News Hounds

Andrew Napolitano - Fox's Shameless, Pro-Alito, In-House GOP Pimp

Samuel A. Alito can't have a better friend or advocate in the media that his longtime buddy and former classmate, Fox News "Senior Judicial Analyst," Andrew Napolitano. The friendship between the two is paying off in ways that money can't buy. Napolitano is a one-man Alito booster, cheerleader, and spinmeister and today (January 10, 2005) he fed Fox's audience the latest GOP lie regarding Alito's membership in the reactionary Princeton alumni group, Conservative Alumni of Princeton (CAP).

As People for the American Way (PFAW) says, CAP was "overtly hostile to Princeton's efforts to increase the numbers of women and students of color on campus" and people were "appalled that Alito would brag about his membership in such an organization." It maintains that CAP's "inflammatory rhetoric and divisive tactics were so reprehensible that it was condemned in a report of a special alumni affairs committee of the university's Board of Trustees. The report was co-authored by alumnus and now-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and endorsed by the full board." (Emphasis added.)

PFAW says that in an effort to mitigate Alito's involvement in CAP, "Alito's surrogates have apparently come up with a new excuse: Alito joined CAP to protest Princeton's treatment of ROTC during the Vietnam war. Senate staffers have told reporters that Alito might use the ROTC explanation" in an attempt "to wrap his membership in CAP in the flag and the military."

Well, well. What could be handier than having one of Alito's oldest friends, Napolitano, ready and waiting with a captive audience in the wings, to do just that in order to help poor "Sam"?

Here's what Napolitano said today:

CAP went out of business in l986 or l987 when the presidency of Princeton changed from someone who was hard left to much more moderate. But the Democrats are painting CAP with a brush that it doesn't deserve. Its principle thrust in the late 70s and early 80s, in addition to maintaining the number of male undergraduates, was to make sure that ROTC stayed on campus. Sam and I were classmates. In our senior year, as members of ROTC, we had to leave Princeton and go to a state school because radicals at Princeton had firebombed the ROTC offices and rather than building them new offices, the university just let them leave and stay off campus.

Comment: I contend that due to his close friendship with "Sam," Napolitano should be barred from commenting on the confirmation hearings or on the Supreme Court should Alito be confirmed, and this is precisely why. He is advocating on behalf of Alito and can no longer be seen as an objective "analyst," worthy of the public's trust.