QUICK UPDATE: Day 4.

Morning session has begun, and I’m watching and noting. I am also dealing with a sick dog, so some of my attention has been distracted.

In summary - mostly Democrats have used their time, Republicans are holding back, reserving their time for later, or perhaps the end. There will be an executive session at some point before lunch, and the afternoon will be taken up with witness panels for and against.

Let me emphasize to all of you that Democrats have done a fine job, again, today, one that no one our side should be muttering about.

I have been disappointed to see less than universal appreciation of this fact on our side of the blogisphere.

Jeralyn Merritt, for instance, of whom I am a major fan, standing in for Eric Alterman at Altercation, concurs, based on her own, admittedly partial viewings of the hearings, with the Walter Shapiro take in Salon that I blasted yesterday She faults Democrats with bloviating and approves Shapiro’s characterization of their “artless” questioning.

They spent countless minutes spouting off their views, followed by close-ended questions he could answer or refuse to answer in a sentence or two

My take on Alito is that one of his most effective slip-sliding-away techniques has been the use of long, case law detail-laden, often winding answers that don’t really engage the clear intent of the question asked.

It was Republicans who asked those silly single sentence broad questions, like, “Do you believe in the doctrine of separation of powers.” To which Alito was able to answer, with reverential feeling, that yes, he does, deeply belive in it. Which I’m sure is true. I”m sure that Bush and Cheney could and would say the same thing, and mean it, or at least think that they mean it. However, saying that does not seem to affect their embrace of the “unitary theory of the presidency,” of which Judge Alito has been a major advocate, and which clearly undermines the conception of the separation of powers doctrine as its been understood for some 200 years or so.

Read the whole post, though, because Jeralyn is always worth reading, and be sure to follow her links to Will Bunch at Attywood, who has some fascinating material which undermines Alito’s use of his attitude about ROTC to explain why he may have joined CAP. In case you have already read Altercation, and didn’t click the Attywood link, can do so here

Other critics are upset that the Democrats haven’t been tougher, haven’t gone at Alito with outrage, or with some notion of a Perry Mason style of questioning that would have succeeded in piercing Alito’s smooth, well prepared refusal to engage in an actual dialogue that might force him to acknowledge his clear history as a proponent of Federalist Society jurisprudence, or somehow or other break him. Such critics insist that Democrats have been ruled by fear.

I have seen none of that myself. No fear, certainly. This hearing is not an adversarial event. If Democrats have gone out of their way , at various points, to emphasize respect and comity, it has usually been as an answer to the constant din set up by Republicans that Democrats are being disrespectful meanies who are engaged in a massive smear campaign.

Another observation as of this morning - the conventional wisdom is already cast in stone - feckless, foolish Dems, Alito a shoe-in.

The media coverage of the hearings has been as bad as anything I’ve seen since the coverage of Al Gore in the 2000 campaign. Which is to say, it’s been outrageous. Atrios, in linking to Crooks and Liar’s post about Brian Williams’ nastiness about Joe Biden, shared in the early morning hours with Don Imus, seems to assume that Williams’ characterization of Biden was accurate, or at least might have been.

It wasn’t, and it isn’t.

What it was is the equivalent of Williams’ obsession with Al Gore’s wardrobe in 2000. Total and complete nonsense, but effective in undermining any notion that what was at stake in that election, and continues to be at stake in the elevation of anyone to the Supreme Court, actually matters to the way most Americans live their lives. Clearly, it doesn’t matter to how Brian Williams will live his, as it doesn’t, to be frank, to most multi-millionares; no ten year old daughter of Brian Williams is ever likely to be strip-searched, is she?

This morning Democrats were especially well focused, in particular on trying to get Alito into a genuine substantive conversation that squares his long history of espousing a specific extremely conservative, even radical, set of legal theories with his endorsement during the hearings of broad principles which his own rulings, associations and writings have been focused on undermining in one way or another.

As he has done through-out the hearings, Alito used boilerplate verbiage, combined with copious references to case law that don’t really do any squaring of anything.

I’ll be back at the lunch break with more, I hope, depending on how my 14 year old canine love fares during the day.