The Sotomayor SCOTUS Week In Review

now threatens to overshadow the actual discussion of Sotomayor’s record.
What discussion would that be? Why discuss her record when we have out of context quotes and YouTube?

Michael Scherer:
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her comment that minority women might be “better” at deciding cases than white men
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So…we’ve coalesced around this interpretation of her remarks, i.e. President Gingrich’s? I knew it…
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OK, I’ll re-ask my question from your last thread, then:
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Has anybody asked Sonia Sotomayor what she meant by “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.“?
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Has anybody asked her whether she meant
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A) “…her experience as a person of a particular sex and ethnic background will make her a better judge than a person of another sex and a different ethnic background!” [President Gingrich's interpretation]
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B) someone with her quality and volume of experiences will be enabled to reach better conclusions than someone who hasn’t had that experience –even though that inexperienced person may be an otherwise wise white male
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or C) something else?
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If not, why do you think that is, Michael Scherer?
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Isn’t it the decent thing to do when someone makes an unclear remark just to ask the person what they meant by it before expending barrelfulls of ink and quarks of electrons on interpreting what that person was trying to say?

“This intraparty sideshow, with all its hot-button pressure points, now threatens to overshadow the actual discussion of Sotomayor’s record. And while that may not be the same as a cure for cancer or a nuclear free North Korea, it’s certainly a development that the White House welcomes.”
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I certainly hope so Micheal. After all, I seem to remember for quite a while the very mention of that selfsame “soft spot” the GOP has was met with reletnlentless silence on the part of you and your peers.
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Now that it is in fashion, and the wind is blowing in a direction that doesn’t bode well for the practice of Southern Strategy, are you planning on becoming a champion of Civil Rights?
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As far as it goes, MS, I’ll take it, and then some. Good riddence and let’s hope the next time conservatives try to “reinvent” themselves, they do it without resorting to racial hatred and fear.
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And next time, maybe you and your peers should look at what’s right, not just which way the wind is blowing, and help make sure they don’t stray down that path again!

Drum wrote this the day of the announcement, and it’s still the best thing I’ve read on the subject:
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Supreme Court Kabuki Watch
By Kevin Drum | Tue May 26, 2009 10:38 PM PST
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The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is only 12 hours old and I’m already sick of it. Conservatives, who seem constitutionally incapable of viewing any non-white nominee as anything other than identity politics run wild, have already decided she’s just a crass affirmative action hire. Out of a decade-long appelate court career, the only opinion of hers they seem to have heard of, or care about, is Ricci. And unlike all the middle class white guys on the court, who are apparently paragons of race-blind rationality, they’re convinced that she’s just naturally going to be incapable of judging any case before her as anything other than a woman and a Hispanic.
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Not that it matters. We all know how this is going to play out. First, everyone is going to start looking for some dark secret in her background that will derail her nomination. That will probably fail. Then she’ll testify before the Senate, and everyone will ask what she thinks of Roe and Casey and Kelo. She’ll dutifully claim that she’s never even heard of these cases, and on the off chance that any of them ring a bell, she’ll sing the usual song about how it would be improper to say anything about any matter that might come before the court in the future. Which is everything. After a few weeks of this, all the Democrats and maybe a dozen or so Republicans will vote to confirm her and she’ll join the court in time for the fall term.
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It’s all so tedious. So instead of going though with it, why don’t we just pretend we did all this, confirm her tomorrow, and then get back to something important, like fighting a couple of wars, trying to rescue the world economy, creating a national healthcare plan, and stopping global warming?

So in other words, a win for the White House? They introduce a competent, moderate candidate and watch the right turn into a pack of ravening ghouls. Again.
Seems like sound strategy to me.
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But really, what jcapan said. Is the media ever going to get tired of all this endless dumbf*ckery?

“Is the media ever going to get tired of all this endless dumbf*ckery?”
No. Not as long as the dumf*ck republicans provide the media with an endless supply of faux outrage. I would like to propose one thought. Even the MSM might be so disillusioned with the republican party as it stands today that they are reporting on everything they say which does seem to be alienating increasing numbers of voters. We claim the MSM is giving them unwarranted coverage, but maybe they’re just as interested in killing their party as we are. After all, the death of a major party would be BIG news for years.

