Briar Patch

With little else to do, the right-wing blogosphere has worked itself into a frenzy over Sonia Sotomayor. To hear them tell it, she's so racist that she might as well wear Ku Klux Klan white for her judicial robes and spends most of her time stewing in chambers figuring out ways to put it to whitey. Moreover, the woman with six years experience on a federal district court and eleven years as an Appeals Court judge is apparently completely unqualified to sit next to Clarence Thomas on the high court and is the greatest threat to American jurisprudence since, I dunno, George Bush and Dick Cheney?

An important part of "savaging" Sotomayor (as one commenter put it) is to force President Obama into dipping into his political capital. Now, how standing tall to savage a Latina whose life story is out of Horation Alger will sap Obama's political capital is beyond me. Come on strong against Sotomayor and Republicans will use up so much of what little capital they have left with Hispanics that they'll be doing the political equivalent of deficit spending. They'd have to make huge gains among whites to make up for the beating they'd take in the Hispanic community. And yet it's Obama who has played the race card by nominating Sotomayor.

It's right out of Uncle Remus, with President Obama saying "don't throw me into that briar patch" while the opposition steps into the tar of its own free will...

E. J. Dionne writes that Sotomayor is the anti-Roberts:

In his September 2005 speech explaining his vote against Roberts, Obama argued that 95 percent of court cases are easily settled on the basis of the law and precedent. But in "those 5 percent of hard cases," Obama said, the "legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision" and "the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart."

And that is where Obama found Roberts wanting. The young senator insisted that Roberts "far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak" and "seemed to have consistently sided with those who were dismissive of efforts to eradicate the remnants of racial discrimination in our political process."

Obama believes Roberts's subsequent behavior on the court has justified his initial suspicions. He hopes that Sotomayor will be the anti-Roberts, a person whose experience growing up in the projects of the South Bronx will allow her to see life and the quest for justice in a way Roberts never will...

By now, everyone has heard of Newt Gingrich's idiotic Twitter (which he apparently sent from Auschwitz) calling on Sotomayor to withdraw because she is a "Latina racist." Like a moth to a flame these guys just can't resist appealing to white resentment. I haven't decided whether the constant self-important pontificating about reverse racism is comical or offensive. But I have a feeling that I'd come down on the side of offensive had I ever actually been the target of racism...

Thoughts about Bush and Obama:

But just because things are different now, doesn't mean we can stop believing, stop paying attention, or stop holding his [Obama;'s] feet to the fire on things. We still have to make sure things are done as we believe he has promised them to be.

We have to hold his feet to the fire to make sure things are done, correctly, most especially. That's where things failed, before. No one, NO ONE, held BushCo's feet to the fire and made sure they were doing things legally and morally correct. They just turned their backs and let them go...

Lowell, Massachusetts, City Hall...

Bat Cat!...

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) prepares legislation to reform the Army Corps of Engineers. She actually sought the advice and counsel of the Dutch, something Michael Chertoff and his henchman resolutely refused to do. The Dutch know more about flood control than any country in the world...

Fred Barnes doubts that graduating summa cum laude from Princeton is any big deal. He also hints ominously that Sotomayor may have gotten into Princeton as a beneficiary of -- gasp -- affirmative action. An ardent supporter of the Iraq War, once had this to say about the war:

The war was the hard part...and it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but not as hard as winning a war...

The (Fats) Domino Effect...

Friday's Choice: John Coltrane, with an assist from McCoy Tyner, says it's so damn sad "Every Time We Say Goodbye":