Via Brian Beutler:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced on the Senate floor today that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on July 13. . . .

This tracks with the time frame for the nomination hearings of now Chief Justice John Roberts. Leahy noted:

That agreement was reached before the Committee received the answers to the bipartisan questionnaire, and before the Committee had received any of the 75,000 pages of documents from his years working in Republican administrations. If 48 days were sufficient to prepare for that hearing, in accordance with our agreement and the initial schedule, it is certainly adequate time to prepare for the confirmation hearing for Judge Sotomayor.

As regular readers know, I fight a constant battle against the rehabilitation of Andrew Sullivan among progressives. Today Sullivan demonstrates again why I do this:

I must say that, to my mind, [Shelby] Steele has a point. It isn't the judicial rulings that trouble me so much as [Sotomayor's] non-judicial opinions and mindset. The constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity - racial and gender - and the harping on it so aggressively so often does strike me as a classic mode of victimology deeply entrenched in her generation.

(Emphasis supplied.) Andrew Sullivan has rightly obsessed on the discrimination faced by gays and lesbians in our society. It would never occur to me to describe his writings on gay rights as a "classic mode of victimology." To this day, Sullivan is unable to understand the issues of racism (his championing of "The Bell Curve" continues to this day) and sexism (his virulent sexism is exposed almost daily.) To him, concern about racism and sexism is "a classic mode of victimology." There is something wrong with him. UPDATE - Compare this Yglesias post about Victor Davis Hanson to what I write about Sully. The difference is no one, except me apparently, will write this way about Sully.

Speaking for me only

You can watch here.

My views here.

Jeralyn's views here.

Sen. Feingold's letter to President Obama on preventive detention here.

WaPo:

The Obama administration objected yesterday to the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons, arguing to a federal judge that doing so would endanger national security and benefit al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts.

. . . Although Panetta's statement is in keeping with his previous opposition to the disclosure of other information about the CIA's interrogation policies and practices during George W. Bush's presidency, it represents a new assertion by the Obama administration that the CIA should be allowed to keep such information secret. Bush's critics have long hoped that disclosure would pinpoint responsibility for actions they contend were abusive or illegal.

I guess that whole Brandeis sunshine/disinfectant thing is not operative in the Obama Administration. But pols are pols . . . See also Greenwald.

Speaking for me only

The FBI is understandably disinclined to reveal the details of ongoing criminal investigations, and the information it chooses to make public isn't always true. We therefore have no way to evaluate the legitimacy of the FBI's efforts to recruit Muslim informants to spy upon clerics and worshipers in mosques. Credible evidence that terrorists are using a mosque to shield their activities could justify the Bureau's infiltration effort, but how do we know that Muslims aren't targeted for undercover investigation simply because of their religion?

Robert Mueller's vague defense yesterday of the FBI's reliance on informants to gather information inside mosques when "there may be evidence or other information of criminal wrongdoings" did little to assure concerned Muslims that the FBI has a good reason when it decides to spy on them.

"It doesn't alleviate anything. It only continues to show the sheer arrogance demonstrated by the bureau in holding Muslim community members, clerics, mosques, as suspects," [executive of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California Shakeel] Syed said.

[more ...]

The inmates are opposed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to consider selling San Quentin to earn money for the state.

They live two inmates to a 4-by-9-foot cell. And it's fine with them. Why? The opportunities for learning and rehabilitation.

One inmate says:

"Some places you go for punishment," said inmate John Taylor, a catcher for the prison baseball team, the San Quentin Giants. "Here, it's more rehabilitation. I just don't know why the governor would want to shut us down."

Taylor's job at the prison: cutting weeds. He says:

"This is the first place visitors see when they come in," he said. "We want it to look good."

[More...]

The oddest legal question of the day might be this: Does gardening in barely legal, scanty attire constitute a public nuisance?

The renters of a home in Boulder are upsetting their neighbors by gardening in a state of nature -- or at least as close as they can get without breaking the law. The nudist couple, Catharine and Robert Pierce, don thongs when they venture outside; Catharine adds pasties. Some of the neighbors complain that the Pierces can be seen by the children who attend a neighborhood school or play in nearby parks. The couple's landlord is threatening eviction for violating a lease term that prohibits nuisance behavior if the Pierces don't begin to dress "appropriately."

[more ...]

After 9/11, some overzealous protectors of the homeland's security began to suspect anyone who pointed a camera at a public building, a bridge, or a railroad yard of plotting a terrorist attack. One of the most unlikely terrorist suspects was 55-year-old Shirley Scheier, a fine arts professor at the University of Washington who was frisked, handcuffed, and aggressively interrogated while being detained in the back of a squad car for more than half an hour -- all because she took pictures of electrical power lines for use in an academic project.

With the ACLU's help, Scheier sued the City of Snohomish's police officers for violating her Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The city's insurer argued that the officers entertained a reasonable suspicion that Scheier was up to no good because she left quickly after the electrical substation's security provider approached her (who wouldn't?) and because she had maps in her car (who doesn't?).

U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour disagreed. [more ...]

So much TV tonight. Top billing in my book: Weeds, where the Season 5 opener is on Showtime. Last season, with the addition of the "Mexican Mafia", was the most intense and best yet.

But, that's not all we've got tonight. [More...]

Bwaahahahahahahahah! Rothenberg is boycotting Tweety because Tweety is too partisan for Democrats. Bwahahahaha!

Speaking for me only

Ian Millhiser writes:

One of the centerpieces of federal civil rights law is the ban on disparate impact discrimination. In 1964, Congress passed a law forbidding race discrimination in hiring, but it soon became very clear that racist employers rarely leave a paper trial proving that a job applicant was turned down because of their race. The ban on disparate impact discrimination was a response to this reality, intended to “smoke[] out hidden bigotry” by forcing employers to justify practices that have an adverse impact on minorities. . . . In 1989, the Supreme Court in Wards Cove Packing v. Antonio significantly weakened the ban on disparate impact discrimination. Congress responded almost immediately by overturning Wards Cove with the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Right-wing justices tried their best to roll back civil rights law, but they were rebuffed by elected representatives.

Since Wards Cove, Congress has gotten much more progressive, but the Supreme Court has lurched to the right. In other words, the time is ripe for another conflict between Congress and the Court regarding whether civil rights law can continue to smoke out clandestine bigotry in hiring. . . .

(Emphasis supplied) And the brazen, judicially activist, extreme conservative wing of the Roberts Court are just the white men to do it - to overturn the wishes of the People as expressed through the elected branches of government - the Legislative and Executive Branch. The White Man's Burden must be lifted . . .

Speaking for me only

Our coverage of "crimes in the news" would not be complete without mentioning the man in Aberdeen, Washington who used pink paint to write "Liz, call home, I love you" on Boone Street. The man was arrested for "suspicion of malicious mischief" after police officers spied incriminating evidence: pink paint on his hands and shoes and a can of pink paint in his car.

If the note had been written on Valentine's Day, perhaps the police would have been more forgiving. Unless the guy is stalking Liz, his mischievous writing doesn't seem particularly malicious. A sensible prosecutor would probably agree to defer any charges if the note writer finds an environmentally friendly way to remove or mask the message.