bizarrely, some have quibbled with my characterization of joe biden as a buffoon and a charlatan. just for the hell of it, i'm hooking you into the transcript of his "questioning" of samuel alito during the latter's confirmation hearings before the senate judiciary committee. (you'll find the biden bit toward the end of the first page; only kennedy was his senior on the minority.) in the course of a half hour he doesn't formulate a coherent question, just yaps with complete mindlessness.

also, notice that insofar as he's saying anything, it's a barrage of completely disingenuous diversions and disclaimers: you know judge i'm not saying you're not not not a man of integrity, but you know, i'm not not saying that either etc.what it amounts to is something like this: because i'm such an amazing and generous person, i'm going to assume you are a man of integrity, you monster. 

and all of it is, let's face it, embodied in the syntax of a moron.

ponder the fact that this is what he did with his one chance to assess alito's qualifications to sit for life on the supreme court. this is what he did rather than ask alito, well anything, but maybe: how do you read the second amendment? or: let's talk about separation of powers.

no one messes with joe. indeed no one with any sense gets anywhere near him. you know, it doesn't follow from the fact the you basically agree with someone's politics that they're smart or that they're not completely incoherent. there are not too many professional politicians who could stand up on a stage with sarah palin and be outclassed intellectually. biden, however, is one such person.

Judge, I'd like to say a few very brief things at the outset. I'm puzzled, and I suspect you may be puzzled, by some of the questions. I don't think anybody thinks you are a man lacking in integrity. I don't think anybody thinks that you are a person who's not independent.

I think that what people are wondering about and puzzled about is not whether you lack independence, but whether you independently conclude that the executive trumps the other two branches.

They wonder, when you -- granted, it's back in '85 or '84 when you wrote, "I do not question the attorney general should have this immunity as absolute immunity but, for tactical reasons," et cetera.

So people are puzzled -- at least some are puzzled. And so I don't want you to read any of this as -- at least from my perspective, as I've read it so far -- that people think that this is a bad guy.

BIDEN: I mean, what people are puzzled about with the recusal issue was, under oath you said, "I will recuse myself on anything relating to...," and then a case comes up. So they're looking for an explanation.

So it's not about whether you are profiting or whether you are, you know, all of this malarkey about whether you broke judicial ethics. It's, you know, a simple kind of thing. You under oath said: I promise if this ever comes up, I'll recuse myself. And then you gave an explanation. It slipped, you forgot, it had been years earlier, et cetera.

So don't read it as this is one of these things where we know where you are. The people I've spoken to on your court -- and it's my circuit -- have a very high regard for you. And I think you're a man of integrity. The question is, sometimes some of the things you have said and done puzzle -- at least, puzzle me.

And one of the things -- this is not part of a line of questioning I wanted to ask -- but I did ask you when you were kind enough to come to my office about the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Were you aware of some of the other things they were saying that had nothing to do with ROTC? Because there was a great deal of controversy.

I mean, I can remember -- I can remember this. My son was -- well, anyway, he ended up going to that other university, University of Pennsylvania.

But I remember at Princeton, I had spoken on campus in the early '70s. This was a big thing up at Princeton at the Woodrow Wilson School. And I remember -- I didn't remember Bill Frist, but I remember that there was this disavowing, that Bill Bradley, this great basketball star, and now United States senator, was disassociating himself with this outfit, that there was a magazine called Prospect. I remember the magazine.

And all I want to ask you is: Were you aware of the other things that this outfit was talking about? Were you aware of this controversy going on in...

ALITO: Senator, I don't believe that I was.

ALITO: And when it was mentioned that Senator Bradley had withdrawn from the magazine, that didn't ring any bells for me. I did not recall anything like that.

BIDEN: Well, it was a pretty outrageous group. I mean, I believe you that you were unaware of it. But here I was, University of Delaware graduate, a sitting United States senator, I was aware of it because I was up there on the campus. I mean, it was a big deal. It was a big deal, at least in our area of the Delaware Valley, if Princeton, Penn, the schools around there had this kind -- because the big thing was going on at Brown at the time as well.

And by the way, for the record, I know you know when you stated in your application that you are a member -- you said in '85, "I am a member" -- they had restored ROTC. ROTC was back on the campus.

But again, this is just by way of why some of us are puzzled. Because if I was aware of it, and I didn't even like Princeton...

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, I really didn't like Princeton. I was an Irish Catholic kid who thought it had not changed like you concluded it had.

I admit, one of my real dilemmas is I have two kids who went to Ivy League schools. I'm not sure my Grandfather Finnegan will ever forgive me for allowing that to happen.

But all kidding aside, I wasn't a big Princeton fan. And so maybe that is why I focused on it and no one else did. But I remember it at the time.