Administration attacks Alito story

Officials said the analysis unfairly portrayed the nominee as conservative.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is mounting an aggressive effort to counter a Knight Ridder story that described Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a committed judicial conservative.
The administration's response -- delivered separately Tuesday by the White House and the Justice Department -- reflects its determination to defend Alito and its sensitivity to the conservative label for him.
The attack came after Senate Democrats circulated Knight Ridder's assessment of Alito's judicial record for possible use against him at his confirmation hearings next month.
What analysis said
The 2,500-word Knight Ridder analysis, based on 311 opinions by Alito during his service on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, concluded that he "has worked quietly but resolutely" to advance his conservative philosophy on a host of legal issues.
"Although Alito's opinions are rarely written with obvious ideology, he's seldom sided with a criminal defendant, a foreign national facing deportation, an employee alleging discrimination or consumers suing big business," reporters Stephen Henderson and Howard Mintz wrote.
The reporters also concluded that Alito "rarely supports individual rights," shows "a strong deference to police authority" and is extremely skeptical about claims of racial discrimination. Henderson covers the Supreme Court for Knight Ridder. Mintz, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, a Knight Ridder paper, worked on the Alito project during a stint in Washington.
Administration critique
Administration officials said the story unfairly cast the Supreme Court nominee as a conservative ideologue.
"His 15-year record on the 3rd Circuit shows him to be a mainstream, fair, thorough judge," Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand said in a C-SPAN interview devoted to her critique of the Knight Ridder analysis.
Brand, whose duties include shepherding judicial nominations through the Senate, rejected the conservative label for Alito.
"The term conservative means different things to different people. A judge is supposed to apply the law, not make it," she said.
John Nowacki, senior counsel in the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs, also objected to the Knight Ridder analysis. In an e-mail to Henderson, Nowacki criticized attempts to discern a judicial philosophy by looking for trends in a judge's record.