Well Qualified

The lefty special interest groups won't like this:

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito received an unanimous well- qualified rating from the American Bar Association on Wednesday, giving his nomination momentum as the Senate prepares for confirmation hearings next week.

The rating came after a vote of the ABA federal judiciary committee and was delivered in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will launch Alito's confirmation hearings on Monday. Alito will face almost an hour of questioning from each of the 18 senators on the committee.

"As a result of our investigation, the committee is of the unanimous opinion that Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. is well-qualified for appointment as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court," said Stephen L. Tober, chairman of the ABA panel.

The ABA rating - the highest - is the same that Alito received back in when President Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, nominated him to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

They don't just throw these things around. The ABA goes through a pretty extensive process to come up with their ratings.

The ABA ratings are well-qualified, qualified and not qualified. The committee's members interview hundreds of colleagues - confidentially - and scours pages of a nominee's writings before coming up with the rating.

Of course, this rating will have no effect on the lefty groups that have already lined up to oppose Alito. During the Clinton years these same groups insisted on the ABA rating as being some sort of gold standard which could not be violated when the GOP opposed Clinton nominees. I'm sure they'll look at things differently now.