I honestly don’t really care how well the nomination fight is going, as far as gauging whether she’ll go through or not.
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The fact of the matter is I’m finding it painfully hard to actually find out anything substantial about her, her judicial views, her rulings, etc., because the nomination has become a giant excuse to indulge and amplify the absolute worst things about the damn political discourse in this country, courtesy of the ReLimbaughcans. That’s the thing that honestly makes me weep and wish this would all just go away.
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Is it too much to ask for actual arguments on the issues of merit, rather than clipping comments out of context, cries of ‘reverse racism’ while using nakedly racist language, and nakedly ugly sexism? Please? Is that just too much to ask these days?
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And this is aimed to you, MS, and the media as a whole, as much as it’s aimed at the Tancredos, Rosens, Gingriches, and Limbaughs, because it’s your job to call these people on these things, and I’m not seeing terribly much of that.

“But really, what jcapan said. Is the media ever going to get tired of all this endless dumbf*ckery?”
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Endless D-F, amen to that, although note: it’s what Drum said. And I’m of the mind that there’s plenty of said dumbf*ckery to spread around. It’s the vehicular currency/lingua franca in my native DC metro, but they’ve hardly cornered the mkt.

Newt’s a piker. THIS is how you do it.
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Today on his radio show Rush Limbaugh claimed that Barack Obama is making white people the new oppressed minority. He said, “How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration, by hating white people.”
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http://www.politicususa.com/en/Limbaugh-Racism
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I can hardly wait to see what week 2 brings!

PNNTO: Thank you for using piker.

I was raised old school sacred.

That brought a smile.

sacredh – I think you might have a point. Every time they say, “Let’s hear from Newt Gingrich!” they might just be trying to give the right more rope to hang itself with.
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But, given how much they de-emphasize and refuse to acknowledge, I’m doubtful that this is the case.

Cliff – Considering how much they strained and insisted on framing Cheney’s media blitz as a “debate” on National Security between Obama and Cheney, I’m honestly convinced that they’re not waiting for the right wing to hang themselves. The rope they’re giving Cheney, Gingrich, Tancredo, Limbaugh, etc. is to tie up a hostage media suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

Ditto on the piker praise–I’d add Prat, Twat, Wanker, Bugger and a 4-letter word starting with C that my Aussie mates use in ways/and a frequency that makes me blush. Further Aussie slags: Gronk, Grommit, Feral, Bogan, and perhaps the gravest of insults: Pom (i.e. someone from England). Drinking with such blokes is quite an education, suffice it to say. And they just “love” Yanks.

“a strategy that is sure to increase skepticism for the GOP from Hispanic voters.”
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Michael-I not sure why you are limiting this to just Hispanic voters.
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With respect to how important a voting block the Hispanic votes are. I think the GOP is doing tremendous damage to its reputation among a wide myriad of minority groups as well as women and accomplished professional women. Plus the optics of this is just awful for the GOP with the visuals of most of the attack messengers seeming to older white men. Minorities watching this unfold are going to start to wonder at what point does the GOP turn on them.

Gunny makes an excellent pt. The optics in particular–a la the Johnny Mac convention. It was as if they were filming at Augusta National in the ’50s.

Oy.
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jc and sacred on the topic of words-when I was young and would whine “When are we going to eat?” my mom would always say “Getting peckish?” which I always understood to mean hungry. She told me, many years later, that she meant it as a way to tease me using the word as meaning cranky.
I had no idea of the other meaning.
Of course these were the same parents who when asked why Lawrence Welk “talks so funny” told us “Everyone from North Dakota sounds like that”

Cliff: I think about what’s going a great deal and I’m truly happy the republican party is going under. It’s easy to write them off as just being crazy and/or stupid, but as much as we enjoy ripping on the MSM, the media isn’t uniformly an unintelligent lot. There has to be more going on. The core of the republican party does seem to be uneducated, evangelical and biggoted. The MSM media isn’t. We’ve seen the republican party shrink at an alarming rate. McCain was a lousy candidate and Palin was a walking joke, but McCain won the nomination. He had the best chance of any of them. He got stomped. Palin was more popular than McCain. How on earth does that make sense? The media rightly gave Sarah all the rope she needed to hang herself. The media didn’t doom Palin. Palin doomed Palin. Even before 9/11 I was telling people at work that the evangelicals were eventually going to cause a huge a backlash in the republican party. Even then, I didn’t see them gaining the kind of influence they have now. Not all evangelicals are stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but there are far more uneducated bigots among them than is healthy for any outfit outside of the Klan. As much as it pains me to say this, the MSM media on average is more intelligent than a representative sample of the people at large. If relatively uneducated people like me could see this coming, how could they possibly miss it? I am becoming more and more convinced that they’re helping the republican party to fail by just reporting on what they’re saying.

