Sunday Morning: When in a hole, stop ... Edition

The President on Sotomayo. As sgw said, this is "thorough and timely":


Repeat hilzoy's QOTD:

Seriously: Obama is a serious student of the civil rights movement, which in turn drew a lot of inspiration from Gandhi. Both Gandhi and the Civil Rights movement made brilliant use of the following method: you do something right, which you suspect might lead your opponents to do something wrong. If you are right about them, they discredit themselves, without your having to lift a finger. If you're wrong, you are pleasantly surprised. But you do not have to do anything wrong or underhanded yourself, nor do you in any way have to hope that your opponents are bad people.

That's what he's doing now.

From the NYTs Home Page:

Court Choice Pushes Issue of ‘Identity’ Back to Forefront

By PETER BAKER

With President Obama’s pick of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, identity politics in America is back with a vengeance.

C&L

DemfromCT (DK): Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Thomas C. Goldstein (a SCOTUS expert) actually looks at Sotomayor's record:

In sum, in an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred. (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.) She particulated in two other panels rejecting district court rulings agreeing with race-based jury-selection claims. Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking.

Kathleen Parker:

First came the breaking-news e-mail alert: President Obama would appoint Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Within minutes, a dozen other e-mails tumbled through the hatch enumerating all the reasons Sotomayor was a terrible pick: affirmative action, identity politics, the Ricci case, double standards, racism, sexism. Boom shacka-lacka-lacka . . .

You could practically hear the clattering of bullet points ricocheting through the blogosphere.

Charlie Cook:

Watching conservatives work themselves into a lather on cable TV over Sonia Sotomayor is amusing. Supreme Court nominees are almost always confirmed, particularly if the president's party has a decisive majority in the Senate. Plus, Sotomayor is a liberal who would replace a liberal, David Souter.

This seems to make little difference to the noisemakers. Although Sotomayor might well end up somewhat more liberal than Souter on certain issues, we are talking about gradations, not any significant shift in the Court's balance.

NJ Insiders poll and blogger poll:

Would it be politically smart for Republicans to try to block the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor?

Republicans (89 votes)

Yes 24%
No 64%
Depends (volunteered) 12%

Democrats (92 votes)

Yes 8%
No 89%
Depends 3%

Richard Clarke:

Cheney and Rice say anyone would respond as they did. They're wrong

Frank Rich:

The Beltway antics that greeted the great Cheney-Obama torture debate were an unsettling return to the post-9/11 dynamic that landed America in Iraq. Once again Cheney and his cohort were using lies and fear to try to gain political advantage — this time to rewrite history and escape accountability for the failed Bush presidency rather than to drum up a new war. Once again Democrats in Congress were cowed. And once again too much of the so-called liberal news media parroted the right’s scare tactics, putting America’s real security interests at risk by failing to challenge any Washington politician carrying a big stick.

When Dems were out of power, all we heard was Republicans. Now, Republicans get way too much overly deferential coverage relative to the positions they hold.

BarbinMD (DK): Gen. David Petraeus: "We have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions"

Two years ago, thirty-one Republican Senators signed on to a letter that said:

It is important that all officials in positions of responsibility speak out and defend General Petraeus as the honest and honorable military leader he is. From his years of service to our country and the important position he currently holds, he has certainly earned it.

That sentiment is certainly going to be put to the test in the coming days -- assuming that the traditional media covers the stunning admission made two days ago by General David Petraeus:

Q: So is sending this signal that we're not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does that have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?

PETRAEUS: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again they've beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion. When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Convention, we rightly have been criticized, and so as we move forward, I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena, and to practice those.

For weeks we've watched as Dick Cheney and his Republican minions littered the airways in the defense of torture, including Cheney's speech at the American Enterprise Institute that was carried live by every cable news show, and that received wall-to-wall coverage from every media outlet in the country. In it, Cheney said:

Even before the interrogation program began, and throughout its operation, it was closely reviewed to ensure that every method used was in full compliance with the Constitution, statutes, and treaty obligations ...

Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.

I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about “values.”

Petraeus' unequivocal acknowledgement that we violated the Geneva Conventions through our use of torture means one of two things; he was either telling the truth, or, he was feigning outrage over a lie, and with contrived indignation and phony moralizing, distorted the truth. Not to mention proving that he doesn't have any "values."

Will this development further the debate? If the media does their job it certainly would. And if they do, can Republicans continue to embrace Dick Cheney as the sage of "enhanced interrogation techniques"? Because there would be no middle ground. Continued support for Cheney's arguments would mean that the same attacks leveled at President Obama and congressional Democrats would apply equally to Petraeus; he's soft on terrorism, he doesn't understand the nature of the enemy, and he's making the country less safe -- are those arguments that Republicans would be willing to make?

• To say that General Petraeus, a man who has dedicated his life to our country, would say anything that would harm our country or our soldiers is an embarrassment. - Eric Cantor (R-VA)
• And I call on my colleagues to listen to what General Petraeus has to say. He's earned it. - John Boehner (R-OH)
• He's proven his devotion to this country. His integrity is above reproach. And any suggestion to the contrary is totally absurd and demonstrably untrue. - Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• ... he has proven time and time again, with his blood, his sweat and his tears, his patriotism and his love for our country ... one would be hard-pressed to find another military officer with the qualifications that are as impressive as General Petraeus. - John Cornyn (R-TX)

Would Cheney and company be willing to get down in the mud and attack Petraeus like they've attacked anyone else who disputes their claims that "it's not torture," or objects to how it's hurt this country's values? Because that would certainly be the ultimate rock and a hard place:

Like most Americans, I admire the integrity and the candor that General Petraeus showed ... And the attacks on him by MoveOn.org in ad space provided at subsidized rates in The New York Times last week were an outrage. (Applause.) ... no one in politics, regardless of party, should hesitate to object when an American soldier at war is mocked and insulted. (Applause.)

Dick Cheney (R-FU)

Presumably, that would still apply.

In a perfect world ... well, it should be noted here that in a perfect world we would never be having a debate in this country on the merits of torture, but I digress ... in a semi-perfect world, the media would immediately spring into action over this development. The clip of Petraeus' statement would be running side-by-side with Cheney's remarks about "contrived indignation and phony moralizing." Someone (does Petraeus have a daughter?) would be given a platform on every network to defend Petraeus' position. The networks could even show a video of someone whose mind was changed about waterboarding after undergoing the procedure -- if such a thing could ever be found. The battle lines would be drawn, and Republicans would be forced to take a side.

Or the media could ignore the story.