Your time spent resting on your stellar reputation is over, Thurgood!

The hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan are underway. You know the drill: in order to be allowed onto the highest court in the land, the nominee vows to remain as silent as possible, dodge any question that may in fact reveal a personal thought or long held position, and attempt to set a Guinness world record for saying the phrase "I don't answer hypotheticals, Senator." You know, it's the way a serious country full of adults and intelligent elected officials selects a slot on its most august judicial body.

Then there's the dance our elected betters put on. Kagan's supporters on the Democratic side spend their time telling us how she's the most qualified nominee in the history of judges and law, that merely asking her a negatively toned question is likely to make God weep, and that any opposition to putting her immediately on the Supreme Court is rooted in the blackest evil, the foulest magic, and darkest blood rituals.

On the other hand, the GOP concocts scenarios in which her activist judicial fiats will split the earth in two in a literal orgy of flag burning illegal Mexican immigrants performing mandatory abortions on the Children of God, and how it is entirely conceivable that the President has nominated a dangerous mental defective and terrorist sleeper agent who, the second she gets on the bench, will strap C4 to herself and make for the Constitution.

You know how it is. It pretty much went by that book yesterday. But there was an unexpected addendum to yesterday's proceeding. Apparently going after Kagan was not enough, so the GOP decided to set their sights on another ACTIVIST JUDGE: Thurgood Marshall, who is apparently a massive shitbag.

Looks like Senate Judiciary Republicans have at least one unified talking point today: Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to ever serve on the Supreme Court, was an "activist judge." As Elena Kagan kept on her listening face, multiple senators slammed both Marshall's judicial philosophy and her service as his clerk in the late 1980s.
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In an example of how much the GOP focused on Marshall, his name came up 35 times. President Obama's name was mentioned just 14 times today.

Ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said Kagan's reverence for Marshall "tells us much about the nominee," and he meant that more as an indictment than a compliment.

The Washington Post says the Republicans even went so far as to pass out opposition research on Justice Marshall. Thurgood Marshall! You know, the guy who argued Brown v. The Board of Education, worked tirelessly on civil rights, and worked to fix institutional barriers of racial discrimination. That Thurgood Marshall. He was apparently a massively activist asshole. So, of course, the GOP spent an entire day trying to tear him down, discredit him, and attack him in order to knock Kagan's time spent as a law clerk for Marshall. One of the most accomplished, important justice and lawyer in US legal history. I'm not sure they even asked Kagan a question.

But there is one question we do need the answer to: would current GOP Senators vote to confirm Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court?

Sen. Orrin Hatch, like many Republicans these days, is arguing that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s hero, Thurgood Marshall, was an activist judge and that raises questions about Kagan’s judicial philosophy.
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I caught up with Hatch after today’s confirmation hearing to ask an obvious question: Would Hatch have voted for Marshall?

“Well, its hard to say,” Hatch said.

Jesus Christ.

/throws up hands, walks away

Bang on, Supreme Court!

A week ago, the Obama Administration and Republican Senator Lindsay Graham were in negotiations to "modify" (read: weaken) the Miranda Law. Why? Of course it was because of teh turrists and turrism and our new found principles that to protect our rights, we must weaken, remove, and ignore our rights.

It was one of the residual pants shitting maneuvers left from the Times Square bomber. And none to soon. Once it was revealed that the authorities read him his rights, everyone went nuts. "How dare they read a terrorist his rights!" That he talked, was cooperative, and gave us useful intelligence and answers afterward is ignored. By refusing to immediately waterboard him, declare him an enemy combatant, and start in with the Jack Bauer shit, it didn't make us feel manly as a country. This cannot stand! So we must step in and take manly Miranda weakening measures.

About that. Seems the Supreme Court decided to get there and weaken it first.

A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are the first of the Miranda rights warnings, which police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But the court said that suspects must tell police they are going to remain silent to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.
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"Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk to police," Kennedy said. "Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's newest member, wrote a strongly worded dissent for the court's liberals, saying the majority's decision "turns Miranda upside down."

"Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent - which counterintuitively, requires them to speak," she said. "At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded."

Will everyone act surprised when I tell them that this was a 5-4 decision? It was a 5-4 decision! And cue shocked faces.... nicely done, dear readers.

That's right, the Supreme Court ruled that in order to have an inherent right, you must invoke it. I think that's the way most inherent rights works. I mean if something is inherent that means you have to explicitly state it aloud or it doesn't apply. That's what inherent means, right?

