Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: President Picks Conservative for Supreme Court: 10/31/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/alito_10-31.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is the Supreme Court?

2. How does the Supreme Court affect your life?

3. What is the difference between liberal and conservative?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Who is Samuel Alito and why are Democrats opposed to him?

President Bush nominated a conservative judge, Samuel Alito, to the Supreme Court Monday, a choice sure to anger Democrats who say Alito would swing the court dramatically to the right.

2. What problems is President Bush having?

The choice comes at a time when President Bush's popularity is at a new low: support for the war in Iraq is dwindling as more American soldiers are killed and a top White House aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted last week in a case connected to information leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

3. What is a federal appeals court?

Alito is currently a judge on a federal appeals court - one step down from the U.S. Supreme Court. The United States is divided into 13 judicial circuits, each with a court of appeals. Alito's circuit covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

4. What is known about Alito's position on abortion?

Alito played a role in two high-profile abortion cases. In 1991, he voted to uphold a Pennsylvania law requiring a wife to tell her husband if she wants to have an abortion. That ruling was later struck down by the Supreme Court. In 2000, he ruled to overturn a New Jersey ban on a late-term procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion, saying that he was bound by the Supreme Court ruling. The question will be whether he feels that as a member of the top court in the land, he would be free to change the course of laws concerning abortions.

5. Why is Alito known as "Scalito"?

If confirmed, he would be the second Italian-American Catholic to join the high court after Justice Antonin Scalia. The similarities between the two men, both judicial conservatives, have earned Alito the nickname "Scalito."

6. How might the Democrats block Alito's confirmation?

Since Republicans hold 55 of the 100 Senate seats, Democrats would have to use the filibuster technique -- long speeches that would essentially keep the Senate from getting anything done -- to stall Alito's confirmation.

7. What is the "nuclear option"?

However, Republicans have fired back that they would consider what has become known as the "nuclear option": a change to Senate rules that would strip Democrats of their ability to filibuster the judicial nominees.

Discussion Questions (more research might be needed):

1. Does Alito sound like he would be a good Supreme Court justice? Why or why not?

2. Research laws affecting abortion. Why is this such a controversial issue? What is the difference between laws regarding abortion and personal views on whether abortion is wrong or acceptable?

3. Interview your parents, teachers or other adults to find out how they think the recent changes on the court will affect life in the United States.

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.