PNNTO, Peckish, wow, it sounds like things got pretty rough during your childhood!
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I always tell people that I learned all of my cursewords from my parents. I still remember my dad tossing a stubborn chainsaw down the hill, cursing in harmony to its lovely arc, his face a pulsating red mask. I learned so well from my elders that in 2nd grade, my teacher said my name should be “Jack Asser,” a play on my real name. That a 2nd grade teacher in the ’70s said such a thing, well, you can imagine the walls were being peeled with my F-bombs. Mind you, I wore that sobriquet like a badge of honor for years. Great shame of my life in Japan (bereft of the brutal slang of the west) is I can’t share my vulgarities, with the exception of other expats. Humor also doesn’t translate AT ALL here.

Not getting much play but I think General Petraeus is no longer going to be darling of the right.
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Gen. Petraeus: US violated Geneva Convention, the court of law could try terrorists: we made mistakes after 9/11: Close Gitmo
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Gen. Petraeus joined FOX News and Martha MacCallum today and gave a blockbuster interview, but probably not the one Fox expected. Once again, he called for the responsible closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also said that mistakes were made after 9/11 and that the Army Field Manual is all that we need to use to interrogate prisoners. In addition, he said that we have to have faith in our judicial system and we should try the Khalid Sheikh Muhammads in a court of law.
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MacCallum: Where do you think those people should go?
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Gen. Petraeus: Well, it’s not for a soldier to say. What I do support is what has been termed the responsible closure of Gitmo. Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activity since 9/11 and again Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.
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MacCallum: What about the concern that a Khalid Sheikh Muhammad or anybody of that ilk might be tried here in a US court and the possibility that some of the treatments that were used on them that they could go free.
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Gen. Petraeus: Well, first of all, I don’t think we should be afraid of our values we’re fighting for, what we stand for. And so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to operationalize them in how we carry out what it is we’re doing on the battlefield and everywhere else. So one has to have some faith, I think, in the legal system. One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.
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MacCallum: So you’re confident that they will never go free.
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Gen. Petraeus: I hope that’s the case.
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MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)
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Gen. Petraeus: ….T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them — those techniques work, that’s our experience in this business.
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MacCallum: So is sending this signal that we’re not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?
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Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it’s important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.
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http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/gen-petraeus-believes-our-values-and-co

“my dad tossing a stubborn chainsaw down the hill, cursing in harmony to its lovely arc,” Ha-That’s impressively written.
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Gunny I hope Gen. Petraeus enjoyed his final visit to Fox. Look for the wingers to start with “Move On was right!”

Outside of the horrible conservative attacks on Sotomayor, the biggest head-scratcher of the week in this may have been the White House decision to apologize for the “Latina over white males” remark.

Why not just let whatever controversy that was there continue degenerating into the GOP’s problem, not the president’s?

http://www.political-buzz.com/

“…or C) something else?”
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C) Nobody’s perfect (in judging the law).
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and
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D) I hope that wider experience leads to better judgment.
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That’s why there’s nothing wrong with the “better” part, she was talking about experience generally, and her personal experience as a Latina, relative to that of a typical white male, was simply a metaphor. A very impolitic metaphor.

MS said ‘This intraparty sideshow … [is] … certainly a development that the White House welcomes.’
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Maybe or maybe not. Although watching the gopers fall apart politically may be entertaining, I suspect that Obama might rather have a few adults in the gop that he could deal with on policy. With this bunch of clowns it’s politics 24/7 — nothing but obstruction and wild, flailing political attacks.

You write: This intraparty sideshow [...] now threatens to overshadow the actual discussion of Sotomayor’s record.
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Stupid question: Is there a rule that the GOP must drive the media’s narrative? Could the media perform its own analysis? Are you only allowed to comment in reaction to GOP comments?
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From example: a Youtube video showing her joking about making policy from the bench
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What do *you* think this comment meant? Do you care what it actually meant? Or is the “frame” the only reality in D.C.?

“A very impolitic metaphor”
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Yes, in retrospect, circa end of May, 2009, we can deem it an unwise turn of phrase, however innocuous most of us think it is. And if she was self-aware of the trajectory her career was taking as early as 2001, then too. But in the context of the speech (on paper + audience/purpose + the setting–i.e. deviant hippy mecca) not at all. But she’s being forced to leave behind an arena of intellect, nuance, and context for a far different setting, Washington. Two often equally dumb contenders in a gladiator-style ring, with the MSM as ref. Good luck to her–I’m sure it’ll be quite the culture shock. At least it’s the SCOTUS for her, as opposed to those proud bastions of anti-intellectualism–Congress & the WH. But thus are the rewards of public service, in terms of the mind. It’s the conscious dumbing down to navigate chum-strewn waters of “dumbf@ckery”

“It’s the conscious dumbing down to navigate chum-strewn waters of ‘dumbf@ckery’”
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It’s White Male dumbf@ckery sir, and I won’t sit here and have you suggest that any other gender/race could surpass…oh, wait.

