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

Backing The Wrong Race Horse.....Again

So I am sure everyone knows by now that for the last several weeks crusty old white racist conservatives like Pat Buchanan have come out strong against President Obama's Supreme Court Justice nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, based almost entirely on a decision she and the rest of her panel made on the infamous Ricci Case in New Haven. Frank Ricci alleged all the way up to the Supreme Court that he and his fellow white officers (and one Hispanic) had been the victims of reverse racism when the city of New Haven through out all of the test scores which were supposed to help decide which firefighters got promotions, because of an apparent racial bias in the outcomes of the test.

Now the Pat Buchanans of the world believe that white men are just such an oppressed minority that they need everyone to watch out for them and show them (gasp) empathy. They have been hammering Sotomayor over and over claiming that her ruling in the case, which reaffirmed a lower court's ruling and was unanimous at the time, evidenced a racial bias of hers against white men. They have held up Frank Ricci as the prototypical hard working (white) Amurican, living out the Amurican dream and overcoming his dyslexia only to be slapped down by that bad, oppressive Latino woman.

How dare she!

You may also know that the Supreme Court recently overturned the decision in a 5-4 ruling which some math challenged crust old racist conservatives like Pat Buchanan decided was actually a 9-0 ruling. As if to emphasize the point that they would be attacking Judge Sotomayor on the basis of some imaginary racial bias the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee decided to bring Frank Ricci in as a witness for the confirmation hearings starting on Monday.

But a funny thing happened on the way to those hearings. It would seem that Ricci just might not be the guy conservatives want representing the Amurican dream after all. That is unless they are now totally reversing themselves on tort reform.

Ricci is invariably painted as a reluctant standard-bearer; a hardworking man driven to litigation only when his dreams of promotion were shattered by a system that persecutes white men. This is the narrative we will hear next week, but it somewhat oversimplifies Ricci's actual employment story. For instance, it's not precisely true, as this one account would have it, that Frank Ricci "never once [sought] special treatment for his dyslexia challenge." In point of fact, Ricci sued over it.

According to local newspapers, Ricci filed his first lawsuit against the city of New Haven in 1995, at the ripe old age of 20, for failing to hire him as a firefighter. That January, the Hartford Chronicle reported that Ricci sued, saying "he was not hired because he is dyslexic." The complaint in that suit, filed in federal court, alleged that the city's failure to hire Ricci because of his dyslexia violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Frank Ricci was one of 795 candidates interviewed for 40 jobs. According to his complaint, the reason he was not hired was that he disclosed his dyslexia in an interview. That case was settled in 1997 with a confidential settlement in which Ricci withdrew his lawsuit in exchange for a job with the fire department and $11,143 in attorney's fees.

In 1998, Ricci was talking about filing lawsuits again, this time over a dispute with his new employer, Middletown's South Fire District—which had hired him in August of 1997. According to a Hartford Courant report of Aug. 11, 1998, Ricci was dismissed from the Middletown fire department after only eight months. He promptly appealed his dismissal, claiming that fire officials had retaliated against him for conducting an investigation into the department's response to a controversial fire. A story in the Hartford Courant dated Aug. 9, 1997, has Ricci vowing "to pursue this to the fullest extent of the law."

In August of 1998, a state Department of Labor investigation cleared Chief Wayne S. Bartolotta of any wrongdoing in the firing. The Aug. 3, 1998, letter from the state Department of Labor indicated that the case was closed with a finding of no violation. "After a thorough investigation, it was determined that the South Fire District did not discriminate against Mr. Ricci." Ricci's response? According to the Courant, Ricci contended "Their decision was political, it has nothing to do with who was right and who was wrong." He told the paper he would "pursue the matter in civil court."

Ricci also tried to discredit his former boss, Chief Bartolotta, by disparaging his professional credentials. His fight over access to Bartolotta's professional training records was resolved between the two of them a week before the matter was slated to be taken up with the state Freedom of Information Commission, according to a Jan. 13, 1998, report in the Hartford Courant.

Eventually, Ricci made his way back to the New Haven Fire Department, where he famously aced his promotions test, then sued, yet again, in 2004.

BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

gasp, breathe, gasp

BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So basically this is a guy who has gotten just about every job he has ever had either buy suing or threatening to sue his employer. You have got to love this story.

Its called vetting, Republicans. We know its not something you like to do as evidence by the choice of Sarah Palin for VP last year but damn!

Yeah I can't wait to see how this "hail mary" pans out for yous guys LOL.

What Do You Know About Jeff Sessions?

The GOP has predictibly chosen Senator Jeff Sessions to take over as ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, taking over for the now defected Arlen Specter.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) will take over the ranking member position on the Senate Judiciary Committee after striking a deal with his more senior colleagues over the weekend, sources confirm to The Hill.

Sessions and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reached the deal that will allow the Alabama Republican to take over for Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), whose departure from the GOP last week left the committee without a ranking member.

Under terms of the deal, Sessions will serve as ranking member until the 112th Congress, when he will take over the ranking member post on the Senate Budget Committee. Current Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) is retiring at the end of the 111th Congress.

Now with a battle brewing over President Obama's nomination to replace retiring Supreme Court justice David Souter I think we would do well to aquaint ourselves with Jeff Sessions and learn what kind of a guy he is. I found this post from digby to be particularly enlightening.

Sessions was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. The year before his nomination to federal court, he had unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers--including Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr.--on a tenuous case of voter fraud. The three had been working in the "Black Belt" counties of Alabama, which, after years of voting white, had begun to swing toward black candidates as voter registration drives brought in more black voters. Sessions's focus on these counties to the exclusion of others caused an uproar among civil rights leaders, especially after hours of interrogating black absentee voters produced only 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of more than 1.7 million cast in the state in the 1984 election. The activists, known as the Marion Three, were acquitted in four hours and became a cause célèbre. Civil rights groups charged that Sessions had been looking for voter fraud in the black community and overlooking the same violations among whites, at least partly to help reelect his friend Senator Denton.

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

All of that's a GOP qualification for elected office in Alabama, so being rejected on that basis naturally vaulted him into the Senate. Making him the ranking member today means the Republicans will put their ugliest face forward during judicial confirmation hearings. But hey, it's their long, ongoing funeral.

Now in light of the fact that is very likely that President Obama will choose a minority and perhaps a woman to fill this post it will behoove us to make sure that this information on Sessions is out there so people can judge whatever his motivations might be should he choose to try to block this nomination. I won't even go into what it says about Alabama that they elected a guy like Sessions, but I will say that we can't allow someone whose mindset is still stuck in the pre Civil Rights era to hinder progress in this country. So get ready for the fight and arm yourself with information. I have a feeling we are going to need it.