Please, Please Filibuster Sotomayor
At the gym this morning I could not help but notice that corpulent right wing fuck Karl Rove (that's actually his official title) on Fox "News" going on about the possibility of a filibuster against Sonia Sotomayor.
To which I say, paraphrasing the words of Mr. Rove's former boss, bring it the fuck on.
Please GOP, filibuster a woman of Puerto Rican descent, who grew up in the projects in the Bronx, yet managed to attend Princeton and Yale Law School. Sotomayor worked as a federal prosecutor and corporate attorney before getting appointed to the federal bench by Bush 41, and then served on the Court of Appeals for ten years after Clinton elevated her to the Second Circuit. She is clearly well qualified and her appontment would be a milestone. But hey, filibuster away.
This is just what the Republican base wants and I would hate to see them deprived of the opportunity of denying this woman a seat on the high court.
Let this happen and then Obama should make a priority of passing comprehensive immigration reform. The Republicans can then spend the next twenty years seeing if they can crack the 40% mark in presidential elections.
How long ago was it that the Republicans were loudly asserting that filibustering a Supreme Court nominee was unconstitutional?
Posted by: oddjob | May 26, 2009 at 08:08 AM
Fox "News"
Its actual title, too.
Yeah, I'm ready for the GOP to throw away the Hispanic vote for the next several election cycles. Huckabee's led off already by calling her "Maria" Sotomayor. I guess he thinks all Hispanic women are named Maria.
Anyhow, I'm glad to see Obama nominate her, and for another reason besides my reasons to believe she'll be a good Justice. After the smear campaign directed at her, Obama's choosing her anyway indicates that he's not going to be scared away by the sort of bullshit that's been going around.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | May 26, 2009 at 08:14 AM
I guess he thinks all Hispanic women are named Maria.
Maybe Huckabee just met a girl with that name.
Posted by: Stephen | May 26, 2009 at 08:17 AM
And suddenly that name . . .
Ah, sooner or later it always comes back to show tunes with you pinkos.
l-t c,
I'm really glad he picked her for the same reason. I think it shows a willingness to fight when the fight makes strategic sense.
Posted by: Sir Charles | May 26, 2009 at 08:24 AM
It wasn't long ago that the DEMOCRATS were using the filibuster against Supreme Court nominees. IT WAS REPUBLICANS WHO TRIED TO END FILIBUSTERING, BUT THEIR EFFORTS WERE KILLED BY LIBERALS IN BOTH PARTIES.
It's the DEMS who like filibustering nominees, this time they can eat it.
It's disgusting... all this talk about filibustering a "hispanic" nominee. That's because whenever a Democrat President nominates a minority everyone better just shut up. No one say one word. AND GOD HELP YOU IF YOU QUESTION THEIR JUDGEMENT... unless you're Clarence Thomas.
Posted by: CHRIS | May 26, 2009 at 08:39 AM
...conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru has announced that Sotomayor is "Obama's Harriet Miers."
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: oddjob | May 26, 2009 at 08:40 AM
Ta-Nehisi had a pretty good take on it this morning: "one thing that's clear to me, is that this notion that Obama won't fight, really doesn't hold up. He sometimes doesn't fight for things that we want him to fight for. But he isn't afraid."
Via Benen, Mark Halperin says the GOP's going to decide that discretion is the better part of valor, and not really fight this one. Regardless of his role in reflecting and helping to define the Beltway CW, I just don't see that the base will allow them to go quietly on Sotomayor - and besides, the GOP Congressional delegation includes plenty of people who are perfect reflections of the crazier parts of their base.
I think she'll get confirmed by a safely filibuster-proof margin, but the GOP will still fling plenty of poo that will mostly wind up sticking to them.
And in the unlikely event that they were able to successfully filibuster her, Obama would be free to choose a genuine liberal firebrand in her stead, because the GOP would have already cried 'wolf,' and nobody would be able to tell that they really meant it this time.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | May 26, 2009 at 08:48 AM
Chris, you would be in a much better position to make your case if the GOP hadn't spent the last 40 years specifically championing the notion of white bigots as victims of bigotry, no?
Posted by: oddjob | May 26, 2009 at 09:04 AM
Sen. Hatch is already on the record about getting agita from a Sotomayor nomination.
Posted by: oddjob | May 26, 2009 at 09:06 AM
BUT THEIR EFFORTS WERE KILLED BY LIBERALS IN BOTH PARTIES.
This is factually incorrect. The Democrats who participated in that effort were conservatives and moderates.
Posted by: oddjob | May 26, 2009 at 09:08 AM
CHRIS,
You don't seem to understand my point -- I am inviting your right wing brethren to filibuster Judge Sotomayor. I come not to bury the filibuster but to praise it.
