Alito emerges unscathed from grueling hearings

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There were no smackdowns yesterday. No broken gavels. No one walked out in tears.

After 18 hours of testimony and 700 questions, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. kept his Supreme Court nomination on track despite the efforts of Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to flap the unflappable jurist from New Jersey.

"I regard him as the most qualified judge" to join the Supreme Court, said 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Senior Judge Leonard Garth, who recalled taking walks in New Jersey years ago with his former clerk to grab some peanuts and coffee in the afternoon.

They often wound up at a store called Ward's, Judge Garth recalled, where a special blend of java was named for the Supreme Court nominee: "Judge Alito's Bold Justice Blend."

Laughter rippled through the hearing room. And it was like Evian in the desert.

Later in the afternoon, after lunch, witness after witness confirmed what viewers already knew: the soft-spoken, self-effacing scholarly Judge Alito is also a man of the highest integrity. A family man, beloved and respected by his colleagues. Teflon.

But the blue-state senators, especially Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, still weren't convinced. He began the hearing, hands shaking and looking downright irritated that his efforts to derail the nomination had failed.

In a bid to portray Judge Alito as anti-homosexual and anti-women, Mr. Kennedy tried to tie the nominee to the conservative Concerned Alumni of Princeton, but the documents he requested were reviewed by staffers until 2 a.m. yesterday and turned up nothing.

While the legislators behaved at times as if waiting for their nightly news sound bite, Judge Alito remained unfazed.

While the dark forces of the Senate aides behind the panel BlackBerried away, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch's high-pitched voice squeaked to new "how dare they" heights.