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Since January 15th in 2006 fell on a Sunday, all the news was looking back at the week prior.
And the week began on Capitol Hill with confirmation hearings. Judge Sam Alito was up for a Supreme Court seat, facing the grilling that was more ritual than substantive. Still, a lot centered around Alit’s position on Roe V. Wade, a hot button topic in 2006 as it is almost every year. The hearings got testy – Alito’s positions made for speculation and even fodder for standup comedy routines. But Sam Alito would eventually prevail and SCOTUS would have a new member after a vote of 58-42 confirmed Alito’s appointment.
And with the current climate of domestic terrorism prevailing, the issue of Domestic Spying became a hot button topic, this week in 2006. The Bush Administration had secretly implemented a domestic spying program following the September 11th 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Although it was instituted as a preventative from having a repeat performance of the bombings, it nonetheless drew fire from critics who felt it was too much and was, in fact unconstitutional. It lead to a lawsuit against the United States over the issue of domestic spying.
The lawsuit, filed January 17 by civil rights organizations, lawyers, journalists and educators, “challenges the constitutionality of a secret government program to intercept vast quantities of the international telephone and Internet communications of innocent Americans without court approval.”
The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, based in Detroit. Plaintiffs included branches of the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Washington and Detroit branches of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Greenpeace. It would eventually be overturned, but not until August.
And what was it like for a blue Candidate to win election for Governor in a predominately Red State? Ask Virginia Governor Mark Warner, a Democrat, who won a slim majority of votes in the previous Gubernatorial election. He was now facing a re-election campaign and speculation was rife whether Warner could work the same magic twice.
Along with the continuing Alito hearings, a lot more for this week ending January 15, 2006 by way of ABC News This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
