Sotomayor Confirmed.

I figured this good news deserved its own post.  She was confirmed by a margin of 68 to 31 (Ted Kennedy was ill and did not vote). 

Only 9 of the Senate’s 40 Republicans voted for Sotomayor.

See the New York Times story here.

Dude! The word is “em-path-ic”

Excuse me my while I exercise my “pronunciation-police inner-child” – but this honorable Jon Kyle from Arizona needs to learn the English language.  There is no such word as “em- pa-thet-ic”, it is pronounced “em-path-ic”.  If you can’t say it correctly, I suspect that’s a sign you don’t have it and maybe can’t relate to it.

Boy, these dudes are just going to look bad in this whole process.  As Lindsey Graham even said, “unless you have a complete melt-down, you  [Sotomayer] are going to be nominated.”

Watch the hearings here.

It is really difficult to read her face.  She is looking very stoic so far.

Sotomayor represents a changed nation and changing diversity

An excellent piece at THE NEW YORKER says presidents have always tried to keep diversity on the highest Court, but what counts as diversity has changed with time.

Presidents used to preserve a New England seat, a Virginia seat, a Pennsylvania and a New York seat on the Court because regional disputes were the the most often kinds of cases heard.  Later when European immigrants transformed American society, religious differences needed to be kept balanced.  For more than a century the Catholic seat was respected and kept filled.

“As with earlier breakthrough nominations, Obama’s selection of Sotomayor has stirred some old-fashioned ugliness, and in that alone it serves as a reminder of the value of a diverse bench and society. Some anonymous portrayals of the Judge offered the kind of patronizing critiques (“not that smart”) that often greet outsiders at white-male preserves. Women who have integrated such bastions will be familiar, too, with the descriptions of her temperament (“domineering”), which are of a variety that tend to reveal more about the insecurity of male holdovers than about the comportment of female pioneers. The pernicious implication of such views is that white males, who constitute a hundred and six of the hundred and ten individuals who have served on the Court, made it on merit, and that Sotomayor is somehow less deserving.

And now with American diversity changing this president need not be reluctant to acknowledge that Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group, who by 2050 will represent a third of the American people, deserve a place at this most exclusive table for nine.  As Barack Obama knows better than most, it is a sign of a mature and healthy society when the best of formerly excluded groups have the opportunity to earn their way to the top.”

fnord

Sotomayor v. Right Wing Idiocy

 

My goodness, those right wing folk do not know when to stick a rag in it, do they?

Randall Terry (Operation Rescue founder; former ICT visitor):  “Do GOP leaders have the courage and integrity to filibuster an activist, pro-Roe[v. Wade] judge?”

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition: “The Republicans have got to take a stand on this one.  If they don’t, they can kiss their chances of ever getting back into power away.”

Thanks, GOP, please trot out as many of these nut-jobs as you can find.

Read more at politico.

Sotomayor disguised as Limbaugh???

From Politico:

And how did Sotomayor spend seven hours at the White House on Thursday with no one noticing?”We snuck her in here disguised as Rush Limbaugh,” Axelrod joked, adding: “We can’t tell you guys all of our tricks.”