Republicans As Sleazy Used Car Salesmen

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Something I Did Not Know

I have been warning people on the left not to fall too much in love with Andrew Sullivan just because he was disenchanted with the Republican Party. See he is still a flaming right winger who doesn't care much for folks on the low end of the totem pole, he just found a few issues to rail against the GOP about like torture and indefinite detention and he also wishes they packaged their bullshit up better but that's about it. Well I learned something else about Sully today that I hadn't been aware of till now:

Nine years ago Andrew Sullivan was caught up in a sex scandal when an anonymous personal ad he took out on a site called barebackcity.com was exposed by gay journalist and outing proponent Michelangelo Signorile. Sullivan claimed that he was a victim of "sexual McCarthyism" and sampling Clarence Thomas, called the whole incident the "high-tech lynching of an uppity homo." Back then, I defended Sullivan's right to sexual privacy. But I also noted that given the fact that Sullivan had made a career of lambasting the sexual promiscuity of fellow gay men (including analogizing unprotected oral sex with murder), as well as the peccadillos of our first "queer" president, Bill Clinton—Sullivan had opened himself up as a target. What he wanted was not sexual privacy (an ethic extending to all), but sexual secrecy for himself with the attendant hypocritical right to wag his finger at those whose secrets became hot public messes.

So here is Sully being the world's biggest hypocrite trolling a website for random sexual encounters while blasting other gay men for doing the exact same thing. And not only did he do this, he then when outed did not apologize but instead blasted the people who outed him.

See he was pretty sure he had a right to privacy in that matter. And I don't necessarily disagree.

But its amazing that a guy who could take that stance about his own private life would now be arguing that Elena Kagan should be made to answer on the record whether she is gay or not. Mind you I don't know if she is or she isn't and I truly couldn't care either way, but surely she should have the same expectation of privacy that Sully himself felt he should have been afforded don't you think?

And one has to wonder what kind of outrage Sully would evince should employers start requiring every worker to disclose their sexual orientation on applications and or in hiring interviews. Some how I doubt mightily that he would think that kosher, yet in the case of Kagan its paramount that we know.

Why?

The funny thing is if pressed on the issue he couldn't possibly come up with a good answer. Supreme Court justices are given the ultimate tenure, they have that job for life. So there is no way anybody could pressure her by threatening to out her should she be confirmed because at that point she would lose nothing if it came out. If somebody came out today and said Sam Alito was "teh ghey" it would have no bearing on his standing as a justice and even if some of us would point out the hypocrisy thats about the most we would get out of it. There is nothing about being a Supreme Court justice that would make her being gay a germane fact one way or another.

Unless...

Unless Sully is trying to say that gay people think different from the rest of us and all things being equal would interpret the law in a different way.

Is that REALLY the impression he wants to make? Is that REALLY a path he wants to go down? I sincerely doubt it. Rather I think as is usual with him he just found some silly ass cause to jump on and so he went at it feet first. One can only hope that this does not become a crusade for him like Sarah Palin's daughter did.

Then again once an obsessed asshole, always an obssessed asshole so I wouldn't expect anything less.

Even people on the left opposed to Kagan's nomination should be able to see how wrong it is for this to be a focus of her confirmation process. If not I am going to be very dissappointed in a lot of people because if Republicans/right wingers were to do it we for damn sure wouldn't think it was ok.

Elena Kagan Is President Obama's SCOTUS Nominee

Most of the people following the nomination process to replace the retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens had pegged Solicitor General Elena Kagan as the top choice almost from the start. Now some on the left, mostly the truly far left at this point, have raised objections about Kagan but I tried to be open minded about the situation and checked into every allegation and just doesn't seem to be any there, there. Obviously the Republicans will oppose her cuz at this point that's just what they do. But I can't see a serious reason to oppose her from the left. Yes, maybe there were more liberal/progressive choices that President Obama could have made but that doesn't diminish who Kagan is and what she can bring to the highest court in the land. So as for me I will be supporting the nomination wholeheartedly and I hope most of the people on the left decide to do the same.

Justice Stevens And Citizens United

With the announcement today that Jusice John Paul Stevens will be retiring this summer there is rampant speculation about who President Obama will select to replace him. Of course the other speculation is about how, not if but how, Senate Republicans will oppose whomever he nominates. But I will say this much and I hope Senate Democrats get this, they have the upper hand now. Last year all throughout Justice Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation process the Republicans kept trying to paint her as an "activist" judge who would rewrite law to fit her world view. It didn't stop her nomination, but I think it did do some damage to her in terms of public perception and also to President Obama as well for nominating her.

