Kleefeld (TPM): Schwarzenegger: Limbaugh Not The 800 lb. Gorilla -- He's Down To 650 lbs.
Krugman: A note on identity politicsThere's at least one high-ranking Republican office-holder willing to insult Rush Limbaugh. Check out what California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said last night on CNN:
"Well I think that they say that Rush Limbaugh is the 800 lb. gorilla in the Republican Party," said Schwarzenegger. "But I think that's mean-spirited to say that -- because I think he's down to 650 lbs. I think one should be fair to him about this whole thing."
In all seriousness, Arnold talked about the need for a big tent. He acknowledged that the right wing does have an important place. "But we also need to create a center of the Republican Party," he said, "and I think that the bigger our tent is, the better it is."
The attacks on Sonia Sotomayor are getting crazier by the minute. The pronunciation of her name is unnatural. Her fondness for Puerto Rican cuisine — sorry, her “claimed” fondness (you never know) — may cloud her impartiality. She doesn’t have enough money in her retirement account.
But is this any crazier, when you come down to it, than the Cult of Bush that ruled much of Washington for years? It was positive, not negative (though there was plenty of that too), but it was similarly about identity politics — you were supposed to support Bush, not because of how he did his job, but because he was, drumroll, a regular guy. Remember Peggy Noonan
I was asked this week why the president seems so attractive to the heartland, to what used to be called Middle America. A big question. I found my mind going to this word: normal.
Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He’s normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He’s not exotic. But if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help. He’ll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, “Where’s Sally?” He’s responsible. He’s not an intellectual.
Of course, a year and a half later there really was a fire on the block — actually a flood in New Orleans, but basically the same thing — and what he actually said was, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” But I digress.
The thing that is really driving conservatives crazy, I think, is that their identity politics just isn’t working like it used to. Their whole approach has been based on the belief that Americans vote as if they live in Mayberry, and fear and hate anyone who looks a bit different; now that the country just isn’t like that, they’ve gone mad.
Supreme strike out May 28: It appears that a lot of right wing attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are beginning to collapse. How are their attacks being debunked? Rachel Maddow is joined by NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.
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Josh Marshall: Red Cape
To take the public conversation on its face, a key dynamic in the Sotomayor story is that Republicans can't easily level what would otherwise be legitimate criticisms because some will see them as evidence of prejudice or hostility toward a Latina woman. In other words, the GOP is hamstrung on this battle and has to fight it with one rhetorical arm tied behind its back.
In theory, that could be a problem. But a couple days in, it's actually playing really differently. While elected Republicans are keeping their powder mainly dry and avoiding -- in all but a few cases -- racial charged remarks. But you can't say that for professional Republicans. We've heard that her taste for 'ethnic' food might throw into question her judicial reasoning, that she's a product of affirmative action, that she's a racist, that she's challenging English language dominance by insisting on an alien Spanish pronunciation of her name, that she belongs to a scary group called 'la raza' that might want to help Mexico reconquer the southwestern United States and make it Mexican again and on and on. All told, there's a chorus from the right that Sotomayor is a scary Mexican, understood in the sense of 'Mexican' as anybody with a Spanish last name who isn't actively working to keep the Cuban embargo in place.
And to the extent that there's political calculation at work it seems more likely that it's the realization that any Latina nominee would bring out the rightwing crazies like moths to a flame. They simply can't help it.
- Josh Marshall: Sotomayor Debate Careens Toward Complete Nonsense
According to The Politico, charges that Sonia Sotomayor is a "racist" are picking up steam and must be addressed. At least according to Lanny Davis and Chris Lehane.
- Josh Marshall: Truly Can't Help Themselves
Here's your next emerging meme. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Blood & Soil) just went on CNN attacking Sonia Sotomayor for belonging to La Raza which he called a "Latino KKK."
As I said this morning, it's painfully revealing how conservatives simply cannot helping going hard on the race front with Sotomayor or, as David Kurtz just put it, can't help imagining that everyone else is as racist as many of them are.
For those who aren't familiar with it, La Raza is basically a Latino equivalent of B'nai Brith or the NAACP. Garden variety and uncontroversial unless you thinks it's a public safety issue if more than a handful of Mexicans or Puerto Ricans get together in one place at the same time.