I mean that's how we work free speech and freedom of the press. Unless we start each statement or news story with "I am invoking my rights to free speech from now until the end of this statement/story" we are liable to be thrown in jail for whatever we say/write. This decision just codifies that for legal proceedings and the Miranda Law.

So, bang up job, Supremes. With you and our elected betters at work, we're well on our way to making it so that the only rights we have are the ones we're told we're allowed to have in the designated areas and times we're allowed to have those rights in. I'm sure this'll be the death blow to Al Qaeda and all who would do us harm.

Your new liberal Satan

"Chicks on the bench! I am literally thrilled about these developments. Wait till I tell Flo about this!"
"Mr. President, he's not going to speak about me or give me another awkward massage, is he?"
"No, on the former, probably on the latter. I'll call Rahm and see it we can't find Joe a skee-ball machine to occupy his time with."

President Obama has nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be his choice to replace the retiring John Paul Stevens on the highest court in the land. We look forward to the kabuki confirmation process where her not answering any questions that reveal any kind of judicial thought is heralded as a necessary part of being selected to sit on the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, her confirmation is about to get all kinds of politically stupid, what with her alternately being the most accomplished nominee in the history of mankind/a liberal fascist set to yoke us under the brutal command of socialist abortion doctors who are also illegal Muslim -Mexican immigrants. So, we decided to perform a public service and give you the pros and cons of her nomination so you can be informed.

Pro: Either looks like American Comedian Kevin James or British Comedian David Mitchell, so is probably very funny.
Con: In perusing her writings I have found nothing as funny as this.

Pro: As an Obama court pick, it would be assumed that she holds all kinds of liberal positions.
Con: No, not really.

Pro: Would probably support a lot of things liberals support, right?
Con: Nope. Supports the ideological framework of the Bush/Cheney war on terror, the "rightness" behind their efforts, has spent her time as Solicitor General defending the Bush/Cheney and, to a slightly lesser extent, Obama approach to executive power, and isn't that great on civil liberties either.

Pro: Has a limited record and paper trail outlining her ideas.
Con: Wait, that's a good thing? Seriously? Doesn't sound like it.

Pro: As Papa Joe says, "Chicks on the bench!"
Con: Recent science suggest that the female uterus unmoors the basic fundamentals of our legal system and warps the legalistic underpinning of reality. Probably has something to do with estrogen.

Pro: Isn't a "goat fucking, child molester".
Con: That'll probably lose her both of Florida Senator's Bill Nelson and George LeMieux's votes.

Pro: Lots of people say we should take a leap of faith with Obama on this one and trust him.
Con: How'd that work out on health care, financial reform, environmental legislation, rolling back Bush era power grabs, ending the war on terror...

Pro: Nice, safe, middle of the road pick.
Con: Nice, safe, middle of the road pick.

Pro: Still, she'd ostensibly move the court to the left..... right?
Con: Nope. Weren't you paying attention? Considerably more conservative than Stevens.

Pro: Non-judge, so probably less judgmental.
Con: Maybe a judge is what you want sitting on the highest court in the land.

Pro: If she has such a conservative bent on civil liberties and executive power, then she won't be attacked by the right for being a leftist peacenik, right?
Con: What, were you born last fucking week or something?

Broken News: Justice Stevens to Renounce Amateur Judicial Status, Turn Pro

WASHINGTON—When Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, 90, announced his retirement last week, most assumed that the rigors of the court combined with his advancing age had finally become too much for the revered jurist and that he was simply going to move on to retirement and a life of leisure.

But with spoilers leaking out for newly taped segments of next week’s Dancing With the Stars, it turns out that Justice Stevens has terminated his long standing amateur status in order to turn pro and pursue his other lifelong dream: judging celebrity dance contests for network TV.

Perhaps the early indication was in his resignation letter to the President. While one paragraph has been released to the public, Stevens also submitted an epilogue. In it Stevens referenced a need to pay off student loans for his legal education and also “make some serious bank.” He claimed that he could no longer be hindered by the Supreme Court’s onerous rules on amateur status and eligibility and was leaving to “do some real showboat judging for ridiculous coin.”

“I think he just became fed up with the politics of the thing,” said David Thompson, a former clerk for Justice Stevens. “He didn’t care for the hypocrisy of the American Amateur Judicial Association. Sure, they can make millions promoting the work of amateur judges and the yearly Jurisprudence Madness tournament, but if one guy tries to make a little cash on the side with a gavel endorsement? Disbarred.”

“I guess he just got tired, after 63 years, of dealing with the bullshit,” Thompson sighed. “Good for him, he’ll be raking it in now.”