I am a moderate Democrat AND I am also a White Male that finds her comments offensive and insulting. Sotomayor needs to respect the founders who wrote the US Constitution that she is nominated to interpret. Every person who attended the Constitutional Convention was a WHITE MALE. Every signer to the US Constitution was a WHITE MALE. Everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence was a WHITE MALE. Sotomayors remarks on legislating from the bench is also disturbing. I do support that whether its a Liberal or Conservative Justice. Maybe I am in the wrong party…

MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)
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Gen. Petraeus: ….T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual

Yes only 3 of the 700 detainees were Waterboarded. Nothing inconsistent with that vs Petraeus comments above.

The pathetic excuses I see here for her offensive comments are laughable.
Pathetic self hating White Males .

Angry WHITE MAKE-check
Offended WHITE MALE-check
WHITE MALE comfortable with waterboarding-check
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Moderate Democrat? Is that you Senator Lieberman?

Moderate Democrat dencal26
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/house/democrats-predict-210-vote-vic.html
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EVERY SINGLE CASE of VOTE FRAUD since and including 2000 has been by Democrats. In fact Black Democrats to be precise. Sorry but these are the facts.
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Posted by: dencal26 | April 1, 2009 4:18 PM

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And here he is at newsweek.
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Posted By: Dencal26 (May 16, 2009 at 8:52 PM)
The problem for the left wing fools is the title of this article. Its not ” Cheneys” hideaway. It was built to protect Vice Presidents of the United States including the current knucklehead who revealed the existence of the bunker. I guess attacking Cheney is more important than keeping such a place secret for future Vice Presidents. When will this partisan hatred end? I hope Joe Biden never has to use this facility. Perhaps he can go to KATES Restaurant in Wilmington that closed 15 years ago.

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Oh and even here at the Swamp
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dencal26 Says:
Monday, February 23, 2009 at 8:53 am
Lets recap here
A Secretary of State who Obama himself said had no foriegn policy experience
A Tax Cheat for Treasury
A revolving door of Tax Cheats for Nominees
A CIA chief that has less experience than Austin Powers. Is Leon still looking for the Telephone Booth Entrance to CIA?
A so called Stimulus Bill filled with Pork and massive spending that won’t stimulate anything but Chris Matthews Leg
Hillary begging China to lend us more money
Ruling by the DOJ that holding detainees in Bagram Airbase without charges is perfectly legal
Ruling by the Obama Pentagon that GITMO does in fact meet all requirements of Geneva.
Obama signing executive order in support of Rendition ( Sending terrorists to 3rd party nations to get tortured)
The most massive spending bill in in History
Deficit is up 800% since Dems took House and Senate in 2007
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Americans will wake up soon.

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LOL Are you even trying wingnut?

SG!! Nice job. I was thinking dencal26 was sort of a 3rd stringer. Fill in for the weekend.

Now for why I really came here, Tagube has been tracked down and he is denying the Telegraph’s reporting.
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/30/taguba/
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May 30, 2009 | Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba denied reports that he has seen the prisoner-abuse photos that President Obama is fighting to keep secret, in an exclusive interview with Salon Friday night.
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On Thursday an article in the Daily Telegraph reported that Taguba, the lead investigator into Abu Ghraib abuse, had seen images Obama wanted suppressed, and supported the president’s decision to fight their release. The paper quoted Taguba as saying, “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.”
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But Taguba says he wasn’t talking about the 44 photographs that are the subject of an ongoing ACLU lawsuit that Obama is fighting.
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“The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen,” Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said — but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.

Holy Cow! If that’s the way moderate democrats think, I’m either Che or Jesus Christ.

Jesus Cherist?

I was taken by surprise. My tiara and feather boa hit the floor. The mascara’s running and my lipstick’s smudged. I am not amused by the thought that us manly democrats are any less virile just because we support a fellow woman. These gender bender weekends need fine tuning. What kind of razor should I use when I shave my ass?

I shouldn’t make fun of moderate democrats. If there are any real ones out there, I apologize. Two snark posts in a row. I’m on a roll.

