Alito "is not a libertarian conservative, he is a big government conservative, which is what George Bush is,"

...Says Andrew Napolitano:

Napolitano distinguished his friend from Scalia, who tends to emphasize federalism and states' rights in his decisions, pointing to Alito's belief in big government as the impetus behind his decisions. "He's sided with government on every single case except one." ... The differences between Alito's and Scalia's constitutional interpretations became apparent as soon as Alito took his seat to replace O'Connor. In his first decision on the Court, Alito weighed in on the opposite side of Scalia to uphold a lower court's stay of execution for Michael Taylor, a Missouri death row inmate convicted of rape and murder.

Moreover, Jay Fahy, "a former federal prosecutor who worked with Alito," "predicted that Alito will show deference to past judicial decisions. 'The one thing that Alito is going to follow is precedent.'"

Buyer's remorse. Still, let's keep it in perspective: Alito's only been there a year, and if you had to judge Rehnquist -- whose views on federalism are fairly close to my own, although I lean a little more towards Scalia than Thomas on the issue -- by his first year or two on the court, one might conclude that he, too, "began [at the Court by] promptly living up to his advance billing as a solid conservative vote, siding invariably with the prosecution in criminal cases, with business in antitrust cases, with employers in labor cases and with the government in speech cases." Woodward & Armstrong, THE BRETHREN (2005), p.267. Hope springs eternal.