There's much more of this coming.
Yglesias: Tancredo Accuses Senators McCain and Martinez of Complicity in KKK Activities; Will They Fight Back?
Earlier today, Representative Tom Tancredo, a noted anti-immigrant extremist, went on television and denounced Sonia Sotomayor for her association with the National Council of La Raza. NCLR is a Latino advocacy group akin to the NAACP. But to Tancredo it’s the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan, a violent racist terrorist organization:
TANCREDO: If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than a Latino — it’s a counterpart — a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.” What does that tell you?
SANCHEZ: Alright. We’re not talking about — we’re not talking about La Raza –
TANCREDO: She’s a member! She’s a member of La Raza!
Check out the video:
Now as Dave Meyer points out, this is not just a vile slur on Sotomayor and the NCLR, it’s a serious slur on Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who delivered the keynote at NCLR’s 2004 conference and also addressed the group in 2008. Meanwhile, Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) accepted an award from NCLR earlier this year.
The question arises as to whether McCain and Martinez are going to stand for this. Will they take on the maniacs in their own party who are slandering them, or will they decide to just lay low and hope that nobody notices what’s going on. I know that if someone accused me of having delivered the keynote address at a Klan rally, I’d be mad as hell. Is McCain?
John Cole: We’re On a Road to Nowhere
Headlines from the Times:This is what punditry looks like on autopilot:
In the case of the Sotomayor appointment, while she’s likely to coast through the Senate given the Democrats’ sheer numbers, the American public needs to understand why this is such a radical pick. The Obama/Sotomayor idea that judges, instead of making impartial rulings based on the law and the Constitution, should base their decisions (at least in part) on their own experiences and ethnic background, is outrageous. It is perfectly appropriate for Republicans and conservatives to make this point, and there’s no reason why they can’t do so in a respectful manner. In short, the upcoming Sotomayor fight isn’t really a fight about whether she should be confirmed—Republicans pretty much lost that one last November—it’s a fight about whether Obama gets to define Sotomayor as a “moderate.”Noticeably absent from this critique, of course, is any evidence that Sotomayor has ever made any ruling that was based on something other than the law. Not one case. In order for Republicans and conservatives to “make that point,” they would in fact have to have one.
But they don’t. They just have a word salad they barf up every time they think it is appropriate- “reverse racist!” “activist judge!” “legislate from the bench!” “not a strict constructionist.” And that is pretty much what we can expect the next couple of months.
Sonia Sotamayor has more judicial experience than any other person nominated to the Supreme Court in decades. There are literally hundreds of rulings and opinions of hers out there. Surely they could come up with some examples of her “basing her decisions on her ethnic background.” Surely there must be a paper trail. Surely Mr. Klein can come up with some evidence for his smears and assertions.
We’ll be waiting.
Nominee’s Links With Advocates Fuel Her Critics
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and DAVID W. CHEN
Sonia Sotomayor’s work as a board member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund may become an issue during her confirmation hearings.
Sotomayor’s Sharp Tongue Raises Issue of Temperament
By JO BECKER and ADAM LIPTAK
Conservatives opposed to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination see her demeanor on the bench as a potential vulnerability.
- Josh Marshall: One Might Almost Say Shrill
"Some lawyers just don't like to be questioned by a woman. It was sexist, plain and simple." -- Judge Guido Calabresi, Judge Sotomayor's colleague on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, on suggestions that her tough questioning from the bench suggests a problem with her 'temperament.'
This is from an article in the Times with the headline "Sotomayor's Sharp Tongue Raises Issue of Temperament." It's by Jo Becker and Adam Liptak, two of the best, though I'm personally more familiar with Becker's work since it's been in areas where I've done reporting too.
Read the article. It is, I think, an example where the headline is not quite borne out by the article itself and where -- choosing my words carefully -- the 'both-sides' imperative of conventional newspaper journalism made lead to placing two unequal arguments on equal terms. The piece itself reads like Sotomayor is tough and can be intellectually combative and that her gender leads some to describe those qualities in, shall we say, much less flattering terms. Compare to Scalia. Give it a read. I'd be curious to know what you think.