I was taken by surprise. My tiara and feather boa hit the floor. The mascara’s running and my lipstick’s smudged. I am not amused by the thought that us manly democrats are any less virile just because we support a fellow woman. These gender bender weekends need fine tuning. What kind of razor should I use when I shave my ass?
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I just want you to know that I will NEVER get that mental image out of my head and my attorneys will be contacting you. That is all.

I just don’t understand why wingnuts come with that kind of weaksauce. Who the hell did he think was going to buy that he was a “moderate Democrat”?! I think even Ben Nelson would have told him to shut the f*ck up.
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Anybody ever heard of a liberal faking like a con at a con site?

Anybody ever heard of a liberal faking like a con at a con site?
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Sure Sg, but you need a long hot shower afterwards. Or your favorite intoxicant just to get the thoughts out of your head.

“Anybody ever heard of a liberal faking like a con at a con site?”
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I don’t know that they are liberal but I’ve never bought that Coulter, Limbaugh or Malkin believe a word they say. Capitalist performance artists.

yutsano
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Really? What was it like? Realize I am not talking about just commenting or trolling a con site. I am talking about yelling out “I am pretty conservative Republican but I happen to believe that President Obama is better than Reagan.” Have you pulled that kind of thing off? If so I gotta give you props.

Have you pulled that kind of thing off? If so I gotta give you props.
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You can’t get away with it for long, the vast majority of con sites are monitored way too heavily. Plus the term “moderate” is a dirty word to them.

In defense of my actions, I thought I was coming across like a dimwitted Nazi. I thought that I’d get called out for being so outrageous after a couple of posts. I think I got to about a hundred before they finally figured out that I was making fun of them. To give you an idea of what my posts were like, imagine that spob got fired by a blackman, raped by a gang of Arabs and beat up by lesbian. Then imagine what his posts would be like. That was me.

I was posting as a patriotic right winger.

Hey! I finally got a comment stuck in moderation. I’ve wondered what I’d have to say to get censored. Now I know. Since my life is now complete, I’m going to go to bed and read.

lol gnite sacredh

I like that. “Excuse me, gentlemen, I love war crimes and strip mining mountains as much as the next red-blooded American, but I have to say, Obama is all right in my book.”
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Wouldn’t work, they’d spot you at the “Excuse me, gentlemen”

SZ: (Sorry for interrupting MS’s thread). I’m sure people would LOVE to ask Sotomayor what she meant by those words. And I’m also sure she will be asked — probably many, many, many times — at her confirmation hearings. But what happens when someone gets nominated to the Supreme Court is that they are put under the tightest wraps possible. You will see pictures on the teevee of her going in and out of congressional offices to make calls on the Senators Who Matter. But you are not going to hear from her until her hearings. Not a peep.

re: pg. 2 #5 – Karen Tumulty Says:
Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 7:01 am

SZ: (Sorry for interrupting MS’s thread). I’m sure people would LOVE to ask Sotomayor what she meant by those words.

I keep seeing this sentiment being expressed, and I just can’t figure out what the heck is being said. It’s pellucidly clear what she meant by those words, if you simply read the phrase in context of what she actually, fully, said. Or am I missing something ?

KT:
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Thanks for weighing in.
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I’m sure people would LOVE to ask Sotomayor what she meant by those words.
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When Sarah Palin didn’t take interviews –was kept under the tightest wraps possible– it was openly suggested by political/media personalities that there was something wrong with her nomination because of that policy. In other words, there were consequences enforced on the nominee, because that avoidance was generally considered inappropriate by the political press corps.
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I think that it’s generally accepted by the political press corps that the nominee doesn’t have to answer questions until the hearing. That’s why she will be allowed to exist “under wraps” with no political consequences for the administration, unlike other similar circumstances involving handlers denying access. Who came up with that rule? How does that rule serve the public interest?
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you are not going to hear from her until her hearings
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The unfortunate problem with that is that the Senators are the worst possible questioners on earth. These hearings have proven in practice to be the worst setting possible for doing anything other than providing stupid, boring theater designed to conceal that decisions are made in back rooms –with the press dutifully going along with the charade.
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There is almost nothing worse for getting to the truth of any matter that I can think of than a Senate hearing –except, paradoxically, a total absence of hearings.
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“Not a peep until the hearing” effectively means “no information for the public until their betters figure out what they want to do, and then put on a puppet show for the rubes”, doesn’t it, KT?

henqiguai:
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I don’t think that it’s pellucidly clear, but then again I might be a moron. It seems that her statement is unclear enough to political reporters for them to refute President Gingrich’s characterizations of it.
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Imagine that she had said “I have owned many dogs in my lifetime.“, and President Gingrich used his enormous bully pulpit to claim “She has clearly said that she owned many slaves in her lifetime. She’s obviously a racist and unfit for the court. How can she get away with this? Damned Liberal Media…”
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In that theoretical case, her statements would be pellucidly clear enough for there not to be reports like these:

The White House hit back at Newt Gingrich on Wednesday for a twitter post made by the former House Speaker accusing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor of being a racist.
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Early on Wednesday, Gingrich put up a post on twitter rapping Sotomayor for saying that she had owned many slaves in her lifetime.

