Kennedy vs. Freedom of Association

Via Taranto, here's TigerHawk posing a pertinent question regarding Sen. Kennedy's demand that the Senate subpoena the private papers of former National Review publisher William Rusher, a founder of Concerned Alumni of Princeton, in search of dirt about Alito's possible ties to the conservative group (details: S.F. Chronicle, Daily Princetonian):

Senator Kennedy took the scary position that it was just and appropriate for the Congress to extract by coercion the private, internal records of a political advocacy group just because it was considering the nomination of a person who had once been a member of that organization.To understand how weird this is, consider the following "thought experiment": If the next Democratic SCOTUS nominee once belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union (as Ruth Bader Ginsburg actually did) and, say, Sam Brownback proposed issuing a subpoena for the "records" of the ACLU to help him "understand" the nominee's testimony, what do you imagine the reaction of the mainstream media might be? The implications of Senator Kennedy's demand for freedom of speech and association are appalling. Where's the outrage?

(cross-posted at Point of Law)