Well now the tides have turned in my opinion with the Citizens United decision handed down by the conservative, read Republican, majority on the Supreme Court. By over turning basically 100 years of case law not only did these judges serve as "activists", but they also pissed off the majority of the American people who don't want Congressional and Presidential races to turn into a situation where the corporations by all or most of the elections. Democrats should have a "wish a muthafucka would" mentality right now, hoping and praying that the Republicans are stupid enough to try to use that talking point again. Every time it comes up they should hammer them mercilessly about the Citizens United decision which not only will serve to protect whomever President Obama nominates, but will also serve to permanently connect the GOP to that decision. Basically they could kill two birds with one stone by helping the nominee and by making it a campaign issue.

Now there is a small chance that Republicans won't actually use that tact this go around, but I highly doubt it. These are not smart people for the most part and so their playbook isn't very large. You take away the "activist judges" talking point and what do they have left? Not much.

It will be interesting to see if Democrats finally take the opportunity to go on the offense instead of sitting on the sidelines or strictly playing defense.

SCOTUS Bends To The Corporations

The Supreme Court today ruled that corporations are not distinguishable from individuals when it comes to free speech in elections. What that means is that they have opened the door for some of the richest businesses in America to basically hand pick the Congress and the President. Its a ruling so bad that I can't help but believe some new legislation will be quickly forth coming to effectively overrule it. Still, the overjoyed reaction of GOP leaders to this ruling should put to bed any thoughts of them actually being all about the people and riding a wave of populism. They will ALWAYS side with their financial benefactors to the detriment of the regular folks in order to get in power and stay in power. Anybody who can't see that at this point is just a fool.

Confirmed!!!

It wasn't really in doubt but it is still great to say it. Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed to the Supreme Court by the Senate.

Reporting from Washington -- Sonia Sotomayor completed an unlikely and historic journey today, one that began with her birth in a Bronx, New York, housing project 55years ago and culminated in her confirmation as the Supreme Court's 111th justice.

When she is sworn into office, Sotomayor will take her place as the high court's first Latino and just its third woman. She was approved by a 68-31 Senate vote after three days of debate. Nine Republicans crossed party lines to support her.

Sotomayor was nominated in May by President Obama to replace retiring Justice David H. Souter. A judge on the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals for the last 11 years, Sotomayor worked her way through two Ivy League schools and was a Manhattan prosecutor and corporate lawyer before joining the federal bench.

This was also a major victory for President Obama. He said he wanted his nominee confirmed before the new court was seated and he got it done. I wonder how many in the mainstream media will point this out.

Oh and there will be 31 Republican Senators who will have to explain their no vote to their constituents sooner or later. And I don't think its gonna be pretty.

Yep, That'll Do It

I think this attack ad against Judge Sonia Sotomayor may just be the nail in the coffin for the foreseeable future with the GOP's relationship with Hispanics.

A Couple Highlights From The Sotomayor Hearings

First up we have Senator Orrin Hatch getting schooled on the difference between nun chuks and guns.



Next we have known racist Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III PWNING himself by trying to put words in another judge's mouth to attack Judge Sotomayor.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), seeking to discredit Judge Sonia Sotomayor's judicial philosophy, cited her 2001 "wise Latina" speech, and contrasted the view that ethnicity and sex influence judging with that of Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who "believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices."

"So I would just say to you, I believe in Judge Cedarbaum's formulation," Sessions told Sotomayor.

"My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here," Sotomayor riposted, to Sessions's apparent surprise. "We are good friends, and I believe that we both approach judging in the same way, which is looking at the facts of each individual case and applying the law to those facts."

In fact, while Sessions held up Cedarbaum, a Reagan nominee, as having the superior approach to jurisprudence, Cedarbaum immediately backed Sotomayor. "I don't believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no affect on her approach to judging," she told the Wall Street Journal this morning.

Enjoy

Judge Sotomayor's statement.

You can read Judge Sonia Sotomayor's opening statement here.

Update: Here is the video.

Ricci Ruling

In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court decided for the plaintiffs with the conservative wing all voting for the plaintiffs and the 4 more liberal justices all dissenting.

I am far from being a legal scholar but I will say that this doesn't seem like it will be the "ammunition" that conservatives were hoping for to use against Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Also I admit my unfamiliarity with these things but I was struck that in addition to Justice Antonin Scalia writing the majority opinion, you had several "concurences" written by other conservative justices as if they all needed to help out and speak out to justify the decision. Now again maybe that's normal, I don't know.

