Leah has been live-blogging the Alito hearings; this is her record of the proceedings.

A majority of Americans don’t want a Supreme Court that will make a radical turn to the right, as evidenced by the astonishing lack of popularity for the Republicans did in the Schiavo case, and by the 56% of Americans for whom even the threat of a terrorist attack is not enough to persuade them to give up their constitutional rights, both positions, remember, came as total surprises to the SCLM, many of whom are still predicting that liberals will be the losers on the NSA issue, and that Abramoff is a bipartisan scandal….