It’s been less than 24 hours since the Alito nomination has broke. How is that everybody is absolutely sure of who Alito is, what he represents, what his views are on critical issues of judicial philosophy, etc. etc.? There simply isn’t any way that the entire blogosphere could have come to an informed opinion on this in the space of a few hours!
What are the implications of the universal blogger habit of immediately having hard-and-fast opinions on stories like this? How does it affect judicial nominations specifically? Those are some of the questions I explore over at The Debate Link.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.