I'm John Bachelor. I welcome John Malcolm, Vice President of the Edwin-Meese,

the Third Institute for the

Rule of Law at the Advancing American Freedom. John, a very good day to you. Justice Alito on the

court mentioned repeatedly in news stories these last days, speculation about retirement, well-deserved,

but at the same time, a wonderful opportunity to talk about why he's so well-respected

and why his retirement would be upsetting to many who've come to understand this court as coherent

and straightforward. I welcome your comments about Justice Alito, but I'll say quickly, he comes out of a very hard-working

background of Trenton, New Jersey. He and I attended Princeton at the same time. He was class of

71. I was class of 70. And those were turbulent times, John. The Vietnam War, marijuana,

expulsion, co-education, all of that might not seem much now, 60 years later or so. But at the time when you're 18 or 19 years old, these are large events falling upon you and you're without your mom and dad. So Justice Alito survived all that.

I did not know that he joined the ROTC. Good for him. And I did not know that that later on led him to an army camp. Good for him. What about his career as a lawyer serving as a prosecutor

as a judge? Is this all usual fair for going to the court?

I don't have familiarity with that matter. Good evening to you. Well, different justice. First of all,

it's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for inviting me. The justices have reached the court in a

variety of ways. They've all had distinguished careers of one sort or another. Justice Alito was

certainly among them. So after going to Princeton University, he talks, by the way, about the

contrast of what he saw as privileged elites at Princeton who were thumbing their nose at people

who were serving the Vietnam War and compared them to the people he had

grown up with in Trenton, New Jersey, Salt of the Earth folks. Many of the people who were high

school classmates of him, of his had been drafted and were now in Vietnam. And then, of course,

he did join the ROTC. From there, after Princeton, he did obviously exceptionally well there,

as he had done in high school to get into Princeton.

...