J$P Instant Transcript! Sam Alito was in a Princeton club that is subject of some controversy. The Judge reveals he was in it too--in fact, he was the President!

From The Big Story, January 9 2006:

JOHN GIBSON [FOX NEWS]: Joining us now with his take on day one of the Alito confirmation hearings, our own Judge, Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano. I heard you start to laugh because I was referring to you.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO [FOX NEWS SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST]: That was very gracious of you. I know Sam Alito since we were freshmen in college together. And I think he will be confirmed, and should be confirmed, and I do disagree with him on a couple of things. But put aside my disagreements. We heard from each of the members of the Judiciary Committee today. They staked out their territory. One says abortion is murder. The other says abortion is an absolute right because it comes from the right to privacy. They're going to try and push him on this. And it's key that you asked General Ashcroft about the right to privacy, because unfortunately for Judge Alito, the NSA spying issue is now on the table. And so the right to privacy implicates both: can we spy on Americans without a search warrant, and do women have the right to choose an abortion. So the right to privacy is key, and I suggest that's where Sen Specter, the Chairman of the committee, will get to in about his second or third question tomorrow.

GIBSON: Is there a right to privacy for the Commander in Chief to order certain protective actions of the country without somebody peeking over his shoulder?

NAPOLITANO: Yeah that's a question he doesn't want to answer tomorrow, John, because he may very well have to rule on that, and he doesn't want to appear predisposed in one way or another.

GIBSON: All right, now you have said many times that Sam Alito is an acquaintance of yours over many years.

NAPOLITANO: Right.

GIBSON: He is being attacked now, one of the things he is being attacked by a couple of the liberal senators, I think Teddy Kennedy is one of them, is for his membership or participation in a club at Princeton you were the President of for a while.

NAPOLITANO: I was an officer of an organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton. And this was an alumni organization that sought to involve the opinion of alumni in the governance of Princeton more than was being respected by the administration. It also sought to make sure that the Reserve Officer Training Corps, commonly known as ROTC, stayed on the Princeton campus. It had been kicked off the Princeton campus because students firebombed the ROTC building, the students weren't punished, and the university let the military go. It took many years of politicking by Concerned Alumni of Princeton--the organization, and people in the organization--to get ROTC back on campus. When we were undergraduates, both Sam and I were in ROTC.

GIBSON: Well this is being brandished as a sign of his extreme conservatism, and something some senators seem to want to question him about.

NAPOLITANO: You know, it was a mainstream conservative organization. And some of the people that wrote for the magazine and that edited the magazine that Concerned Alumni of Princeton printed, are prominent today. Like our own David Asman, like Laura Ingraham, like Terry Eastland, who is the publisher of the Weekly Standard. It was an aggressive organization, but by today's standards perfectly mainstream, perfectly mainstream conservative.

GIBSON: Do you sense, is there a chance, in the horse race here, that Alito would not be confirmed?

NAPOLITANO: I don't think so, and I don't think the Democrats will vote to filibuster because they don't have the votes. I mean today, Sen Byrd from West Virginia, a Democrat, and Sen Nelson from Nebraska, a Democrat, both said he's entitled to an up-or-down vote. They need every Democrat in lockstep to filibuster, and they don't have it.

GIBSON: Judge Andrew Napolitano. Judge, thank you.