How soon before Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn has to abjectly apologize to Rush for this:

One of the top Republicans in the Senate, John Cornyn, is repudiating recent comments by Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich which claimed that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. Cornyn, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NPR's "All Things Considered":

"I think it's terrible... This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent." Cornyn dismissed Limbaugh and Gingrich, adding: "Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don't think it's appropriate. I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong."

I predict Cornyn will be forced to agree that Rush and Newt are right - Sotomayor IS a "racist." Rush and Newt know about such things. Listen to the interview here.

Speaking for me only

Ilya Somin and Erwin Chemerinsky discuss the role of "empathy" in judging. In a subsequent blog post, Somin describes the chasm between them:

I fear that to some extent Chemerinsky and I are talking past each other. I don't disagree with Chemerinsky's claims that conservative justices (like liberals) sometimes base decisions on empathy and on their political ideology, and that judicial reliance on empathy cannot be completely eliminated. . . . Rather, my view is that reliance on empathy is a negative rather than a positive - whether practiced by conservative judges or liberal ones. . . . Ultimately, I think the real issue is not whether conservative and liberal judges sometimes rely on empathy (they both obviously do), but whether we should strive to reduce such reliance or increase it.

[More...]

Tom Tancredo has officially lost his marbles. (Video here.)Today, in discussing the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, he said:

TANCREDO: If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than a Latino — it’s a counterpart — a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.” What does that tell you?

SANCHEZ: Alright. We’re not talking about — we’re not talking about La Raza –

TANCREDO: She’s a member! She’s a member of La Raza!

[More...]

The New York Times runs an article claiming that conservatives will attack Judge Sonia Sotomayor for her harsh questioning in oral argument. From the gang that reveres Justice Scalia, this is just rich. But Sotomayor's colleague on the Second Circuit, Judge Guido Calabresi, cuts right through the BS:

Judge Guido Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School who taught Ms. Sotomayor there and now sits with her on the Second Circuit, said complaints that she had been unduly caustic have no basis. For a time, Judge Calabresi said, he kept track of the questions posed by Judge Sotomayor and other members of the court. “Her behavior was identical,” he concluded. “Some lawyers just don’t like to be questioned by a woman,” he added. “It was sexist, plain and simple.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Indeed.

Speaking for me only

The L.A. Times reports that the Obama Administration is giving the FBI a bigger role in fighting terrorism.

Bureau agents will gather evidence to ensure that criminal prosecutions of alleged terrorists are an option. The move is a reversal of the Bush administration's emphasis on covert CIA actions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

Here's the Government's page on the Global Justice Initiative. Its mission: "the efficient sharing of data among justice entities." [More....]

Retired Major Gen. Antonio Taguba (remember the Taguda report on Abu Ghraib?) told the British press he agrees with President Obama that the photos of Iraqi detainees should not be released:

A former U.S. general said graphic images of rape and torture are among the photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse that President Barack Obama's administration does not want released.

"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them," Taguba was quoted by the Daily Telegraph. "The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."

The Telegraph article is here. Among the graphic images: [More...]

Does anyone remember Sara Jane Moore, the 45 year old frumpy looking woman who took a shot at then President Gerald Ford and missed?

Apparently she is now 80 and was released in 2007 on mandatory parole after serving 32 years in jail. She was on the Today Show this morning. [More...]

The National Spelling Bee is being televised on ESPN. Go spellers! The Finals will be televised live on ABC tonight at 8 pm EST.

This is an Open Thread.

During the nuclear option fights of the Bush Administration era, I always argued against those who claimed that the Senate owed the President unfettered deference regarding judicial nominees. At best, the argument went, the Senate could only consider the nominee's "qualifications." I categorically rejected that view, arguing that the Senate's advise and consent Constitutional role provides the Senate not only the freedom, but the duty to consider all aspects of a nominee's record, including, maybe even especially, their ideology. After all, Senators are elected too.

I am pleased to see that the hypocrisy of the Republican position on this matter will be exposed now. For example, Republican Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) has already announced he will oppose the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the SCOTUS:

Via Brian Beutler, in Politico, Mike Allen writes:

[T]he media's left-of-center bias is rarely more apparent than during court fights. The coverage running up to the pick was slanted heavily toward the notion of how "pragmatic" Obama's legal views are and how unlikely he was to pick a liberal.

(Emphasis supplied.) Only a right wing ideologue could write about the Media's left bias. As for court fights, the fawning over John Roberts, whose credentials on paper were incredibly inferior to Sotomayor's (Roberts had less than two years on the federal court compared to Sotomayor's 18), contrasts sharply with the Media's racist attacks on Sotomayor's "intellectual heft." Who are you kidding here Allen? At least Allen is now open in his right wing bias.

Speaking for me only

As we wrote here, the child stars of Slumdog Millionaire had their homes demolished by the Indian Government over the past month. The producers had established a trust for them, and announced today that both children will soon be in their own family homes which the Government will not be able to take away from them. The New York Times report is here. [More...]

(Former Congressman and state proseuctor Kenny Hulsof and Dale Helmig)

Don't miss America's Most Wanted on Fox this Saturday Night. Instead of trying to find a murderer, this time the show is trying to free a wrongly convicted one.

“America’s Most Wanted,” scheduled for broadcast at 8 p.m. Saturday on KQFX-TV (Fox 38), will devote an hour to the investigation and trial of Helmig, now 53, who in 1996 was convicted of murdering his mother. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The show is designed to capture bad people and put them away,” said producer Dave Bolton. “This case jumped to our attention because it looked like a huge miscarriage of justice because the bad guy who did the crime was still out there and the innocent guy was put in prison for a crime he did not commit.”

Helmig was convicted of killing his mother. The evidence against him, all circumstantial, was beyond thin. His conviction was overturned in a federal habeas petition (opinion here), but the state appealed. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Dale's conviction and the Supreme Court denied cert. He remains in prison today, having served 12 years of a sentence to life without parole.[More...]