This is thought to be a major coup for ABC’s Dancing With the Stars program, which has long fought for more legal credibility on its judging panel. It was initially thought that Stevens was looking for work in recently politicized beauty pageant field, but surprised everyone by going for the high stakes, high glamour world of celebrity contest judging.

“I guess he just wanted to roll with the big boys,” said Dan Harnett, a junior programming executive at ABC. “No disrespect to Thurgood Marshall, John Jay, and Earl Warren – I think we all recognize the purity of the legal game they played – but Stevens is finally stepping up to join the big dogs in the judging world; we're talking the likes of Simon Cowell, Judge Judy, and David Hasslehoff.”

Already some of Stevens' dynamite legal opinions are rocking the TV world. In one of his first written opinions, in the case of Kate Gosselin and Tony Dovolani v. Jitterbug, he is reported to have remarked that “One thing is certain. Although we may the identity of the winner of this year's competition for some time, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in your ability to put one foot in front of the other.”

Later he was said to remark towards Pamela Anderson that while he “always allowed dancers wide latitude in determining how best to achieve legitimate artistic goals,” that “the interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society is outweighed by your completely awful fucking dancing”, before decreeing the dance be edited out of the show. He then comically banged an oversized gavel on the judges table and proceeded to show Ms. Anderson how to execute a proper Charleston.

“That’s the kind of judging we all knew he was capable of,” observed Constitutional Law Scholar and George Washington University legal professor Jonathan Turley. “Sound legal opinion combined with the flash, showmanship, and showboating that pro judging requires. Another season or two of these kinds of performances and he might be ready to go down with the legal greats: getting his own judge show where he gets to mete out decisions in small claims court.”

In any event, if the leaked reports are true, former Justice Stevens seems to be well on his way towards fulfilling the promise he showed during his 35-year amateur career.

Fare thee well, Justice Stevens

After nearly 35 years on the Supreme Court and 90 years on the earth, Supreme Court Justice and former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Stevens is retiring.

Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, the leader of the liberals on the Supreme Court, announced on Friday that he will retire at the end of this term, setting up a confirmation battle over his replacement that could dominate the political scene this summer.

In a brief letter to President Obama, whom he addressed as “my dear Mr. President,” Justice Stevens said he was announcing his retirement now because he had “concluded that it would be in the best interests of the Court to have my successor appointed and confirmed well in advance of the commencement of the Court’s next term” in October.

Is he going to molest children with David Souter, tour with Them Crooked Vultures, or is he just retiring so he can vie for a prestigious nomination to Judge Judy's seat on the TV Court? Who knows. All we do know is that this will invariably set off some apocalyptic struggle over his replacement. I think we all remember how classy the Sotomayor confirmation was... well that was when the Democrats had some limited measure of control over confirming her. Now?

Maybe I'm overreacting. It's not like GOP leaders talking about filibustering the next Obama Supreme Court nominee a few days before Stevens retired, is it?

The second-ranking Republican in the Senate suggested on Sunday that the party would filibuster the next appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, if that nominee were deemed to be outside of the judicial mainstream.

"It will all depend on what kind of a person it is," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) declared during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." "I think the president should nominate a qualified person. I hope, however, he does not nominate an overly ideological person."

And what is an overly ideological person? Anyone the President nominates. Even though anyone he nominates will probably be considerably less liberal than Stevens is/was.

Still, Kyl is at least a damn sight better than the Bachmann types who will be livid that this Obama fellow thinks he has some Constitutional power to appoint people of his choosing to vacant Supreme Court positions. The nerve! He's shoving judicial nominees down people's throats! This all sounds Maoist... or Stalinist! Tyranny!

So, just in case you thought there was a possibility that American politics would get... we won't say smarter... but.... less.... monstrously stupid, well, I hate to break it to you, but those hopes got shanked in a prison shower. In any event, this will be great fodder for Sean and myself. We eagerly await meeting the new liberal Satan who will invariably wish to bring about the destruction of this country and replace democracy with some sort of communist fiefdom where abortion is the only currency. Good times!

Cheap Blogging Crutch 03.31

Up In Smoke: How Marijuana Ruined States’ Chances Of Invalidating Health Care Law In Court
The passage of health care set off a rash of frivolous lawsuits from state AG's with hopes for higher office and a penchant for wasting the money of cash strapped governments in times of economic crisis. Will they succeed? No. But that inevitability isn't so much interesting as why they will fail to succeed, besides the basic "not understanding the Constitution" thing. Essentially the Supreme Court, and Antonin Scalia in particular, recently ruled in a marijuana case that the government had a right to regulate interstate non-economic activity as a part of regulating interstate commerce. So unless Scalia totally reverses his opinion for political means, any challenge that makes it to the Supremes isn't likely to even pass muster with the conservative wing. Actually, that sounds incredibly likely. Still, marijuana: is there anything it can't do?

