This is the guy the Times got to replace Kristol . . .Yeah, enough about Sotomayer. In other news, the Governor General of Canada, Michelle Jean, gutted a seal and ate its fucking raw heart.
Jesus, I love my country.
sgw: Ross Douthat Really Needs A Woman
This guy is truly obsessed with trying to not only tell women what they feel, but why they feel what he says they feel.
I am beginning to think that "conservative intellectual" is an oxymoron.
Josh Marshall: From the Coleman Alt. Universe
Norm Coleman sends word that as soon as he's sworn in he'll be reviewing Judge Sotomayor's record and deciding how he'll vote.The following post is here because it offers two things: rare good sense from a repuglican, and to-die-for hatred from wingnuts in the comment thread:
Thrush (politico): Rahm gave Snowe a heads-up
This is a good omen for Dems.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), whom Dems need to avoid filibuster on Sonia Sotomayor, seems pleased (if officially non-committal) — and took the unusual step of thanking White House COS Rahm Emanuel for giving her the head's up.
In another good sign for Dems, she describes Sotomayor as "well-qualified" — and says she fits the criteria she outlined to President Obama during a recent meeting in the Oval.
And that gives Snowe some ownership.
Her statement: (at the link)
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Posted By: | May 26, 2009 at 12:48 PM
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Posted By: BS | May 26, 2009 at 01:08 PM
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Posted By: pattyann1 | May 26, 2009 at 02:48 PM
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Posted By: Eileen for Freedom/Liberty | May 26, 2009 at 03:52
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Posted By: patriot_67 | May 26, 2009 at 06:53 PM
Republican Party infighting is interesting to watch, but talk of a full-blown “rupture” based on contrasting Sunday show appearances seems overblown. Mike Tomasky fingers the reason:
A prerequisite for a “rupture” is that there are two competing sides capable of rupturing. But that really isn’t the case in Washington. There aren’t enough GOP moderates in Washington to constitute a side. It’ll take more than Powell and Ridge to create any kind of schism.
The closest thing to a real rupture is this. Some conservatives believe that in races wherein a solidly conservative candidate can’t win, it makes sense to run an occasional deviationist. Other conservatives believe that solid conservatives should be nominated for every race, irrespective of how unlikely it is that a solid conservative could win statewide in, say, Maine. This really is a dispute. You see the pragmatic side of this argument seeming to carry the day in terms of Senate nominees for Connecticut and Delaware. And you see the hardliners backing Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and this guy Rubio in Florida. But there’s absolutely no chance that the Mike Castles and Rob Simmonses of the world are actually the future of the GOP. The real dispute is over whether or not they’ll be allowed to play at a sidetable.
Think Progress: Limbaugh on Sotomayor: ‘Do I want her to fail? Yeah.’
Think Progress: Inhofe worries that Sotomayor may allow ‘undue influence from her own personal race, gender.’Reacting to Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court today, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh called Sotomayor a “horrible pick,” said that Republicans should “go to the mat” in their efforts to oppose her confirmation in the Senate, and — echoing his hopes for Obama’s failure — declared that he wanted Sotomayor to “fail”:
LIMBAUGH: Do I want her to fail? Yeah. Do I want her to fail to get on the court? Yes! She’d be a disaster on the court. Do I still want Obama to fail as President? Yeah. AP you getting this? He’s going to fail anyway, but the sooner the better.
Listen here:
Republican members of Congress have been trying to subtly raise questions about Sonia Sotomayor’s objectivity — simply because of her non-traditional race, gender, and upbringing. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said today that he is concerned Sotomayor has shown “personal bias based on ethnicity and gender.” Similarly, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said in a statement today that Sotomayor may be subject to the “undue influence” of her race and gender:Of primary concern to me is whether or not Judge Sotomayor follows the proper role of judges and refrains from legislating from the bench. Some of her recent comments on this matter have given me cause for great concern. In the months ahead, it will be important for those of us in the U.S. Senate to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences.
Responding to Inhofe, The American Prospect’s Dana Goldstein writes, “Yes. Because the worldviews of John Roberts, Sam Alito, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Antonin Scalia are not impacted at all by their white male identities. White men are raceless and genderless, haven’t you heard?”
Drum: Waiting for the Meltdown
Leaving aside Jonah Goldberg's contention that Sonia Sotomayor is "the most left-leaning Hispanic possible/confirmable" Supreme Court nomination, this actually strikes me as an interesting point:
If Obama picked a centrist, opposition would have been principled, but pro-forma. By picking Sotomayor, conservatives will no doubt demand full-throated opposition, which plays perfectly to Obama's purposes (so long as he doesn't dump Sotomayor for some, any, reason). I don't think this was the key factor in his decision, but you can be sure the White House will love casting conservative opposition in those terms.