“Imagine a judicial nominee said “I have owned many slaves”

We wouldn’t imagine that this would be the outcome, right henqiguai? If it were that clear from the original statement that the nominee was talking about dogs and not human beings, a reporter couldn’t possibly write an article in which the falsity of President Gingrich’s characterization wasn’t in the piece. A reader would never be allowed to walk away from pieces about “Gingrich rapping Sotomayor” for saying she had supported slavery without being told that she had never said anything like that.
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But if you look at the coverage, it’s stenographing the claims of all parties. Readers are given the quote that the Republicans want them to see, given the Republican characterization of what Sotomayor meant by that quote, some “She’s really great, we swear!“-style defenses that don’t refute Gingrich’s interpretation, and maybe a little more from Sotomayor’s remarks that doesn’t serve to clarify anything.
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It’s a far cry from something like:

The White House hit back at Newt Gingrich on Wednesday for a twitter post made by the former House Speaker accusing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor of being a racist.
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Early on Wednesday, Gingrich put up a post on twitter rapping Sotomayor for saying that she had owned many slaves in her lifetime.

“Imagine a judicial nominee said “I have owned many slaves”

In the remarks to which the former Speaker of the House refers, Judge Sotomayor did not in fact claim to have owned slaves, and in fact claimed that she owned dogs, unlike Gingrich’s characterizations.

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That would be pellucidly clear.
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…But it’s not, so it would be helpful if some human being possessing an interest in the truth could ask somebody with appropriate knowledge of Sonia Sotomayor whether she meant:

A) “…her experience as a person of a particular sex and ethnic background will make her a better judge than a person of another sex and a different ethnic background!” [President Gingrich's interpretation]
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B) someone with her quality and volume of experiences will be enabled to reach better conclusions than someone who hasn’t had that experience –even though that inexperienced person may be an otherwise wise white male
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C) Nobody’s perfect (in judging the law)/I hope that wider experience leads to better judgment.
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D) Something else

And then we would have either Newt Gingrich publicly confirmed as a legitimate crusader for racial equality, or exposed as an execrable charlatan willing to accuse others of racism in the service of political opportunism.

SZ: I enjoy your posts, but putting President in front of Gingrich is tantamount to screaming “FIRE!” in a crowded theater. It is inciting terror amoung the populace. It’s like having Sarah Palin and “launch codes” in the same sentence.

re: pg. 2 #8 – stuartzechman Says:
Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 10:23 am
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SZ, moron you’re not. I, on the other hand, tend to be a bit literal which may come across, sometimes, as a bit moronic. I also try to understand what the heck is being said to/at me which means maybe taking a few seconds to consider the words and context presented before reacting; especially in circumstances such as a Supreme Court nominee’s comments.
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Perhaps I’m ‘guilty’ of filtering such comments through my own life’s experiences, but even before I saw the full context of her comment, I knew exactly what she was implying. And it’s not like her implication is all that uncommon in American public discourse. That’s why I expressed the mild confusion over the (very, very) false outrage and confusion concerning the comment.
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It seems that her statement is unclear enough to political reporters for them to refute President Gingrich’s characterizations of it.

If those so-called ‘political reporters’ are that uncritical, gullible, or stupid they should not be so employed. Part of my problem, and one that I freely acknowledge, is my impatience, if not outright contempt and disdain, for such false outrage and blatant stupidity (with regards to both the originators of such crap as well as their enablers; e.g. those aforementioned ‘political reporters’).
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Or am I too literally reading your comments and simply misunderstanding you ?

The lack of background being provided behind her ‘controversial’ quote is the real sin of ommission in this entire discussion.
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She was invited to speak at a memorial lecture specifically on the topic of diversity on the bench and in courtrooms in general. The subject of how background and heritage might affect decisions from the bench was the topic under discussion
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She gave a lengthy speech on the subject but the only way they could hang her for an inappropriate statement was to slice it not just out of the paragraph it appeared in, but to chop the sentence itself in half in order to excise the phrase “I would hope”.
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The fact that this isn’t explained in absolutely every story discussing the subject is solid evidence that the media is utterly uninterested in truth if it interferes with the outrage and controversy that is their bread and butter.
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Even when the coverage is sympathetic to the candidate it’s only centered around questions as to whether her critics have gone too far
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If you ask me, the whole process is downright disgusting.