What was most odd to me was that Justice Alito's concurrence seemed like nothing more than an attack on the dissent rather than illuminating anything having to do with the merits of the case. And it wasn't very compelling reading or reasoning either, at least for this layman.

The other thing that struck me was how strong Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's dissent was. She raised issues about the case that had not been discussed at all in our drive by media. I guess the most compelling argument was this one.

As a result of today’s decision, an employer who discards a dubious selection process can anticipate costly disparate treatment litigation in which its chances for success—even for surviving a summary-judgment motion—are highly problematic. Concern about exposure to disparate-impact liability, however well grounded, is insufficient to insulate an employer from attack. Instead, the employer must make a “strong” showing that (1) its selection method was“not job related and consistent with business necessity,” or (2) that it refused to adopt “an equally valid, less discriminatory alternative.” Ante, at 28. It is hard to see how these requirements differ from demanding that an employer establish “a provable, actual violation” against itself. Cf. ante, at 24. There is indeed a sharp conflict here, but it is not the false one the Court describes between Title VII’s core provisions. It is, instead, the discordance of the Court’s opinion with the voluntary compliance ideal. Cf. Wygant, 476 U. S., at 290 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“The imposition of a requirement that public employers make findings that they have engaged in illegal discrimination before they [act] would severely undermine public employers’ incentive to meet voluntarily their civil rights obligations.”).

(I apologize for formatting but pdf and I are not friends)

I have to say that this argument is a strong one to suggest that this was not the correct ruling on this issue and implies that as Justice Ginsberg stated it probably should have instead been remanded to a lower court for further clarification. Truly any business or municipality now finds itself between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If they use a hiring or promotion practice that convincingly statistically shows a racial bias they question is do they be proactive in order to try to be Title IX compliant and risk another expensive Ricci type case? Or do they keep the status quo and not only potentially allow discrimination to go on but also open themselves up to a similarly expensive lawsuit from minority employees or prospective employees who feel they have been discriminated against?

It seems this ruling offers more questions than answers.

But all in all its good news for John McCain!

Thousands Of NRA Members' Heads Just Exploded

Conservative Judges Echo Sotomayor in Gun Ruling

....Said The Racist White Man.

I just had to chuckle when I saw this Jeff Sessions, talk about how sensitive we have to be about race when it comes to Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor this morning on Meet The Press.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Just to refresh your memory.

On its own, the case might not have been enough to stain Sessions with the taint of racism, but there was more. Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU ) "un-American" and "Communist-inspired." Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down the throats of people." In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as "un-American" when "they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions" in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases. Sessions acknowledged making many of the statements attributed to him but claimed that most of the time he had been joking, saying he was sometimes "loose with [his] tongue." He further admitted to calling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation," a phrase he stood behind even in his confirmation hearings

One can only wonder why the king of "gotcha" moments when it comes to Democrats, David Gregory, didn't bring up Senator Sessions own racist past during the discussion today. Hmmmm....

Even More Context Needed

Cross posted at Attackerman


Ta Nehisi Coates has a post up about Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor and one of the supposed controversial statements that she made in a speech she gave in 2001 to some students at the University of Californa Berkley School of Law. Here is an excerpt:

Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

I think we can immediately dispense with the crazies who think this statement should disqualify Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. It's worth noting that William Rehnquist once endorsed segregation, and yet rose to be Chief Justice of the court.

That said, I think Sotomayor's statement is quite wrong. I understand the basis of it, laid out pretty well by Kerry Howley over at Hit & Run. The idea is that Latinos have a dual experience that whites don't have and that, all things being equal, they'll be able to pull from that experience and see things that whites don't. The problem with this reasoning is it implicitly accepts the logic (made for years by white racists) that there is something essential and unifying running through all white people, everywhere. But White--as we know it--is a word so big that, as a descriptor of experience, it almost doesn't exist.

Indeed, it's claims are preposterous. It seeks to lump the miner in Eastern Kentucky, the Upper West Side Jew, the yuppie in Seattle, the Irish Catholic in South Boston, the hipster in Brooklyn, the Cuban-American in Florida, or even the Mexican-American in California all together, and erase the richness of their experience, by marking the bag "White." This is a lie--and another example of how a frame invented (and for decades endorsed) by whites is, at the end of the day, bad for whites. White racism, in this country, was invented to erase the humanity and individuality of blacks. But for it to work it must, necessarily, erase the humanity of whites, too.

Sotomayor, unwittingly, buys into that logic by conjuring the strawman of "a white male." But, in the context that she's discussing, no such person exists. What is true of the straight Polish-American in Chicago, may not be true for the white gay dude working in D.C. I'm not even convinced that what is true for the white dude in West Texas, is true for the white dude in Austin--or that what's true of the white dude in Austin, is true of other white dudes in Austin. There's just too much variation among people to make such a broad statement about millions of people.

