by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ryan Powers, Nate Carlile, and Ian Millhiser
The Stench Of Conservative Desperation
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is well-qualified to serve as a Supreme Court
Justice, with more
federal judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in 100
years. Her loyalty to settled law is, in the words
of the Congressional Research Service, "the most consistent characteristic
of Sotomayor's approach as an appellate judge." And she
is tremendously popular; Americans overwhelmingly
support her confirmation to the nation's highest court.
Even Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), in a surprising moment of
candor, told Sotomayor that she would be confirmed "unless
you have a complete meltdown." Yet, as Sotomayor's elevation
to the Court grows increasingly inevitable, conservatives are
the ones melting down. They are using Sotomayor's confirmation hearings
to hurl more and more desperate
attacks.
A TAINTED LEADER: In what
may be the biggest strategic blunder since Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
chose Gov. Sarah
Palin
(R-AK) as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election,
Republicans selected Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as their point person on
the Sotomayor hearing.
Sessions, whose own nomination to the federal bench was rejected
by the Senate in 1986, has a long
history of controversial statements
about race. He once quipped that he "used to think [the KKK] were
OK"
until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." He
routinely
referred to an African-American attorney who worked for him as "boy,"
and he once warned that attorney to "be careful what you say to
white
folks" after Sessions overheard him chastising a white secretary.
Yesterday, at Sotomayor's confirmation hearing,
Sessions
wondered aloud how Sotomayor could have voted differently than another
judge of "Puerto
Rican ancestry." So, it's odd that conservatives
would pick this man as their leading voice against the first Latina
nominated to the Supreme Court. The selection suggests that
Senate conservatives wholeheartedly embrace Sessions' views on
race.
SOUTHERN STRATEGY: It is clear,
however, that Sessions is the architect of the
conservative strategy against Sotomayor. In a campaign that echoes Lee Atwater's
infamous Willie Horton ad and Jesse Helms' "white hands"
ad, attacks on Sotomayor have focused almost exclusively
on race. Rush Limbaugh, the de facto leader
of the Republican Party, called Sotomayor's remarks "worse
than Macaca," claiming that she "doesn't
have any intellectual depth" and that she is a "bigot" and a
"racist." Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) spent six
uninterrupted minutes lecturing Sotomayor about her so-called
"wise Latina" speech during yesterday's hearings. And conservative
senators repeatedly raised the specter of Frank Ricci, the white
firefighter whose discrimination claim was rejected by a panel of
judges that included Sotomayor, even though Sotomayor simply followed
a 1984 precedent, whose facts are nearly identical to those
presented by Ricci's case, when she considered his claim.
Apparently conservatives believe the facts must take a backseat
to race-baiting.
THE KITCHEN SINK: Race
may have been the centerpiece of Sessions' playbook against Sotomayor,
but in their desperation to keep her off the Court -- or at least tar her as a
liberal extremist -- conservatives have resorted
to throwing everything they can imagine at the nominee. The
right-wing Committee for Justice, whose leadership played a key role in
selecting President Bush's nominees, launched an ad yesterday
claiming that Sotomayor
led a terrorist organization, and linking her to "Obama's buddy
Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist who
bombed American buildings in the seventies." Meanwhile,
conservative senators have accused her of being hostile to the Second
Amendment, even though her only major Second Amendment decision relied
entirely on a binding Supreme Court precedent. They have
painted her as an enemy of property rights, citing an eminent domain
decision where she held that a land developer who filed
his eminent domain case two years after the statute of limitations
had
run shouldn't get a special exception from the law. And many
have repeatedly claimed that Sotomayor is disqualified because
President Obama once said that judges should have "empathy."
Amusingly, when NPR pointed out that forbidding judges who use
empathy in their decision-making would bar ultra-conservative Justice
Samuel Alito from the bench, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) responded
that he shouldn't
have voted in favor of Justice Alito. Ultimately, however, no
one actually believes that conservatives are regretting their support
for Alito -- and certainly no one believes the Committee for Justice's
claim that Sotomayor is akin to terrorists. Conservatives
are simply demonstrating, once again, that they will say absolutely
anything to obstruct President Obama's agenda, no matter the facts.
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In a desperate attempt to derail her nomination, the right wing now
claims that Judge Sonia Sotomayor led a
terrorist group.
The debate over the F-22 is a "test of whether the requirements of
electoral politics can
outweigh the requirements of American national security."
President Obama's approval ratings argue
for rapid action on health care.
Message to Liz Cheney: Obama didn't
concede that much to the Kremlin.
Glenn Greenwald: "Finding out what
is and is not true is not the role of" CNN.
Fox News gives the conspiracy theory birther
controversy unwarranted airtime.
Some bloggers are unfairly
twisting RNC Chairman Michael Steele's words about "fried chicken
and potato salad."
In e-mails to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's office, right-wing
media dismissed stories about his strange disappearance.
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