Only 1 Criterion?

Is a Supreme Court nominee's view of abortion the only thing that matters? That's certainly the impression I get from scanning the media on both sides of Alito. What about the questions of competence and relevant experience? Are they not more important than whether one is for or against abortion? After all, there are a heck of lot of issues that will or should be facing the Supreme Court over the next twenty or so years. Here are a few examples that I can think of at 7 in the morning of an unseasonably warm November day.

• Does the fact that Congress has not declared war in fifty years mean that they have abdicated their constitutional power to do so?
• Are Americans more evil than other nations? If not, why are so many of our fellow citizens in jail? Do we try to control people's lives too much? And why are the majority of the inmates black or Hispanic or from the inner city? Are they more prone to criminality than white people or those who live in the suburbs? Or, just maybe the odds are stacked against them from birth?
• Does allocating $200,000,000 to abstinence programs violate the separation of church and state? What about making these programs a condition of our foreign aid?
• Does a failure to prosecute higher-ups in the Abu Gharaib scandal give these people more rights than the soldiers who have been convicted?
• Does the Patriot Act abrogate any of our inherent rights to privacy?
• Does concocting false reasons for going to war violate any oaths of office?
• Is the government's failure to act in times of emergency a violation of people's rights?
• Should the executives of companies that fail to adequately fund their pension liabilities be held personally accountable? Or should the burden of paying the pensions fall to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (aka you and me)?
• Should those who send our soldiers into battle without proper equipment be prosecuted?
• Can a President be prosecuted for fiscal irresponsibility?
• Is there some minimal measure of competence that presidential nominees must meet?
• Should those who run our education system be brought up on charges of dereliction of duty?
• What are the legal ramifications of stem cell research, cloning, nanotechnology?
• Should the government pay people to fully convert to HDTV?
• Have we lived up to the treaties we have signed?

And the list could go on and on. We're living in parlous times. But we allow our leaders to spend their time focusing on the non-essential.