On MSNBC yesterday, Pat Buchanan repeatedly attacked Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor as an “affirmative action candidate,” echoing right-wing claims that she has “been the recipient of preferential treatment for most of her life.” On Bill Bennett’s radio show this morning, Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes argued “that she’s one of those who has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.” When Bennett noted that she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton, which he called “a pretty big deal,” Barnes dismissed it, saying “I guess it is”:
BARNES: I think you can make the case that she’s one of those who has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.
BENNETT: Yeah, well, maybe so. Did she get into Princeton on affirmative action, one wonders.
BARNES: One wonders.
BENNETT: Summa Cum Laude, I don’t think you get on affirmative action. I don’t know what her major was, but Summa Cum Laude’s a pretty big deal.
BARNES: I guess it is, but you know, there’s some schools and maybe Princeton’s not one of them, where if you don’t get Summa Cum Laude then or some kind of Cum Laude, you then, you’re a D+ student.
Listen here:
On Tuesday night, former Bush adviser Karl Rove said that despite her stellar academic credentials, Sotomayor was “not necessarily” smart. “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools,” said Rove.
Josh Marshall: High Brow and Low Brow
When we go through this ritual of Supreme Court nomination and confirmation, the brainier publications look at the interest groups and great legal questions. But there's another part of the story -- in some ways bigger in terms of the result and often more gripping to my attention-- that is everywhere but too little discussed. And that is, the cast of spinmeisters and freakbots on the cable shows either smearing or carrying the water of the nominee.
And right out of the gate the chief anti-Sotomayor rabble rouser seemed to be a woman named Wendy Long. You can see her yacking it up on all the shows. You've probably seen her somewhere. In our ed. meeting this morning Brian Beutler raised the point that Curtis Levey -- another highly visible freakbot -- is not only the chief TV spinner for his group The Committee for Justice but also runs the group. And Long is only the TV yacker for her group, the Judicial Confirmation Network. And he even says that Levey's group has more muscle. So I had to take Brian to task and explain that he shouldn't waste my time with all those details. Wendy Long is the chief freakbot on TV. And really, what else matters?
So if you want to know a bit more about her, here's our run-down.
We want to keep an eye on Long though. So when you see her on TV, pay attention to what she says. And she says anything particularly nuts, drop us a line. And you have any more relevant background, let us know about that too.
Michael Gerson has written what may be the ultimate anti-empathy manifesto today. It briefly left me wondering what might be next battlefield in the Global War Against Empathy. Then it hit me, at the end of this (quite reasonable) Brooks piece on empathy, which must be quoted if only because of the Two Great Conservative Thinkers who are mentioned at the end:
Right-leaning thinkers from Edmund Burke to Friedrich Hayek understood that emotion is prone to overshadow reason. They understood that emotion can be a wise guide in some circumstances and a dangerous deceiver in others. It’s not whether judges rely on emotion and empathy, it’s how they educate their sentiments within the discipline of manners and morals, tradition and practice.It’s a slippery slope from empathy to emotion. And I think we all know how emotional Latinas are, right? I wonder if we’re going to see suggestions that Sotomayor lets her spicy, fiery Latin temperament cloud her judgements.
Benen: THE 2003 TACTICS REPUBLICANS WOULD PREFER TO FORGET....
Following up on an item from earlier, Republicans are pointing to the 2003 fight over Miguel Estrada's judicial nominee as offering key lessons in 2009. I think that's true, but for far different reasons.For some, the point is that Democrats opposed Estrada, but didn't suffer political consequences, so Republicans need not worry about taking on Sonia Sotomayor and losing support from Hispanic voters now. It's a misguided comparison, for a variety of reasons.
But the reference to Estrada is nevertheless a helpful reminder. In 2003, the mainstream Republican attack -- repeated over and again, by officials at a variety of levels -- was that opposition to a Hispanic judicial nominee was necessarily evidence of Democratic racism. I pointed earlier to Trent Lott and Rush Limbaugh making the argument.
The Media Matters Action Network found plenty of additional examples.
Republican Sen. Jon Kyl Said "I See This, Really, As A Slap At Hispanics." As reported by the Washington Times: "Republicans have seized on Mr. Estrada's stalled nomination to drive a wedge between the Democratic Party and Hispanic voters, whose ranks are growing faster than any other minority group in America. 'I see this, really, as a slap at Hispanics,' Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, said Wednesday." [Washington Times, 3/14/03; emphasis added] ...
Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla Said Opposition To Estrada Was "The Biggest Anti-Hispanic Crusade This City Has Ever Seen." As reported by the Washington Times: "Senate Democrats yesterday again blocked the nomination of lawyer Miguel A. Estrada to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The vote sustained for the second time a Democratic filibuster of the Estrada nomination. His supporters responded with accusations of racism and President Bush declared that 'the judicial confirmation process is broken.' 'It's a sad day,' Rep. Henry Bonilla, Texas Republican, said after the vote. 'This is the biggest anti-Hispanic crusade this city has ever seen.'" [Washington Times, 3/14/03; emphasis added]
In case the point isn't entirely obvious, these attacks were pathetic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Democratic opposition had nothing to do with ethnicity. Republicans were engaged in the laziest thinking possible: Estrada was a Hispanic nominee, so to oppose him was to be anti-Hispanic.
I suspect these same Republicans -- Jon Kyl is now the #2 GOP leader in the Senate -- would be outraged to see the same standard they used in 2003 applied to themselves in 2009.
- From Wikipedia: Democratic Senators opposed the nomination, noting Estrada's lack of any prior judicial experience at the local, state, or federal level. Democratic Senators also objected to the refusal by the Office of the Solicitor General to release samples of Estrada's writings while employed there. Republicans, however, stated that the Democratic concerns were actually just an attempt to deny Estrada a circuit court seat because of his conservatism.
Glenn Greenwald: A revealing anecdote about Sonia Sotomayor
The same right-wing extremists who drove the country into the ground continue to attack Sonia Sotomayor with blatant and ugly stereotypes. She's one of those judges selected "for their readiness to discard the rule of law whenever emotion moves them," claims the highly credible legal scholar Karl Rove today in The Wall St. Journal. According to Rove -- whose profound respect for the rule of law is legendary -- she makes decisions based on her emotional "concern for the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless" rather than legal considerations. Because of her background, ethnicity and gender, hordes of people who know nothing about her and haven't bothered to examine what she's actually done as a judge instantaneously believe this caricature, while the media keeps repeating these accusations without, as usual, any critical scrutiny.
As happens virtually always, the facts are now starting to be examined and they reveal just how deliberately false are these right-wing smears. They just make things up without having any idea if they're true. Not only is that caricature of Sotomayor false, the opposite is true: if anything, Sotomayor's flaw is that she is excessively legalistic in her approach. And the assumption -- from both sides -- that she is some sort of pure, doctrainnaire liberal seems quite dubious at best.
The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne says that today "liberals would be foolish to embrace Sotomayor as one of their own because her record is clearly that of a moderate." The New York Times' Charlie Savage suggests that pro-choice groups are worried about how reliable a vote she will be. And Daphne Evitar thoroughly examines Sotomayor's judicial record and concludes that liberals "may end up being disappointed with the president’s choice" because "it’s starting to sound like Obama nominated a highly capable technocrat."
My writing about this issue from the start has not been based on my view that Sotomayor is the best choice for the Court. There is still too much unknown about her to reach a conclusion in that regard (though see this encouraging snippet of her at Oral Argument in a critical case). My interest has been due to the fact that the smears against her were both totally unrecognizable, driven by very ugly sentiments and enabled by reckless "reporting" methods. Along those lines, I want to recount the facts behind a case I had before Judge Sotomayor because it helps to demonstrate just how false and baseless are the attacks thus far against her:
That case, Norville v. Staten Island University Hospital, involved one of the most sympathetic plaintiffs I had in my legal career. The plaintiff, Wendy Norville, was a black woman who grew up in poverty in the Carribean, moved to the U.S., and put herself through nursing school while working as a maid and raising her children as a single mother. After graduating at the age of 44, she went to work at SIU hospital as an R.N. in the neurology unit, where, for the next 12 years, she compiled an exemplary record of uniformly excellent performance reviews.
