Sotomayor Round-Up & Open Thread

From Day Two, here's Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Fuckery) questioning Sotomayor about what a huge stinking racist she is:

And here's Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-Douchery) thinking he's playing a hot game of Gotcha! but really just looking like an enormous dipshit:


At CQ, Craig Crawford rightly describes this sad display for what it is:

Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny.

...It is not that the Republican inquiries were out of bounds in legal terms. But a confirmation hearing like this is a political forum.

Even if they vote for her, the fallout for Republicans could reach well beyond Hispanic voters. They are coming across as a bunch of snarky and bitter old white men who cannot bear the thought of their kind losing power.

Spot-on. The Republican behavior during this entire confirmation hearing has been Privilege on Parade.

A particular low-point was Sessions' seeming assertion that all Puerto Ricans should vote the same way: "Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could've changed that case." Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a multi-tasker people: Huge racist and race-traitor!

Thumbs-down to the New York Times' Sotomayor Leaves Passion Behind:

During her enforced silence, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has been portrayed as a woman of passion. Her speeches, endlessly dissected in the weeks since President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court, reveal a fiery Latino pride. Her colleagues say she runs a "hot bench."

That was not the woman on display here Tuesday.

For hours on end, as Judge Sotomayor had her first chance to rebut critics and the nation had its first chance to listen to her at length, passion was in short supply. Instead, as she sought to fend off Republicans' criticisms — that she was a temperamental bully who would allow her feelings to dictate her decisions — Judge Sotomayor took pains to make herself as boring as possible, with the possible exception of her flaming red jacket.

Gee, it's almost as though the rap on Sotomayor—which in a remarkable coincidence hewed closely to stereotypes of women, especially Latinas—was exaggerated bullshit! And now because she's not living up to those erroneously-applied stereotypes, she's boring. Lose-lose for women—again! Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Meanwhile, in serious news, she's getting high marks from the senators on the panel, even, begrudgingly, from the Republicans who are soapboxing their way through the process. And in "Word of Warning to Clarence Thomas" news, grrl knows her nunchucks.