After having reread the speech I have to say that this is one of the rare times that I totally disagree with Coates. My disagreement really isn't on the substance of his argument per se, but on the premiss of the argument itself. Here is my response as published in a comment on his blog:

I actually think even more context is needed and a focus on the words Judge Sotomayor actually said.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

What I believe Sotomayor to be saying here isn't about painting with a broad brush that encompasses "all white men". I believe she is making a point about white men who do not have a lot of experience dealing with women and minorities on a personal level. To me the key to understanding what she is saying is when she points out that there is no universal standard for what "wise" is or isn't. Many people consider a person who is wise to denote academic achievments alone. I believe that in the totality of her speech she is making the case that wisdom also comes from personal experience. She made the case pretty clearly earlier in the speech that there have been studies that show that women and minorities as judges rule differently than their white male counterparts on the whole. And even in what I quoted she points out that all male courts did not vote against sexual or racial discrimination until 1972 yet they were seen as "wise men".

Now for me its hard to see how anyone can say that this is an absolutist statement especially when she makes allowances that it isn't. Let me quote it again to reiterate.

I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable.

What she is saying is that on the other hand there are also many "wise white men" who do NOT have the capacity for understanding the values and needs of minorities and women for a variety of reasons that she lays out, that a woman who is also minority and has had a wealth of experience with other minorities and women wouldn't be hindered by when judging cases.

And if the problem ISN'T that she is pigeon holing every white man then are we REALLY going to argue against decades of precedent that shows that white men have on the Supreme Court have in fact affirmed that discrimination based on race or sex or sexuality was in fact perfectly fine under the constitution?

FoxNews Uses Fuzzy Math On Sotomayor

Check out FoxNews White House correspondent Major Garrett questioning Robert Gibbs over Judge Sotomayor's supposed reversal rate.



So basically less than 1% of all of Sotomayor's decisions have been overturned by the Supreme Court. That the overwhelming majority of cases never made it to the Supreme Court should tell a reasonable person that they were very sound. But does FoxNews believe in being reasonable?

Hell Nawl.

Better to focus on the handful of cases that ever actually made it to the Supreme Court and then try to sell it as if Sotomayor has a 50% reversal rate. You have to hand it to them, they at least are consistent. Consistently deceptive, consistently biased, and consistently wrong.

So Predictable

Will our mainstream media as Congressional Republicans if they agree with Limbaugh?

See You At The Mid Terms

Conservatives just can't help themselves, and the Republican Party will suffer electorally because of it.





You know its bad when even Megyn Kelly is pushing back.

Making It Official

President Obama presents Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for Supreme Court Justice.





Check the resume.

And here is Glenzilla's take.

A No Win Situation.

With the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, President Obama has set up what may be an epic battle between the establishment GOP and their voting base. The problem is of course this, opposing Sotomayor on specious grounds will further alienate Hispanics from the Republican Party. On the other hand if Republicans in Congress do not vigorously oppose Sotomayor then their wingnut base, led by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and countless other media hacks, will throw a major hissy fit. Now in my mind the calculus should be simple. Republicans in Congress SHOULD nip at Sotomayor's ankles a little bit and then confirm her with a lot of support from their side. At a time when the GOP is bleeding from just about every demographic, they can ill afford to lose Hispanics for a generation. But unfortunately the establishment GOP has shown little appetite for taking on the base of their party, even when they know not doing so will hurt them electorally. Not only that we have seen already this year how cowardly Congressional Republicans are when it comes to taking on Rushbo and his pals. I think its highly likely that Limbaugh and the rest will say some pretty disgusting and demeaning things about Sotomayor and if there aren't establishment GOP voices willing to pushback on the vitriol it might not be enough that they vote for Sotomayor. The Republican Party is now seen as a party for southern white males. This may end up pushing that perception to southern white RACIST males. Now hopefully they will grow a backbone in the next week or so and realize that the base will get over it if Sotomayor is confirmed but Hispanics will not if she doesn't. But I have no faith in their ability to lead their base instead of allowing the tail to wag the dog. I guess we will all have to see how this plays out.

Word On The Street

NBC News is reporting President Obama will nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the vacancy on the Supreme Court due to Judge Souter's retirement. Announcement coming at 10:15 or thereabouts.

What Really Matters

Scotus Blog has a great rundown on the legal opinions authored by potential SCOTUS nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Its much better than reading the rumors put out by scoundrels seeking to exclude her from consideration from the Supreme Court.