It was bound to end.

Such a lovely October, savoring the pleasing spectacle of opponents forming a circular firing squad (they must have stolen our playbook). But the calendar's turned, Harriet Miers is gone -- though her blog lives on -- and Sam Alito has a lot of our clients reaching for their e-mail blasts.

As usual, Moving Ideas is the card catalogue to the progressive library of Supreme Court nominee resources. While you'd expect all the chatter to be about those evangelical bogeymen abortion and gays, Alito's paper trail appears to show ruthless and pervasive hostility towards folks without power or means -- the type to get a case turning on the principle that the law in its majesty forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under a bridge, and find nuanced constitutional fault with the notion that the rich can be forbidden from sleeping under a bridge.

Minorities, workers, women, AIDS victims ... show me a progressive nonprofit constituency, and I'll show you someone Alito's turned a deaf ear to. Corporate America, needless to say, couldn't be happier with this upstanding team player, hungering as it perpetually is to bleed another ounce of primitive accumulation from the lacerations of what scant social welfare remains and the plunder of some new green space level enough to suit a parking lot.

The genuinely fascinating discovery of the young Alito's interest in privacy matters does little to alter this picture, and indeed may serve to cloud it as the well-worn steps of the abortion ballet are trod once again in the chambers of the Judiciary Committee. The powerful have little fundamental interest in abortion -- indeed, they don't mind having it handy for themselves. They are likewise little tormented by the prospect of same-sexers finding erotic satisfaction, and likewise (Mr. Vice President, we're looking at you) liable to want it available for them and theirs.  The same goes for most of what fires up the holy rollers.

But they are keenly committed to degrading workers' protection, eviscerating ecological safeguards, and confiscating the few coppers left to poor people. Alito's track record here is unambiguous, and merits the staunchest possible resistance whatever triangulations on Choice -- and his appellate vote on the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, if cast as a Supreme, would have reversed the decision -- he might manage. He may not be a bully like Scalia or a crackpot like Thomas. That only goes to show how deadly serious he is.