Almost Admirable?!

Really Joe Klein?

The Mark Sanford case is a bit different from the others, and almost admirable. Not for him the usual "I made a mistake" dodge, not for him the exploitation of a staffer or a child. This is a guy who clearly fell in love, and seems unable to hide it very well.

Riddle me this Joe. If YOUR wife was carrying on a sexual relationship for over a year and you found out about it and then SHE flew to Argentina so she could get it in with "Rico" one last time on Mother's Day weekend and didn't tell you nor anybody else. And if she ended up having to stand in front of cameras and tell the world that she cheated on you for over a year.....would you find THAT "almost admirable"?

What a load of bullshit is being shoved down our throats. The same Village idiots who wanted President Clinton strung up and beaten because he got head a couple of times are now oh so forgiving and understanding of Governor Sanford because he was "in love".

Yeah well tell that shit to the wife he committed himself to for life.

Tell that to the kids he couldn't even find the time to call on Father's Day while he was with his mistress.

We are talking about a guy who was most recently seen trying to deny his state badly needed stimulus funds. We are talking about a guy who was as holier than thou as you can get when he was voting for President Clinton to be impeached. We are talking about a guy who has spoken out against empathy in recent weeks.

The victims in this story are Jenny Sanford and her kids, not the bastard who ruined their lives.

I won't even get into the Bill Clinton analogies but its absolutely fucking AMAZING that Republicans can totally fuck over their wives and kids and the Villagers NEVER hold it against them. From Newt to Rush to Ensign to Vitter to now Sanford, you damn near have to pull teeth to get MSM types to mention their past transgressions. Hell every single time, and I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME, Joe Klein mentions Newt Gingrich he makes it a point to say he is smart/briliant/very intelligent. But does he ever mention he is a sorry son of a bitch who cheated on every wife he has ever had and brought divorce papers to his first wife while she was in the hospital battling cancer?!

HELL NO.

Give me a break. Mark Sanford is a dick who doesn't believe in empathy, so I am sure as shit not going to spare any of mine for him.

GOP=FAIL

Well waddya know...

The new poll by the non-partisan firm Research 2000 for Daily Kos strongly suggests that the two main right-wing talking points about Sonia Sotomayor are a bust.

First, on the claim, echoed by many mainstream conservatives and GOPers, that Obama’s call for “empathy” in a judge is a cause for concern:

Do you think empathy is an important characteristic for a Supreme Court Justice to possess or not?

Yes 52%

No 29%

Not sure 19%
…and then, on the claim by Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich (who subsequently retracted it) and others on the right that Sotomayor is a “racist”:

Based on what you know or have heard about Sonia Sotomayor do you think she is a racist?

Yes 8%

No 61%

Kinda makes E.J. Dionne look silly doesn't it?

Sam Alito Had Empathy, Oh Noes!

I would be remiss if I didn't link to this Glenzilla post exposing the hypocrisy of the attacks from the right on Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

With regard to that last point -- how completely different is the reaction to Sam Alito and Sonia Sotomayor -- just consider this exchange that took place at the beginning of Alito's confirmation hearing (h/t sysprog):

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Judge Samuel Alito's Nomination to the Supreme Court

U.S. SENATOR TOM COBURN (R-OK): Can you comment just about Sam Alito, and what he cares about, and let us see a little bit of your heart and what's important to you in life?
ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point.

ALITO: I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.

And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.

But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

I wonder how long before wingnuts start calling for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to be impeached.

What's In A Word?

If that word is "empathy" then I guess there's a lot for misguided conservative wingnuts. However, thankfully for them, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick explains what empathy means with respect to choosing a Supreme Court justice. Unfortunately I doubt if they will take her word for it.