Sotomayor Hearings: Here We Go

Clicked over to the live stream of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings just in time to hear Jon Kyl express his grave, grave concerns that she feels foreign law is worth looking at as a means of maintaining America's world standing, and that she might not be able to set her personal biases aside when hearing cases.

Because only white male corporate lawyers have neither ethnicity nor gender.

Thankfully, Schumer is now riding to the rescue, pointing out that she is much more even-handed than people like Sam "Record Number of Dissents" Alito, and has even appeared to be completely color-blind in several instances. Will it matter when it comes to Republican votes? Probably not. Thankfully, it shouldn't matter.

Interestingly to me as a current Arizonan, Senator Kyl framed his foreign-precedents concern in terms of "the will of the American people, as expressed by the Constitution." Hmm. Kyl seems to have forgotten that one of the primary functions of the Constitution is exactly the opposite of that--not to express the will of the people, but to protect the country from the will of the people when the people are largely made up of short-sighted, self-interested nutjobs. Come on, Jon. You can do just a little better than that, can't you?

Oh, wait wait wait--Lindsay Graham is most disturbed by her speeches! And takes the "wise Latina" comment out of context yet again. Oh, and he's convinced that she's going to decide cases differently than he would, so what should he do given that knowledge? He doesn't know what's in her heart, and since that's Obama's standard for voting on judges, he can't vote for her on that basis and that's going to RUIN THE JUDICIARY. He wants her to be able to speak her mind, and to believe in things, and doesn't want young lawyers to feel they can't do those things, but gosh darn it, those speeches are just disturbing, and Lindsay respects elections and Obama won but that means... Frankly, I'm not sure what he's trying to say here. He's not sure she deserves to be here, but she's had a distinguished career and has good character and should be here, but Obama's set a bad standard in motion by talking about hearts and shit like that, so nobody's ever going to be able to vote for a judge again because no one knows another's heart?

Maybe more later. They know she's a swing appointment. Graham's leopard-prints are in a knot because of the 5% of cases she's not going to decide the way he wants, as are Kyl's. And probably everyone else's. I wonder how long this will go on.