Tuesday, May 26, 2009

And So to My Oar...

Well, we kind of expected this. Sonia Sotomayor is going to be the next Supreme Court justice.

I know, I know, she's only been nominated. She still needs to be confirmed.

There is no doubt that the Republican'ts are going to try and paint the nastiest, most scary librul picture of her that they can. But they're not going to block this. They don't have the votes and there's no way in hell they're going to filibuster a Hispanic female nominee unless there was proof that she did something really really heinous. Crikey, Clarence Thomas got in and he had credible sexual harassment allegations against him, not to mention a pretty unspectacular legal career up to that point.

So it'll get ugly. And you'll hear the following phrases over and over until you want to jam knitting needles into your ears to make the pain stop. (Yes, stop.)

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
---Sonia Sotomayor


And...

“[A] court of appeals is where policy is made.”
---Sonia Sotomayor

Oh no! Identity politics and judicial activism! Run for the hills! We need more "strict constructionists" who think that corporations have more rights than individuals and that only certain people have the rights that were supposedly endowed on us all by our "creator" even as they mock-venerate the framers of the constitution.

Please. She's not perfect. But she'll be fine.

I do have concerns about how long she'll be able to serve. She's only 54, not much older than John Roberts but she has diabetes, which could conceivably knock 15 to 20 years off her life. Roberts could still be messing up our lives for 30 or 40 more years. My freaking mortgage will be paid off by then.

I'm not thrilled to pieces. But it's a good start for BO's SCOTUS picks. And Elena Kagan will be ready when near-nonagenarian John Paul Stevens either kicks the bucket or hangs up his hat at some point in the next few years.

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