I also doubt that this was a key factor, but it wouldn't surprise me if a few people in the West Wing did indeed figure that this was a nice bonus. The wingnut wing of the Republican Party seems hugely energized by Sotomayor's nomination and ready to go ballistic over it. This might be good for them in the short term (it's a nice fundraising opportunity, brings internal factions together, etc.), but Obama, as usual, is looking a few moves ahead and understands that a shrieking meltdown from the usual suspects will mostly help the liberal cause: the American public already thinks the conservative rump running the Republican Party is crazy, after all, and this will help cast that feeling in stone. Most normal people think empathy is a good thing, not a code word for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
And Obama? He gets to be the calm at the center of the storm, providing his usual striking contrast to the seething stew of preachers, radio screamers, and Gingrich acolytes who will be making themselves ever more tiresome to Mr. and Mrs. Heartland with their ranting jeremiads. I don't blame conservatives for opposing Sotomayor even though they know that she'd only be replaced by someone equally liberal if they did somehow manage to derail her (liberals did the same with Roberts and Alito, after all), but if they're smart they'll realize that the usual shriekfest is playing right into Obama's hands.
But they're not smart, are they?
This post is absolutely surreal . . .
John Cole: Almost 100% of the People Who Visit Emergency Rooms Bleeding Need Medical Attention
A question in the comments, reacting to the cable television coverage of the Sotomayor nomination:
Um, where did this “90% of her opinions have been overturned.” crap come from?Limbaugh, like you needed to be told:
I doubt that Sotomayor can be stopped. She should be. She is a horrible pick. She is the antithesis of a judge, by her own admission and in her own words. She has been overturned 80% by the Supreme Court. She may as well be on the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals, given all the time she’s overturned. She has been reprimanded by a truly strong Hispanic judge, Jose Cabranes. She has been rebuked in writing by Cabranes for opinions that she wrote that had no bearing on the constitutional issues before her in the case that was being decided. Details on that coming up. But here is why, even though she may not be able to be stopped, here is why Sonia Sotomayor needs to be opposed by the Republicans as far as they can take it, because the American people need to know who Barack Obama really is, and his choice of Sonia Sotomayor tells everybody, if we will tell the story of her, who he is.Yeah, about that 9th Circuit (despite the fact she is from the 2nd Circuit, we will look at the Ninth since Rush is holding it up as the standard for outrageously high numbers):
As Media Matters for America has documented (here, here and here), the 9th Circuit’s reversal rate of 76 percent during the 2003-04 Supreme Court term was virtually the same as the national average of 77 percent for all circuit courts. Likewise, the percentage of reversals—75 percent—of 9th Circuit decisions for the 2002-03 Supreme Court term was almost the same as the national average of 73 percent for the total number of federal circuit court cases reviewed. For the 2001-02 term, the 9th Circuit’s reversal rate was 76 percent while the national average was 78 percent. During the 1990s, however, the 9th Circuit’s reversal rate did exceed the national average, most notably during the 1996-97 term, when the court’s 95-percent reversal rate topped the national average of 71 percent and “earned the Western circuit its reputation as the nation’s ‘most reversed,’ ” according to a July 3, 2004, article in the Sacramento Bee.Basically, they are hoping you are a moron and have no idea how Supreme Court cases are picked.
*** Update ***
Commenter KG elaborated on this as I was writing this post, and pretty clearly we have a mind meld going:
she’s had something like 6 decisions while on the Second Circuit go up to the Supremes. Three of them have been overturned. This is not wholly uncommon. Usually when a case makes it to the Supreme Court it’s because there is a Circuit split. One circuit has ruled that the law says X and another says that the law says not-exactly-X, or even Y. The Supreme Court must then figure out what the law says. Sometimes they hold that it says X, sometimes they say it says not-exactly-X, sometimes they say it says Y, and on occasion, they’ll even say “you’re both wrong, it says Z.”This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding – in many cases, a purposeful ignorance – of how, exactly, the American legal system works. I made the mistake of listening to Rush this morning on the way into the office (without even knowing the pick had been made), and was just amazed at how little he knew of the legal system.
This “x% of her opinions have been overturned” is just more nonsense.
*** Update #2 ***
More here from Smooth Like Remy.
*** Update #3 ***
Via the comments:
According to this edition of the Harvard Law Review at pp 522-524, the Ninth Circuit’s won/loss record – how many times its decisions were affirmed on appeal to the Supreme Court, was:94 3-14
95 2-11
96 1-27
97 3-14
98 4-14
99 1-10
00 4-13
01 4-14
02 5-18
03 6-15It doesn’t mean they were ‘reversed’ each time. Sometimes, cases were vacated, remanded, or otherwise resolved – but the point is their holdings didn’t hold up well at BigBoy Court. You’d call a football team with that record The Browns. Cherry picking it for the year the 9th made the playoffs or had fewer cases vacated and more remanded wouldn’t hide the fact they are out of sync with the Supreme Court. (Not saying the Supreme Court is on the right side in these, just that they have final word).
That states Media Matters cherry picked the data I used in the original results, and this .pdf backs it up. Regardless, this is besides the point, since Sotomayor is on the 2nd Circuit, not the Ninth.
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