Two comments here:
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1.
It’s obviously clear that she did not say that as a member of ‘la Raza’ she was better than a white maan. She did not qualify the words ‘white man’ well enough, though to make that clear in one sentance.
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What she really meant was that her background gave her better insight into what effects laws have on the average American than do those white men with a high income background that typically populate the bench.
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And as a white* man, I can understand, and even agree with what she said.
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2.
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As far as this brouhaha has unfolded, I think that if one harks back to the Wright thing, the GOP is really doing us a favor by innoculating us politically against the confirmation hearings themselves. To wit:
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None of this will be “new news” capable, by itself, of capturing the news cycle.
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All of this will become a political liability for those congresscritters on the right who go too far with this at the hearings.
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With this “pseudo confirmation” being tried in the media, the answers, and questions, will already be vetted for impact and political utility.
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The benefit? The hearings will be more of a ritual then anything else.
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*there is no “white”. I’m Norweigan. My history doesn’t accrue to some other “white” individual such as say, someome of Frankish descent.

“the whole process is downright disgusting”
It’s also typical. When you can only come up with a talking point that has little basis in fact, your only option is to distort what was actually said and take it out of context. They’re just creating another false controversy in the hopes that their version will be accepted as the truth. They keep building houses of cards and keep being surprised when it eventually gets blown over. Sotomayor will take them apart during the confirmation hearings, so they’re trying to stir up enough faux outrage that she won’t make it to the hearings. Unless they can up with a smoking gun that has an actual basis in fact, they’ll lose. This is just a diversion to keep their hopes alive while they look for something real.

*there is no “white”. I’m Norweigan.
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There’s a very funny Lutheran joke in there screaming to get out, but I’m too tired to find it right now. It’ll show up (on another thread out of context?) after I get a nap.

FT: I might need you to say a little prayer for me after you’ve had your nap. I’ve had my life threatened and claims of selective dismemberment made agaist me.

Paul Dirks @11:19 (I’d use numbers if I could see them!) has this exactly right. The purpose of the meeting where the speech was given was to discuss the topic of diversity on the bench. Snipping a phrase out of a paragraph and letting that rule the discussion shows how bankrupt the press has become. No attempts at context.

her comment that minority women might be “better” at deciding cases than white men
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That’s not what she said. She said a minority woman might be “better” at deciding cases dealing specifically with matters of racial discrimination or gender discrimination than white men. How on earth is that controversial?
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And while the media and the Republicans are focused on that one badly-out-of-context quote, maybe we could take the time to look at her actual record on these matters?
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From Tom Goldstein at SCOTUS Blog:
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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 occurred.) 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.
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Repeat: She rejected discrimination claims by a margin of 8-to-1.

kevin: In order for the right wing to even consider her a good candidate, she would have had to reject every claim of discrimination AND never have made the comment about being a Latina woman. The way they look at the world is that only conservative white men can be impartial.

Clearly, the media has only one goal in mind and that is to instigate another knock down drag out fight to entertain the masses. I like to think it’s just an outward manifestation of their inability to mature beyond the high school level, but who are we kidding they are not the only ones glued to inside edition, tying up traffic to look at roadside calamities, and making California car chases manna from heaven. We have only ourselves to blame for the ridiculous state of the American media. If the country demanded more from them we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. The public has considered their ignorance blissful for a long time and journalists have been content to leave the public uneducated and easily manipulated.
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Say what you want about Senator Burris, whether he’s guilty of something or not, the most salient point of that drive by interview was the number of times the reporters let the question of whether they had read his affidavit go unanswered, before it became obvious that they hadn’t. This is the same problem here, too few pundits commenting on the speech or reporting on the controversy have actually read the speech in its entirety.
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Clearly, anyone who has read the speech and is neither a moron or incapable of critical thought would come away thinking that there is anything controversial or inappropriate about this speech. Perhaps the media will someday see its role as arbiter of the facts but until such time we ought to do our own fact finding so we can dismiss this kind of faux outrage and move on to more substantive discussions.
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Oh and for the record, reading the speech is a good idea for pundits on both sides of the aisle. My advice to the next Democratic pundit who is responding to the right’s favorite retort denying a need for diversity — that 9 white men gave us brown vs the board of education — Sotomayor’s speech also reminds us that while white men can stretch themselves to understand what justice looks like to those outside of their circles, unless of course something in their background prevents them from doing so (Scalia immediately comes to mind), it took people of color and women arguing in the Supreme court, sharing the benefit of their unique perspectives on the facts before those 9 white men were able to come to understand discrimination based on race and gender. Have we forgotten that it took over 50 years before we knocked down Plessy? Justice delayed is justice denied and I for one am not willing to wait that long again for white guys to come around on the next major decision.