Beijing to sweeten stench of rubbish crisis with giant deodorant guns
For some countries a sensible response to a garbage crisis would be better collection and disposal methods, moves to make sure less waste is produced, or even recycling programs. Not China though. Instead of actually responding to their crippling garbage crisis they've just decided to buy a really big can of Axe body spray and just drench their trash in it so people don't have to smell it. Efforts are already underway to paint the trash to look like land and convincing people to ignore it. I think we may have to admit that China may be taking the lead away from us in the Ignoring Potentially Disastrous Environmental Problems category. Ouch. We really seem to cherish that one too.

Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief
What if you were a savant. And not one of those crappy ones who is only good at something like math, the viola, or counting toothpicks that Charlie Babbitt dropped on the floor. No, a savant at stealing shit. Such is the skill of one Gerald Blanchard, a man with the preternatural ability to seemingly exploit any flaw in security. Wired tells his story and how he was caught by two Winnipeg cops.

The most dangerous drug isn't meow meow. It isn't even alcohol...
Charlie Brooker, the man who did this, explains how newspapers, especially newspapers covering drugs, are the most dangerous mind destroying drug on the planet. And he's talking about British ones too. I imagine if he ever had to read an American one or watch American 24 hour news, he'd take his own life.

New Study Estimates Mass Deportation Of Undocumented Immigrants Would Cost $285 Billion
In a tremendous blow to Mexican hating everywhere, it turns out that if we decided everyone in the restaurant, service, farming, and labor industries it'd cost close to $300 billion, or $922 in tax dollars for everyone in the US. Everyone American that is. Not to mention it would completely depopulate California and force white people to get their hands dirty while laboring... and maybe completely cripple US economic growth. Plus who would militias and border state Republicans and Southern Republicans and most Republicans hate then? The Polish? On the other hand, if you put undocumented workers on a path to legalization, it could add nearly $1.5 trillion to GDP over the next decade. I think we know the clear and obvious path here. You start rounding up Mexicans and I'll go door to door collecting $922 a person.

Oh Liberal Media, when will you learn?

There's ThinkProgress, out there doing it again today. They've gone and taken a set of statements made by the racist spawn of Karl Marx and Beelzebub, Sonia Sotomayor, and gone and compared it to things Sam Alito said during his confirmation hearing. Whereas Sotomayor is the world's greatest racist/monster when she says her ethnic background and upbringing inform her judicial decisions, Sam Alito is a salt of the earth working class hero when he brings up his ethnic background and how it informs his decisions.

ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point. … And that’s why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let’s say, someone who is an immigrant — and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases — I can’t help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn’t that long ago when they were in that position. [...]

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

Now the more ill informed of you might say "Doesn't that make him as big a racist as Luftwaffe Reichsmarschall Sonia Goebbels or at least show that both of them aren't racist?" First things first: Alito made those statements while in the possession of a penis (which he prominently displays in a jar on his desk), white skin, Italian heritage, and nomination from a Republican; Sotomayor didn't. Secondly: Alito's schooling at Princeton and Yale Law and his tenure on the 3rd circuit were the product of hard work and achievement, Sotomayor's schooling at Princeton and Yale Law and tenure on the 2nd circuit were the result of affirmative action, racism, and ancient voodoo rituals. Thirdly: I don't have to say a third thing, didn't you listen to the first two reasons?

Clear enough yet? Thank me later for explaining it to you, Liberal Media. I don't want to have to do this again during the next SCOTUS confirmation.

Broken In Brief: Sonia Sotomayor implicated in Nazi War Crimes

WASHINGTON--In a shocking turn of events, Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor was accused of crimes against humanity after Fox News revealed evidence that she had overseen atrocities at the Ravensbruek Nazi concentration camp during the final years of World War II.

This revelation comes as a serious blow to the Obama Administration, which had hoped to appoint Sotomayor as Justice David Souter's replacement, making her the first Latina female to ever sit on the nation's highest court. Sotomayor's inspiring story of rising from a single-parent family in a south Bronx project, through an Ivy League education, and onto the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is now tarnished by her apparent involvement in arguably the greatest humanitarian atrocity of the last century.

