Such a Masterful PR Job Gone To Waste

The Post has an interesting article on how the GOP handily outplayed the Democrats in portraying Alito as a good guy, something that I think we can all agree on. The Democrats didn't get nearly as much on him as they could have, given some of his prior rulings and associations, and the media didn't pick up much of what the Dems did give.

How funny is it, then, that the first thing Alito does--literally hours into the job--is break with the other conservative judges in granting a stay of execution?

Now, I'm not exactly jumping on board the Alito ship, as I'm certain he will do many, many conservative things that I disagree with both politically and as a matter of jurisprudence, but this strikes me as amusing. Maybe he's just showing that nobody "owns" him, and picking a fairly inconsequential case to do so (the guy gets a stay to argue that lethal injection is "cruel and unusual punishment"; good luck with that one). Either way, even the mere hint of another Souter makes me giddy. I'm sure it'll fade by tomorrow when Alito writes an opinion restricting the vote to white, land-owning males or something.