Actually, I thought the Dems should have taken the Republicans up on ending the filibuster (not that the GOP would have actually gone through with it). The filibuster has been used against progressives far more than we have been willing to use it. Senate Republicans have made it a routine aspect of their day to day activites rather than as a tactic to be used sparingly. Ban the filibuster and we can achieve full blown socialism in a matter of weeks. Or is it fascism we are after? -- I can't keep track anymore. Whatever Obama wants, it's okay with me.
And what the fuck is it with you people and the CAPS LOCK? It really is evocative of some syndrome that should appear in the DSM.
Posted by: Sir Charles | May 26, 2009 at 10:25 AM
Not only will the GOP piss off Hispanics by protesting Sotomayor, they will drive more women, other minorities (Blacks, Asians, Native Americans), all 2nd generation immigrants, urban people, folks who "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" , etc. permanently away from the GOP.
Idiots.
Posted by: CParis | May 26, 2009 at 10:31 AM
How long ago was it that the Republicans were loudly asserting that filibustering a Supreme Court nominee was unconstitutional?
2005. Media Matters has the the fun here. Notice McConnell and "Diapers" Vitter.
Posted by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle | May 26, 2009 at 10:59 AM
The Philadelphia torture apologist doesn't like her.
Hat tip, TPM.
Posted by: oddjob | May 26, 2009 at 12:30 PM
oddjob,
Haven't they disbarred that asshole yet?
The nerve of John Yoo, the ultimate results oriented whore, presuming to question Sotomayor's intellectual firepower. Unbelievable.
Posted by: Sir Charles | May 26, 2009 at 12:41 PM
oh, for dog's sake. yoo is weighing in? disbarment takes a while, but seriously, dude needs to just shut up already.
and rove, too. damn, what does it take to retire these people? well, a failed fillibuster might help.
Posted by: kathy a. | May 26, 2009 at 07:52 PM
...This is the same man whose own legal memos were of such poor quality they forced an investigation from the Justice Department's internal watchdog. How painful is it when they remove these people's sense of shame?
Posted by: oddjob | May 26, 2009 at 09:16 PM
apparently, shame removal is a painless procedure [or possibly unnecessary, for congenital reasons] for some folks. your mileage may vary.
Posted by: kathy a. | May 26, 2009 at 09:36 PM
Conservatives practice the type of affirmative action they blame on liberals. There's race/gender-based AA, like with Michael Steele at the RNC and the other blatant tokens in the GOP. Then there's the far more common ideological AA, like when the CPA in Iraq was run by Heritage interns.
Thing is, conservatives have gamed this country's systems so well that liberal and allegedly liberal institutions practice it as well. The aforementioned Yoo at the Inqy and UC Berkeley, the parade of failure on the NYT oped page, Clarence Thomas in everything he's ever done, Condi Rice at Stanford, and of course the crown prince of failing upward, George W. Bush. Conservatives simply get away with a lot more mediocrity and outright failure than liberals because of a combination of lowered expectations and the bloodthirsty hordes they unleash whenever something is deemed too "liberal."
That's not to say that liberals are exempt from this, because class-based AA is the strongest, most common type of affirmative action there is, as so many Democrats regularly show.
Posted by: Stephen | May 26, 2009 at 09:43 PM
the parade of failure on the NYT oped page, Clarence Thomas in everything he's ever done, Condi Rice at Stanford, and of course the crown prince of failing upward, George W. Bush.
OMG,did anyone else cast eyes on Douthat's trainwreck of a column yesterday? OMG, OMG, OMG...it's as though he started a typical scolding, borderline women-hating/fearing screed, then took a few hours off to wash his car, then came back and started another column in the same column, then took another break to run to the grocery store, then came back and started a third column within the column within the column, the end result of which was a giant douchebag-shaped snake with its head engulfed by its ass. Pitiful.
Conservatives simply get away with a lot more mediocrity and outright failure than liberals because of a combination of lowered expectations and the bloodthirsty hordes they unleash whenever something is deemed too "liberal."
Also, they are just stupid in general and are thus more comfortable around people and things that don't require them to think too much. They actually prefer mediocrity over challenge, in other words.
Posted by: litbrit | May 27, 2009 at 03:06 AM
D.
I read Douthat's column with quiet astonishment. Not that these aren't sentiments he's expressed before, but Jesus Christ, there they are on the NY Times editorial page. The major premise in the article I believe is that women are unhappy with the size of Ross's unit, because they have gone and sampled the loins of others. Or maybe that's just my interpretation.
Anyway, he remains a laughable prude and prig -- that he graces the pages of our nation's most prestigious daily is surely a sign of the dminished expectations that one is required to have of conservative voices. Amanda dismantled him of course.
Posted by: Sir Charles | May 27, 2009 at 07:03 AM
I subscribe to the Times daily, and I've never seen a Douthat column on the editorial or op-ed page. I think he's online only.
Posted by: henderstock | May 27, 2009 at 11:03 AM