When asked how Sotomayor could have possibly had any involvement in the crimes at Ravensbrueck, given that she was born five years after the camp's opening and therefore probably not capable of overseeing such atrocities, FOX News spokesperson Marissa Florentine assured reporters that although the tips had been provided "on background" and had been attributed anonymously, the network was confident the sources were "as reliable as any of those we have ever referenced in our ongoing mission to report and let you decide. Mr. Gingrich wouldn't steer us down a wrong path."

As of this hour those within the Obama Administration are unsure if the nomination will be rescinded. According to one source close to the President, the administration was "prepared for the revelation that she was in fact a woman, but this Nazi thing is really causing us to reassess our selection." Those close to the GOP leadership say many of the House and Senate leaders were "giggling uproariously" over the reaction and were debating on how best to reveal their upcoming accusation that Sotomayor had personally ferried across the border every single illegal immigrant currently in the United States.

Quotes of the day: On racism

Pat Buchanan on why the fact that no white men were finalists for Obama's SCOTUS choice and the fact that a damned Mexican stole another job from a white American makes this THE MOST RACIST THING EVER!

BUCHANAN: Look, are you going to let me talk, Lawrence? You got down to four women, not a single white male — all women
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BUCHANAN: Yes. No, it did not occur to me. You mean there are no white males qualified? That would be an act of bigotry to make a statement like that.
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BUCHANAN: I don’t say it’s an outrage, I say it’s affirmative action. They were picked because she’s a woman and a Hispanic and you know it as well as I do.

Newtie twisted a comment she made completely out of context and decided she's a total racist and Tweeted as such. The RNC agreed and reTweeted it.

newtgingrich: White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

Tom Tancredo concurs go back to Mexico racist!

TANCREDO: I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter!

El Rushbo is of the same mind

"So, here you have a racist. You might want to soften that and you might wanna say a reverse racist. And the libs of course say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist and now he's appointed one."

So remember everyone, you may think that excelling at the top schools, a distinguished career, impeccable credentials, and a lifetime of service make you qualified for a position of importance, but it doesn't. Unless you're a white guy, you're just there because of racism or sexism and are almost certainly a complete and total sexist/racist yourself. Just wanted to clear that up.

Sotomayor: Day 2

We're into Day two of the Sotomayor nomination and we're seeing some themes reveal themselves. On the Democrat side the watchwords seem to be about biography, "compelling personal story", "mainstream", "agrees with conservatives on stuff", "moderate", and chortled declarations that if Republicans can't support her, they can't support anyone. Meanwhile the right's reaction has been split into two parts. From the right wing commentators we've got some variation of "half-wit affirmative action harpy", "possible immigrant", "reverse racist", and "most liberal person ever". As for elected Republicans, well I don't know, do you think there were talking points?

Orrin Hatch (R-Utah): "I will focus on determining whether Judge Sotomayor is committed to deciding cases based only on the law as made by the people and their elected representatives, not on personal feelings or politics."

Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): "We will thoroughly examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences."

Charles Grassley (R-Iowa): "The Judiciary Committee should take time to ensure that the nominee will be true to the Constitution and apply the law, not personal politics, feelings or preferences."

John Cornyn (R-Tx.): "She must prove her commitment to impartially deciding cases based on the law, rather than based on her own personal politics, feelings, and preferences."

Uh-oh, a damned woman with her damned feelings and opinions is gonna muck up the He-Man Supreme Court Club. Obama didn't nominate a robot or a man, so now we have to deal with emotions and a uterus blocking the cold Constitutional calculations of the finely honed legal gland. I'm disappointed too. The Supreme Court is no place for feelings, which you only hear about when women are nominated.

Eventually we'll realize this and replace the justices with an emotionless robot voice connected to a complex series of punch cards and wires that booms down judgments from on high. Then we'll have perfect justice, until a week later when SCOTUSbot judges that the only way to save us is to enslave us. Until then we'll have to deal with Sotomayor's feelings and the fact that those feelings will make no significant alteration to the court's 5-4 makeup.

Is this good?

Despite all of the predictably sad, sadly predictable, and mildly racist conservative opposition to President Obama's nomination of Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, one voice of... um... reason has emerged:

I have no questions in my mind about her qualifications in terms of education, experience. A president is not required to nominate the most qualified person to the court. I think he’s obliged to nominate someone who is well-qualified, and I think by any measures, she is well-qualified.

To whom can this measured, level-headed assessment be attributed? None other than former criminal mastermind Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. I suggest we all forget about the perjury, the abject politicization of the Justice Department, the narrow pursuit of anti-American ideals, and just focus on backhanded semi-endorsement of an Ivy League-educated judicial scholar that the crazy right has sought to vilify and demean for, oh, the last 13 hours or so...

Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria...

A compendium of childish reactions to the new liberal devil

Mike Huckabee hears "Latino" and "woman" and doesn't bother learning Judge Sotomayor's first name before he fires off a complaint about "feelings" and "the far left." He just assumes she's named Maria and may or may not be in the middle of a doomed romance/pitched dance off between the Jets and Sharks.

The Judicial Confirmation Network's Wendy Long dropped in the phrase "liberal judicial activist", accused her judicial style of dishonoring police and firefighters who died on 9/11, "reads racial preferences and quotas into the Constitution", and said she was more liberal activisty than the current liberal activist Supreme Court which is full of liberal activists. Judicalpocalypse in other words.

Rod Dreher calls her a mediocre Quota Queen, the left's Harriet Miers, and is relieved that Obama picked a dumb liberal woman instead of someone who can match wits with Scalia.

Charles Krauthammer decided she cares more about minorities and affirmative action than justice and that conservatives essentially need to oppose her to show that white people will not let this stand, man.

Red State: Intellectually shallow. To be clear: they were describing Sotomayer and not the entirety of their website.

Powerline wonders if she's "Che Guevara in robes". I guess we won't know until she's dead in Bolivia after failing to foment a revolution there.

The New Republic is perplexed as to why its dirty, anonymously sourced hit piece on Sotomayor is being used by conservatives to attack her. Gee, I wonder why.

National Review's Mark Hemingway: ‘Dumb,’ ‘Bully,’ ‘Doesn’t Play Well With Others,’ ‘Obnoxious’

ThinkProgress has video from Karl Rove to various Fox Newsies giving different variations of "not smart" and "intellectual lightweight".

There are also reports of a Virgin Mary statue bleeding from the eyes and the birth of a white two headed calf that the media ignored in favor of the birth of a tan two headed calf. We aren't even 12 hours into the nomination yet.

The new face of Satan

Obama finally made his choice for the Supreme Court and it is Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor. If confirmed she will be the second woman currently on the bench and the first Hispanic ever to become a justice. I know, old white men lose out again. Is there no end to the indignity they must suffer? Her stat sheet:

Administration officials say Sotomayor, with 17 years on the bench, would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years.
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Obama had said publicly he wanted a justice who combined intellect and empathy _ the ability to understand the troubles of everyday Americans.
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A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, a former prosecutor and private attorney, Sotomayor became a federal judge for the Southern District of New York in 1992. She became an appeals judge in 1998 for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which covers New York, Vermont and Connecticut.

As a judge, she has a bipartisan pedigree. She was first appointed by a Republican, President George H.W. Bush, and won Senate confirmation without dissent. She was named an appeals judge by President Bill Clinton in 1997.
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In one of her most memorable rulings as federal district judge, Sotomayor essentially salvaged baseball in 1995, ruling with players over owners in a labor strike that had led to the cancellation of the World Series.

17 years experience? Christ, how's she going to be able to hide her judicial opinions, style, and beliefs with a 17 year history? That was the whole point of Bush picking Roberts and Alto: plausible deniability towards judicial philosophy. Roberts had only been a judge for 30 minutes and Karl Rove decided to pick Alito, a lifetime fry cook, after he saw him buy a John Grisham book and Hannity's book at a Washington area Barnes & Noble.

If you are actually interested in knowing what she actually has decided in court cases, Scotusblog has a nice little round-up. Additionally there's a NYT profile here, and some opinions from those who know her here, here, and here. Otherwise it's all just stupid political theatre from here on out. A world where Judge Sotomayor is cast as either the "most liberal jurist ever" who'll destroy the country with her activist judicial style of rewriting laws from the bench, an assassin plotting to kill the resurrected Jesus, or as someone who is barely literate and unable to even put on her shoes correctly, let alone be qualified enough for the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, the argument for her will be something along the lines of "she's makes John Jay and Thurgood Marshall look like Judge Judy", declarative statements that she is the most qualified person in the country, and a reference to one of her appellate decisions curing cancer. It's gonna be real awesome, and we haven't even got to the part where she tries to dodge questions at a judicial hearing and the Administration pretends not to know her thinking on any kind of legal issues.

Consequences schmonsequences

Remember that whole "Bush legacy of hard right justices yanking the court into a black hole of conservative ideology" and "the importance of treating Supreme Court picks with more scrutiny, seriousness, and respect" thing I was on about earlier? Yeah...the consequences of not doing that the last 2 times reared it's ugly little 5-4 head again.

FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be sued by a former Sept. 11 detainee who claimed he was abused because of his religion and ethnicity, a sharply divided Supreme Court said Monday in a decision that could make it harder to sue top officials for the actions of low-level operatives.
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Iqbal is a Pakistani Muslim who spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002. He had argued that while Ashcroft and Mueller did not single him out for mistreatment, they were responsible for a policy of confining detainees in highly restrictive conditions because of their religious beliefs or race.
...
The court's liberal justices _ David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens _ dissented from the court's opinion.

"Iqbal contends that Ashcroft and Mueller were at the very least aware of the discriminatory detention policy and condoned it and perhaps even took part in devising it," Souter said. He should be given chance to prove his claims in court, Souter said.

Being allowed to face your accusers in court and be given a chance to prove your claims? Letting a Muslim do this? What country does Souter think this is?

But hey, Anthony Kennedy had a good line of defense. It was essentially "boys will be boys" and he then moved on to "it was for his own benefit" then moved on to "it was 9/11, laws didn't count after that" before finishing with "just because something targets greater proportions of Muslims and Arabs doesn't mean it targets greater proportions of Muslims and Arabs." His head then exploded from the cognitive dissonance.

So just in case you were holding out hope that some court case would be able to hold top dogs accountable for the interrogation and detainment policies and actions of lower level actors that they either implicitly supported or explicitly ordered...nope. Not under this court.

SCOTUS-blogging

Before President Obama nominates the most liberal such & such in the history of such & such to the Supreme Court, throwing the earth off it's axis, flipping the magnetic poles, opening up the Constitution to infestation from legalese devouring law weevils and forever damaging this country, it is important to note the importance of the whole process. Take, for instance, John Roberts. Whereas we get to dismiss the rest of the Bush Administration as a time of crazy excess when we were run by a deranged collective of escaped mental patients, we're stuck with one of their major decisions, the 54 year old Chief Justice Roberts, for decades after the fact. Centuries even, if he decides to fashion himself into a machine of hate, powered by clockwork gears and his hate of socialism. Then there's Alito.

To that end the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin has taken a extensive look at Roberts career and decisions so far and, surprise surprise, has found him to be a hard-line conservative who sides almost uniformly with the prosecution.

In the past four years, Roberts and Scalia, while voting together most of the time, have had a dialogue of sorts about how best to address the Court’s liberal precedents....According to Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, “The Chief Justice talks the talk of moderation while walking the walk of extreme conservatism.”
...
On issues of Presidential power, Roberts has been to Scalia’s right—a position that’s in keeping with his roots in the Reagan Administration. “John was shaped by working at the White House, where you develop a mind-set of defending Presidential power,” the lawyer who worked with Roberts in the Reagan years said. Just a few days before Bush appointed Roberts to the Supreme Court, in 2005, Roberts joined an opinion on the D.C. Circuit in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that upheld the Bush Administration’s position on the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.... Last year, Roberts dissented from Kennedy’s opinion for a five-to-four Court in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 violated the rights of Guantánamo detainees. Roberts saw the case as mostly a contest between the executive branch and the rest of the federal government. “Today the Court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants,” Roberts wrote in his dissent. “One cannot help but think . . . that this decision is not really about the detainees at all, but about control of federal policy regarding enemy combatants.”
...
Roberts’s solicitude for the President and the military extends to lower-profile cases as well. In Winter v. National Resources Defense Council, the question was whether the Navy had to comply with a federal environmental law protecting dolphins and other wildlife while conducting submarine exercises off California. Roberts said no. “We do not discount the importance of plaintiffs’ ecological, scientific, and recreational interests in marine mammals,” the Chief Justice wrote. “Those interests, however, are plainly outweighed by the Navy’s need to conduct realistic training exercises to ensure that it is able to neutralize the threat posed by enemy submarines.” Though Roberts was writing for only a five-to-four majority, he added, “Where the public interest lies does not strike us as a close question.”

All in all, worth spending a chunk of your time reading. Not only does it show the direction the Court has tipped in the past few years, but it shows the importance of the whole process and highlights the complete lack of scrutiny and phony procedures that go into picking a Court Justice. If the President picks 'em they must be good, then they're shuffled through a confirmation where they try to hide as many of their opinions as possible, and then they get confirmed onto a seat where they'll sit for 40 years. It seems to be kind of important, maybe we should pay a little more attention as a country.

Alberto Gonzales......

