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Racism and hypocrisy on display at Sotomayor hearings

Did anyone watch any of the confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor last week?

Dios mio.

While our own newly-minted Democratic senator, Arlen Specter peppered the nominee with questions ranging from wireless wiretaps to voting rights to televisions in the court, his former colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle seemed intent on following the advice of one Patrick J. Buchanan and doing nothing to temper the GOP’s growing image as increasingly narrow, out of touch and intolerant.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), apparently having learned nothing in the 20 years since his own nomination failed to even make it out of this same committee amid charges of racial insensitivity—the fact that he is now its ranking member is even more mind-blowing—put on quite the show this time around as well, joined by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Tom Coburn (R-OK), a medical doctor who first asked Sotomayor how she would handle a case involving his fetus then threw in his best impression of Ricky Ricardo.

Oy vey.

But the last day’s remarks by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) take the cake. In attempting to assure Sotomayor that she had managed to convince him that she was not an “activist” judge, as had been heavily rumored (“activist” here apparently referring to any decision reached that doesn’t agree with the “accepted” white-male standard), he stated that he thought she would be able to “embrace a right that [she] may not want” for herself, “allow others to do things that are not comfortable” to her and that she would refrain from using her position on the Supreme Court to impose  her “view of life … on the rest of us.”

Gee, it’s a shame Senator Graham can’t say the same about his own party.

July 21, 2009 at 10:08 am

--Tammy Alonso

Tags: Sonia Sotomayor

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