During her 13th year as an R.N., while working in the neurology unit, a very tall male patient had a seizure while lying on a table. Norville attempted to restrain the patient to prevent him from injuring himself or falling on the floor, and when doing so, she sustained a very severe back injury. She was unable to work for a full year, but after extensive rehabilitation, she told the hospital she wanted to return to work, but her back injury imposed some mild physical restrictions -- such as limitations on her ability to lift heavy objects -- and she requested that they find a nursing position for her where heavy lifting was not required.
The hospital claimed that the only positions they could offer her were ones that were part-time or would require her to lose all of her union seniority and benefits, and after a couple of months of pretending to search more, the hospital notified her that there were no comparable positions for her and they thus fired her. Because she was 56 years old and disabled by then, she was unable to get hired by another hospital. So after working for 12 years as an R.N., she was left fired and unemployed -- all because of an injury she sustained on the job, while helping a patient. She then sued the hospital (which was large and fully insured) for failing to accommodate her disability under the ADA and for race and age discrimination (they had accommodated white nurses far more injured than she and also rejected her for the one open nursing position in favor of a much younger nurse).
If ever there was a case where one's "emotions" for "the downtrodden, the powerless and the voiceless" would be strong, it was this one. This was a poor, black and highly admirable woman who -- through no fault of her own -- was left jobless and impoverished at the age of 56, suing a large and fully insured corporation. And her case was not only emotionally compelling, but legally strong as well: the federal judge presiding over the case from the start refused to dismiss any of her claims at the close of discovery, holding that there was ample evidence to support all of her claims and to enable a jury to decide in her favor.
Right before her trial was to begin, that judge got caught up in a massive criminal trial, and as a result, a federal judge from Louisiana was shipped to New York to preside over the trial. This visiting judge hated the case and the plaintiff from the start. At trial, he excluded most of her best evidence showing discrimination, then dismissed her race and age discrimination claims before they even got to the jury, and then -- on her sole remaining claim for violations of the ADA -- gave the jury patently unfavorable and inaccurate instructions about the law that caused the jury to decide against her.
That was the state of the case as it was appealed to a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit. Judge Sotomayor was by far the most active questioner at Oral Argument and it was she who wrote the opinion for the unanimous appellate court. Without a trace of sympathy or even interest in the plight of the plaintiff, Sotomayor methodically recounted the evidence of discrimination and, in as coldly and legalistic a manner as possible, concluded that the Norville "produced insufficient evidence at trial to show that the hospital" discriminated against her. She thus affirmed the trial judge's dismissal of Norville's claims of race and age discrimination. [On a very technical ground, Sotomayor did rule, for the unanimous panel, that the trial judge had inaccurately instructed the jury about what the ADA requires and thus re-instated that one claim (and the judge thereafter admitted he was wrong on that one issue). Just to underscore what a sympathetic plaintiff Norville was, the jury then decided in her favor at the new trial on her sole remaining claim and awarded her $1.6 million in back pay, front pay, attorneys' fees and other compensatory damages.]
One shouldn't derive too much meaning from one decision (though at least the same caution applies to a single snippet from a speech someone gave 8 years ago). But this case was one where she acted exactly contrary to the Rove-led disparagement of her jurisprudence -- the accusation that she disregards objective legal considerations in favor of emotions and sympathy for what Charles Krauthammer euphemestically described as "certain ethnicities." And there are many other cases like that. As Supreme Court expert Tom Goldstein put it: "we have been struck by how the amount of commentary about Judge Sotomayor has ignored the most accessible and valuable source of information: her opinions as an appellate judge." As Daphne Evitar put it after doing real reporting on Sotomayor's actual judicial record: "President Obama’s just chosen an extremely cautious, legalistic nit-picker."
I have no doubt that there are legitimate grounds for criticizing Sotomayor. I have reservations about her and am very interested in her answers at her confirmation hearing. She's a Supreme Court nominee and shouldn't be beyond intense scrutiny. But the bile coming thus far from the Right (and Respectable Intellectual Center) is laughable, contrary to all the available evidence, and grounded in the most naked and destructive stereotypes (the little lady can't keep her emotions in check or her mouth shut; the Latina woman decides in favor of minorities at the expense of the oppressed white male). Before the media keeps repeating the screeching and inflammatory accusations from Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, they might actually want to first see if there is evidence to support those accusations. That is what "reporting" allegedly is about.
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