Again and again during the Alito hearings, senators have given their game away - perhaps most forthrightly Chuck Schumer of New York: "Are you in Justice (Sandra) O'Connor's mold or, as the president has vowed, are you in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas?" And: "Judge Alito certainly gives the impression of being a meticulous legal navigator. But in the end, he always seems to chart a rightward course."

As with Roberts, the blustering left barely dinged Judge Alito - on abortion, on his membership in a Princeton alumni group, on the environment, on the disabled, on health, on rights imagined or real. Exasperated liberal senators tried to unmask him as a conservative ideologue, but could not - to get him to take sides in future disputes, but he would not. He left the most devout leftist senators not impressed by his temperament and erudition, but visibly angered by his unflappability and smooth control.

And the most memorable moment in the Alito hearings is not the trouble into which he plunged when he opened his mouth, but his wife Martha-Ann driven to tears by the mean-spiritedness that these days so infuses the American left.

In implied support of Judges Roberts and Alito, these quotes:

Law writer Stuart Taylor: "(If Democrats) ever succeed in forcing nominees to detail their views, it will not only corrupt the integrity and independence of new justices. It will also, perhaps, open the way for presidents to pack the court with people who have virtually pledged their votes on a long list of issues."

Harvard professor Charles Fried: "I wonder whether the critics are not really complaining that (nominees should) start with a result - their result - and then wrestle the law around until it fitted."

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham: "If we insist that a nominee  'adopt my value system,' we're doing a great disservice to the judiciary."

Justices Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer - the last two nominees confirmed before Judge Roberts, and both very liberal - were elevated to their seats on the court by votes of 96-3 and 87-9 respectively. The vote of the full Senate on Judge Alito will demonstrate the extent to which adamant Senate leftists will override a nominee's merits or qualifications, and - regarding the Constitution and the law - still discriminate against his abiding principles and their derivative points of view.