Alberto Gonzales has popped his head out from behind whatever tenement shack door he's been squatting in for the past few months to ask if you could spare any change...oh and to opine on a new Supreme Court Justice. Apparently the fact that Obama used "empathy" as one of the qualities he looks for in a justice is THE WORST THING EVER. Gonzales doesn't want no empathetic judge on the court, it would lead to chaos.

GONZALES: I do worry a little bit, well, I worry, I worry about about justices on the court making decisions based on what they think makes them feel good. I don’t think it’s fair to expect society to anticipate the outcome of a case based upon what makes a justice feel good. In essence what you’re saying, I think, is that I’m going to, I don’t care what the law says, I’m going to come out, I’m going to pursue an outcome that I think is fair and just. I’m going to rewrite the law. And I think that’s dangerous.

I'm just going to let that one sit there for a minute. Let it soak in.

RIP Irony
1107 BC - 2009 AD
Beloved by all
Murdered by Alberto Gonzales in cold blood

Poor 'lil guy. Couldn't withstand the sheer ignorant force of what Gonzales said.

Souter out

David Souter has had it up to here with all your Supreme Court bullshit. He's finally leaving to start that prog-metal band he kept mentioning in all his minority and majority opinions. Knights of Justice. He's already got a 12 minute opus loosely based around the Boumediene decision. Why's he leaving? Mostly because he hates Washington, hates politics, hates the politicization of the court, hates the court itself (calling it a "annual intellectual lobotomy" every time a term started up) and he ain't too crazy about your ugly mug either. He's gone as soon as they can find his replacement.

Justice Souter, who was appointed in 1990 by a Republican president, the first George Bush, but became one of the most reliable members of the court’s liberal wing, has grown increasingly sour on Washington and intends to return to his home state, New Hampshire, according to the people briefed on his plans. One official said the decision might be announced as early as Friday.

The departure will open the first seat for a Democratic president to fill in 15 years and could prove a test of Mr. Obama’s plans for reshaping the nation’s judiciary. Confirmation battles for the Supreme Court in recent years have proved to be intensely partisan and divisive moments in Washington, but Mr. Obama has more leeway than his predecessors because his party holds such a strong majority in the Senate.

Replacing Justice Souter with a liberal would not change the basic makeup of the court, where he and three other justices hold down the left wing against a conservative caucus of four justices. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate Republican appointee, often provides the swing vote that controls important decisions.

All that being said, Souter isn't THAT liberal, like Thurgood Marshall was. But he became a solidly rational, liberal leaning Justice. He will be missed. He also wasn't as liberal as the right wing will pretend the person to replace him is. Joy of joys, I can't wait for that circus. So and so wants free mandatory abortions for all from illegal immigrant doctors, this justice hates freedom, they're gonna take all the guns, SECEDE~!, this is tyranny, biggest liberal in the history of the world, affront to Democracy, etc. It'll be the pinnacle of rational debate.

As to who Obama wants to replace him with, baseless speculation has centered on the fact that someone heard from some guy who heard from another who heard a rumor that Obama might have said he wanted 'more chicks' at dinner last night. Or 'more chicken'. Either way that definitely signals he wants a woman to preside, what with her special lady parts and judicially analyzing lady brain. All in all, it ought to provide a couple days of rampant meaningless speculation over a position that hasn't even been officially vacated or even publicly signaled that is was going to be vacated yet. In any event it will at least give us a few days distraction before the H1N1 Super Pig AIDS kills 99% of us, rendering man's law and thus the Supreme Court null and void.

Quote of the day

From TS at Instaputz, overheard while drinking at the Lenox Lounge in Harlem.

The chatter round the bar was near-consensus jubilation, but there were a few grumbles about John Roberts' flub.

Said the elderly man at the end of the bar: "Thurgood Marshall wouldn't have fucked up."

Edit: Also felt Shaq's thoughts needed to be added as well. From Shaq's Twitter feed:

The obama speech, wow, was dat memorized, very impressive, im jealous
about 21 hours ago from txt

Supreme court accidentally enfranchises voters

High court rejects GOP bid in Ohio voting dispute

The Supreme Court is siding with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.

The justices on Friday overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.

Ohio Republicans contended the information for counties would help prevent fraud. Brunner said the GOP is trying to disenfranchise voters.

Wait a minute, the US Supreme Court? The one that thought counting votes wasn't important in 2000(and mandated that it's decision never be referenced for any legal precedent in the future) and has since only gotten more conservative? They do know this means black people are going to get to vote, right? That the Republican party won't get to throw 200,000 people off the rolls for spelling errors, moving residences, or registering as a Democrat, right?

The poor are going to vote! Minorities! There might be repercussions for the last 8 years! WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?