CBS evening news is determined to represent Judge Alito as a winner. Jan Crawford Greenburg said, "The fight was out of the room today" -- which wasn't my impression but was the CBS summing-up re Alito's chances of being confirmed without a filibuster. Indeed, Bob Schieffer summed up by saying (accurately) that all the GOP members were still with Alito, and added that the "only question" was how many Dems would join with them.

Meanwhile, the cameras also showed a group of CHEERING SUPPORTERS IN MATCHING RED T-SHIRTS WITH PREPARED PLACARDS TO WAVE, lining up to applaud Alito. And Alito's wife, who as said "left the room in tears yesterday," was said to have HER OWN SUPPORTERS.

The instant flashback here is of that group of Republican staffers and aides etc who thronged the vote-counting room in Florida in 2000, waving their fists and shouting in a Mao-style spontaneous exercise of their First Amendment right to get upset. Who were these cheering Alito fans and supporters? Who organized them? Who provided the matching Alito t-shirts and the prepared signs to wave? Does this group think it constitutional to execute someone who is innocent?

Unfortunately, the evening television news programs typically don't report unless they get some strong reinforcement from the Washington Post. And the Post did very little about Alito. Since Susan Schmidt did an actual reporting job regarding the Jack Abramoff scandals, the inner-circle political reporters at the Post are pretty much relying on the Abramoff series of stories to fill their actual-reporting space. I am interested in that terrorism case that Alito prosecuted, back when he was a US attorney in New Jersey, prior to being leapfrogged to a position as Appeals Court judge by George H. W. Bush.