The Senate's Comedy of Errors

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"Unless you have a complete meltdown, you are going to get confirmed. And I do not think you will."

That was Sen. Lindsey Graham this past Monday, addressing soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

It was a rare burst of realism for a GOP senator. After all, the Democratic-controlled Senate has the votes to easily confirm the Appeals Court judge from Brooklyn, even without the expected Republican defections.

As of this writing, Judge Sotomayor hasn't melted down. Some of her opponents, however, are coming pretty close.

It began the day Sotomayor was nominated, when former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee fired off an immediate press release: "The appointment of Maria Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is the clearest indication yet that President Obama's campaign promises to be a centrist and think in a bipartisan way were mere rhetoric. Sotomayor comes from the far left."

Huckabee's criticism might have been taken a little more seriously if the nominee's first name was actually Maria.

The circus continued during the first day of the hearings, when the only thing anyone was hearing was the sound of the senators' own voices and their endless "opening statements." Not a single question was asked of Judge Sotomayor. This didn't stop Glenn Beck, Fox News' most out-of-control hysteric, from raging about how easy the questioning was "as our country burns to the ground." At least he didn't start crying again.

Then Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the point man for the attacks on Sotomayor, stepped on a banana peel when he actually got around to asking a question.

Why, he asked, can't Judge Sotomayor be more like another female judge, that nice Judge Cederbaum, who, according to Sessions, "believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices"? Apparently, Sessions didn't realize, until Judge Sotomayor pointed it out, that Judge Cederbaum was actually in the hearing room at the time in support of Sotomayor.

"We are good friends," Sotomayor replied calmly, "and I believe that we both approach judging in the same way." In a later interview, Cederbaum confirmed that she didn't "believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and [Judge Sotomayor's] personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging."

Note to Sen. Sessions: When you plan to use Person B to slam Person A, make sure Person B isn't in the room to cut the legs out from under you within the hour.

But, as Graham tacitly admitted, this isn't about whether or not Judge Sotomayor will become Justice Sotomayor. She will. Nor is it really about qualifications, or concerns about judicial philosophy. It is, first, about payback. Republicans are still grinding their teeth over what they saw as unfair criticism of nominees Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork.

The Sotomayor-bashing is also, however, about running for the next election. The Republican members of the Judiciary Committee are playing to the their shrinking base of old, angry and bitter white men. And they're selling the only thing left to sell, since they long ago abandoned anything resembling principles or ideas: They're selling fear. Fear of the Scary Brown People who are Coming to Take Your Stuff.

This strategy was expressed most nakedly by another former GOP presidential candidate, Tom Tancredo, who blasted Sotomayor's membership in the Latino civil rights organization La Raza, which he called the "Latino KKK." Of course, Tancredo didn't seem to have any problem with La Raza backing George W. Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, who at one time was being floated as a possible Bush SCOTUS nominee.

But who cares about consistency when you have white folks to scare and money to collect? And after all, who cares if the GOP alienates Latinos and women with their snarky, smug, and condescending questions, including Sen. Tom Coburn telling Sotomayor in a broad Ricky Ricardo accent that "She got some 'splainin' to do"? Who really needs the fastest-growing group of voters in the country (not to mention women)? Yeah, good plan.

Enjoy your minority status, guys. It looks like you're going to keep it for a while.

The Good Americans at FreeRepublic

Racial slurs directed at Obama children:

"A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion."

These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative 'Free Republic' blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama's 11-year-old daughter Malia after she was photographed wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.

The thread was accompanied by a photo of Michelle Obama speaking to Malia that featured the caption, "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds."

Though this may sound like the sort of thing one might read on an Aryan Nation or white power website, they actually appeared on what is commonly considered one of the prime online locations for U.S. Conservative grassroots political discussion and organizing - and for a short time, the comments seemed to have the okay of site administrators.

Moderators of the blog left the comments - and commenters - in place until a complaint was lodged by a writer doing research on the conservative movement, almost a full day later.

"Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?" wrote one commenter.

"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps," wrote another.

But it's okay, don't you see? It's okay to call an 11 year old girl "ghetto trash" and "street whore" because David Letterman made a lame joke about 18 year old Bristol Palin.

But, of course, it's still not acceptable to say what Letterman said, which was still the WORST THING EVER SAID ABOUT ANYONE EVER (and a perfectly good reason for Palin to resign).

Likewise, it's okay to publish racist comments about "monkey sounds" because Sonia Sotomayor admits that being Latina had an effect on her life. But it's still not okay for Sotomayor to say that because that makes her THE WORST BIGOT EVER.

Wingnut logic.

The New Theme Of Right WIng Racism

Tancredo Claims Sotomayor In "Latino KKK"

Former GOP Congressman Tom 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?

Well it tells me that Tancredo's a lying sack of shit for one thing. That's not the "logo" for La Raza. The motto of the group is actually ""Strengthening America by promoting the advancement of Latino families."

It also tells me Tancredo's a hypocrite, since he was notably silent when La Raza (actually, the nation's largest civil rights organization for Latinos) endorsed George Dubbya Bush's pick for Attorney General, namely Alberto Gonzales.

But Tancredo's attitude is a shining example of the new and improved right wing racism, which holds that it's okay, sort of, to be black or Latino, so long as you don't ever act black or Latino, or ever mention being black or Latino, or ever admit that being black or Latino has an effect on your life and your world view. And for God's sake don't ever belong to any Black or Latino church or organization. Oh, and I almost forgot: don't ever have the effrontery to ask that your name be pronounced correctly. Then it's YOU who's the "real racist."

As it turns out, however, someone's actually run some numbers on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's opinions, and, as usual, the facts have a well-known liberal bias:

Other than Ricci, Judge Sotomayor has decided 96 race-related cases while on the court of appeals.

Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous. (Many, by the way, were procedural victories rather than judgments that discrimination had ccurred.) Of those 9, in 7, the unanimous panel included at least one Republican-appointed judge. In the one divided panel opinion, the dissent’s point dealt only with the technical question of whether the criminal defendant in that case had forfeited his challenge to the jury selection in his case. So Judge Sotomayor rejected discrimination-related claims by a margin of roughly 8 to 1.

I'll put those numbers up against one offhand, out of context quote any day.

But, you know, don't let the facts get in the way. You've got a base to placate here, even if it drives a bigger wedge between the Republican party and Latinos, not to mention women. I mean, when you automatically assume a Latino woman is an "affirmative action" pick on the day she's nominated, I don't see how you're going to gain much ground calling anyone else racist.

Enjoy that minority status, boys. Looks like you're fixin' to hang onto it a while.