Great Society we've been tumbling backwards, thanks to the near unbroken rule of Republican presidents and Republican congresses. I could list all the travesties, but you are living in it right now. Bush is the worst of the bunch, but he's the natural outcome of the divisive bottom barrel politics we've all become used to.

Barack Obama is riding this wave of change that could alter everything about politics in America. By next January we could have real majority control by real liberals and progressives, not the phony liberals and centrists and conservatives we've had for 30 years. The age of Lieberman and Clinton and Delay and Bush is coming to an end, and that's something we can all be proud of.

So really -- what is it about this woman that they don't like?