henqiguai:
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Thanks so much for your response.
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Or am I too literally reading your comments and simply misunderstanding you ?
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I think that, in the interests of making more than a single point about something complex, I’m not doing a terribly good job of communicating (as usual) –perhaps somewhat like Judge Sotomayor.
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SZ, moron you’re not.
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Sometimes I am, as has been proven repeatedly by my commentary in these threads.
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I, on the other hand, tend to be a bit literal which may come across, sometimes, as a bit moronic.
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I think that I’m being quite literal, in an effort to get at the truth of something that has heretofore remained unaddressed by everyone other than President Gingrich.
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I also try to understand what the heck is being said to/at me which means maybe taking a few seconds to consider the words and context presented before reacting; especially in circumstances such as a Supreme Court nominee’s comments.
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That renders you unfit to produce political reporting in the World Ruled by Drudge.
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Perhaps I’m ‘guilty’ of filtering such comments through my own life’s experiences, but even before I saw the full context of her comment, I knew exactly what she was implying.
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Hey, when I read the whole thing, I thought that it made sense, and that she wasn’t saying that her ethnicity and gender made her more fit for judgment on cases in and of themselves, but that a diversity of backgrounds constituting courts would lead to a more comprehensive understanding and application of the law. I didn’t get that from the sound-byte quote, however. In and of itself, without context, it seemed to suggest that European-American males would be more likely to come to the wrong conclusions in discrimination cases involving complaints from non-European-Americans or women –which is why President Gingrich ran with it. If she had meant this, it would have been a thoroughly disqualifying statement along the lines of:

“African-American judges should be appointed especially to preside over discrimination cases involving African-American plaintiffs, Latino judges should be appointed especially to preside over discrimination cases involving Latino plaintiffs, and gender discrimination cases should be decided by women, because the likelihood of anyone who hasn’t directly experienced the alleged discrimination in question deciding a given case correctly increases when a member of the historically discriminated group adjudicates.“

That would be a truly tribal, anti-individual and un-American position indeed.
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And it’s not like her implication is all that uncommon in American public discourse. That’s why I expressed the mild confusion over the (very, very) false outrage and confusion concerning the comment.
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No, of course not. Ordinary people –regardless of their race or ethnicity– are rightly afraid of imperial magistrates who apply law in a manner consistent with the protection and support of elites and elite privilege, and who justify doing so on the basis of some sort of “pure” theory of law. They’re afraid of merciless justices deciding peoples’ lives for the obvious, real-world worse by coldly following the letter of the law. That’s why Sam Alito told the Judiciary committee that he possessed a background that could assist him in understanding all sides in immigration cases, because being unaware of the real-world consequences of one’s court decisions is unacceptable in a judge. Being more capable of this awareness that lets a justice weigh more comprehensively the reality of what happens if they were to decide one way or another is what both judges (Alito and Sotomayor) were talking about, but Sotomayor didn’t say exactly that in a single sentence.
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If those so-called ‘political reporters’ are that uncritical, gullible, or stupid they should not be so employed. Part of my problem, and one that I freely acknowledge, is my impatience, if not outright contempt and disdain, for such false outrage and blatant stupidity (with regards to both the originators of such crap as well as their enablers; e.g. those aforementioned ‘political reporters’).
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Ummm..Amen? Quite frankly, I don’t see it as your problem in the slightest. It’s just as if you said “Part of my problem, and one that I freely acknowledge, is my impatience for being lied to.“. In a representative democracy, theater simply has no place in the affairs of the state. The only ones invested in that theater are the actors currently on stage and their stage hands.
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Thanks so much for reading and considering this, henqiguai.

Let me try that one more time, a little simpler this time…the theoretically disqualifying statement should read:

“African-American judges should be appointed especially to preside over discrimination cases involving African-American plaintiffs, Latino judges should be appointed especially to preside over discrimination cases involving Latino plaintiffs, and gender discrimination cases should be decided by women, because the likelihood of a decision in a given case being correct increases when a member of the specific historically discriminated group adjudicates.“

That’s a little better…hopefully.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/05/audio_of_sotomayor_at_ricci_he.asp