Wrapping Sam Alito in a Tinfoil CAP

So, everybody’s been trying to figure out what the deal is with Samuel Alito and this evil thing called the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP).

As far as I can figure, the Concerned Alumni of Princeton grew out of Princeton’s ROTC program. A group of white, Christian, male, elitist bigots apparently had a problem with the cancellation of the ROTC program, and came together in an unusual effort to rescue something that was very important to them.

And the cancellation of the ROTC program apparently came at a time when Sam Alito was a member of the ROTC program. Therefore, Sam is likely among the founding members of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton.

Whether or not this is the case, Sam is obviously lying his fucking ass off. But he’s not a very good liar. One simply does not forget why something like the Concerned Alumni of Princeton would appear on a big-time job application. And the “I don’t recall” routine rings a little too familiar.

In reality, Sam included his Concerned Alumni of Princeton membership on his little 1985 job application because he believed somebody in the Reagan administration would be impressed by it. It’s a flag. It may even be a secret society kind of deal -- a kind of deal which might garner preferential treatment from fellow elitists -- a kind of deal which might require a lapse in memory if one was ever to be asked about it under oath.

So, here’s the question: Whom was Sam trying to flag back in 1985?

Here’s another question: Who within the current Bush administration (1) might have similar secret society credentials and (2) would have something to gain from the appointment of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court? In other words, for whom does Sam really work?

Are there any old-school Princeton, ROTC, secret society types hanging around the White House these days? And were any of them hanging around the White House back in 1985? And would any of them benefit from the Supreme Court ascension of a guy who tends to defend illegal executive branch domestic spy programs?

even after the ROTC returned to Princeton? He can't remember my ass.

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=20029

For Immediate Release: 11/18/2005
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People For the American Way has requested access to the records of Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) stored at the Library of Congress in the archive of former National Review publisher William Rusher. The records should shed more light on the activities and ideology of the highly controversial organization and could sharpen questions about why Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito touted his membership in the group when applying for a promotion to a high level job in the Reagan Justice Department. The records are held at the Library of Congress under a restriction requiring Rusher’s approval to review the documents.

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CAP supported a quota system to ensure that the vast majority of students would continue to be men. Asa Bushnell, then chairman of CAP, told the New York Times in 1974 that “Many Princeton graduates are unhappy over the fact that the administration has seen fit to abrogate the virtual guarantee that 800 would continue to be the number of males in each freshman class.”5

CAP opposed affirmative action for women and minorities but supported affirmative action for athletes and the children of alumni.6 For instance, CAP principal John Thatcher argued in 1974 that “Academic weakness below the projected graduating level, or character defect, should be the only grounds for rejecting athletes.”7

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Prospect magazine, published by CAP, specialized in reactionary rhetoric and ad hominem attacks. Feminists were labeled “frumps and freaks” and “a 1983 item on sexual harassment was illustrated with a female student sunning herself in a bikini.”8 In 1983, a column in the Prospect had the following to say about international students at Princeton: “I suppose the new students I am observing all had the required SAT scores to get into Princeton, but I really do not believe it for a minute. They are here on the basis of a theory.”9 In 1984 – the year before Alito touted his CAP membership in his job application letter – “the magazine observed the death of a female coal miner who won her job through a discrimination suit and concluded, ‘Sally Frank, take note.’” 10 Sally Frank was a Princeton student who took legal action to open the doors of exclusive, all-male eating clubs at the university to women.

http://www.claremont.org/about/staff/rusher.html

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William A. Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute. He served as publisher of National Review magazine from 1957 to 1988. A veteran spokesman for the conservative viewpoint on public issues, Rusher has become known across the United States in the past forty years. He has been a familiar television and radio personality. A newspaper columnist since 1973, his syndicated weekly "The Conservative Advocate" appears in newspapers all over the United States. A professional lecturer and prolific author, with five hardcover books and numerous magazine articles. His 1975 book, The Making of the New Majority Party, sold over a quarter of a million copies in hardcover and paperback, and his 1984 book, The Rise of the Right appeared in expanded form in a trade paperback edition.

Rusher has also been an influential political activist, and was one of the three men who in 1961 launched the draft of Barry Goldwater for the 1964 Republican nomination—a drive that captured and transformed the Republican Party, and continued under Ronald Reagan. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, served in the Air Force in India in World War II, and was an associate for seven years at a large Wall Street law firm. In 1956 and 1957 he was associate counsel to the U.S. Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee before joining National Review.


In 1989 Mr. Rusher became a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute, for which he advises and writes from his home in San Francisco, in addition to continuing his regular schedule of columns. Mr. Rusher also remains a member of the Board of Advisors of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs, a member of the board of directors of National Review Inc., and chairman of the board of advisors of the Media Research Center.

interview with Rusher
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Rusher/rusher-con0.html.

the pharmaceutical industry, that would be very nice. Rummy cashed in at that time.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/11/22/opinion/13901.shtml

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Or, it should have been. At the very least, Judge Alito will have to explain to the Senate Judiciary Committee why he paid dues to an outfit whose modus operandi was deceit and dirty tricks. He will have to explain how he permitted himself to belong to an organization that was overtly racist and sexist for its entire 14-year existence ­— at times passionately so, too.

Even today, they lie. The Daily Princetonian reported Friday that CAP's longtime board member Andrew Napolitano '72 denies that the group opposed coeducation! This is like denying that the Catholic Church opposed abortion. Opposition to the presence of women at Princeton was CAP's central precept. Fortunately, your reporter quoted co-founder Shelby Cullom Davis '30 writing in Prospect, CAP's member magazine, in 1973, that he could not "envisage" a future student body of 40 percent women and minorities. More important, according to a 1977 New Yorker article, the group used the same language in its fund raising.

snip

CAP's nemesis was President William G. Bowen GS '58 — he was not an alumnus of the undergraduate school, though he had obtained his Ph.D. at Princeton and been a star faculty member for 17 years. CAP fought a guerilla war to undermine his ability to lead the university.

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In proof of the fact that CAP had no program other than harassment, it never brought its complaints to Nassau Hall. It refused to meet with President Bowen anywhere other than Bern, Switzerland, where Davis served as Ambassador. This, even though its other principal, Asa Bushnell '21, lived 400 yards from Nassau Hall.


more

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/11/18/news/13876.shtml?type=printable

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The only CAP member who could be reached by The Daily Princetonian, Alito supporter and former New Jersey Superior Court judge Andrew Napolitano '72, defended the group, saying that there is "absolutely no way" it sought to protest coeducation.

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But Marsha Levy-Warren '73, who was a member of the University's first coeducational class and student government vice president, remembers things differently. In an interview Thursday evening, she recalled Alito, Napolitano and T. Harding Jones '72, another CAP member, as "part of a group of extremely conservative undergraduates."

Though Levy-Warren did not recall Alito being involved with CAP as an undergraduate, she said the group "stated explicitly that they were not in favor of coeducation and that they weren't in favor of affirmative action. Implicitly, they were opposed to any form of diversity on campus."

more - v. good article

"Morgan, this crop stuff, it's about a bunch of nerds who never
had a girlfriend in their lives. They're like 30 and they work up
little codes together and they…analyze Greek mythology and make up
secret societies where other guys who never had girlfriends before can join in.
They do stupid crap like this to feel special. It's a scam.
Nerds were doing it 25 years ago, new nerds are doin' it again."

...from the movie Signs

In reality, it's so dangerous that John Kerry is too afraid to talk about it.