Politico Alerts Citizens What To Watch For During Sotomayor Confirmation Hearings

Politico----

Judge Sonia Sotomayor still speaks with her elderly mom, who’s retired in Florida, “every day.”

She’s a “doting” aunt to three of her brother’s children and an “attentive godmother to five more.”

And did you know she was a “fearless and effective prosecutor” and anti-child-pornography crusader widely credited “with saving baseball”?

These biographical gems come from the official, 200-plus-page White House playbook distributed to Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats tasked with defending President Barack Obama’s SCOTUS nominee during this week’s confirmation hearings.

What emerges from the document is a streamlined, no-drama strategy modeled on the flawless performance of Chief Justice John Roberts back in 2005. Roberts bedeviled Democrats by deflecting questions about his judicial philosophy with the law school equivalent of Greenspan-speak, the art of saying virtually nothing in the most expansive language possible.

“Roberts is our gold standard,” conceded one Democratic aide.

The document emphasizes three major talking points:

1. Sotomayor has an inspiring, only-in-America personal narrative, rising from a single-parent Puerto Rican home in the South Bronx to the apex of U.S. jurisprudence.

2. She’s been a tough, law-and-order jurist and prosecutor absolutely adored by cops and other lawyers.

3. She respects precedent, has adopted a pragmatic legal approach and has more federal bench experience than any other high court nominee over the past 70 years.

“We want to make it the boringest hearings ever,” said a senior Democratic Senate aide.

Republicans, for their part, concede they are too outnumbered in the Senate (60 Democrats to 40 Republicans) and the Judiciary Committee (12 to 7) to stop the nomination.

But they’ll try — and here are six things to watch as they do:

“Wise” Cracks About Her "Wise Latina" Statement:

Barring any other major surprises, “wise Latina” is the one issue with potential to awake the slumbering American masses lulled by the sedate Roberts and Samuel Alito hearings.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion,” Sotomayor famously (or infamously) said in a 2001 speech.

The nominee has spent more time defending those two dozen words during her “murder board” prep sessions with administration officials and in closed-door meetings with senators than any case she’s dealt with in nearly two decades on the bench.

Sotomayor’s defense: The comment was meant to suggest the need for more Latinas on the bench — not fewer white guys — and subsequent passages of the same speech put “wise” in a far less threatening context.

Some senators have apparently been mollified. Maine’s moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins emerged from her early June sit-down with Sotomayor to say she’d been somewhat assured the judge would never, ever use that phrase again.

But most Republicans, led in lock step by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, aren’t buying it. Nearly universally, they profess “skepticism” — a middle-ground word that conveys the GOP’s desire to dent the nominee without provoking a wholesale Hispanic backlash against the party.

Whatever her performance in private, Sotomayor must offer a credible explanation under the bright lights this week.

A fumbled answer — or worse still, one that makes the nominee seem evasive or phony — would undercut weeks of Democratic efforts to portray Sotomayor as America’s nonthreatening, earthy, empathetic, law-and-order Aunt Sonia.

Will she offer an all-out apology for the comment?

Don’t count on it, Democratic aides say.

The Ankle:

Sotomayor fractured her ankle going through security at LaGuardia Airport in early June, and it’s still such a problem she’s had to prop it up on a trash can during cram sessions.

It hurts, it swells up if she exerts herself — “and it itches,” said a source close to the ankle.

Sotomayor will keep it elevated on a footstool behind black bunting underneath the witness table this week, but the source predicted that she may have to take an injury timeout if the ankle annoyance becomes unmanageable.

Of course, there’s possible political gain with this pain — stoking sympathy and giving the nominee time to collect her thoughts.

You think Clarence Thomas wouldn’t have wanted a break to ice his knee at the precise moment he heard the words “long dong silver”?

Meet Jefferson Sessions, GOP Crash-Test Dummy:

When questioning begins on Tuesday, all Republican eyes will be on Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee — and the only sitting member of the Senate to have been rejected for a federal judicial appointment.

Sessions has politely but passionately pursued an all-fronts attack on the nominee.

He’s implied that she’ll let her personal feelings interfere with strict constitutional interpretations, blasted her ruling in the New Haven firefighters case and questioned her commitment to the Second Amendment based on a decision to uphold a local New York law banning the use of a Bruce Lee-type nunchuka.

In a Friday interview with conservative columnist Byron York, Sessions described the aforementioned issues as “huge,” “serious” and “monumental,” and he vowed to be tough, tough, tough.

“If a judge is not committed to setting aside their sympathies and prejudices and background biases when they take the bench, then they shouldn’t sit on any bench,” he said.

The GOP’s other legal sharpshooters on the committee — Utah’s Orrin Hatch, Arizona’s Jon Kyl, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Texan John Cornyn — are watching Sessions to see if the attacks work or if Sessions comes across as badgering, bullying or mean-spirited, GOP sources say.

If he bombs, they’ll likely raise their issues politely, praise Sotomayor’s attributes, vote against her in committee and hope they haven’t antagonized a rapidly growing Latino electorate that already views Republicans with suspicion.

On the other hand, Cornyn and Kyl are already unpopular with Hispanic groups after rejecting President George W. Bush’s immigration reform effort. So they don’t have much to lose, personally.

Graham, the canniest cross examiner on the committee, is a true wild card: He’s both questioned Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy and said he might vote for her.

Herb Kohl. Oy:

Who’s the No. 2 Democrat on the committee — the guy responsible for building Sotomayor back up right after the Sessions grilling?

Why, it’s Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), a genial, soft-spoken, nonconfrontational Milwaukee Bucks owner who is almost universally regarded as the Democrats’ weakest questioner.

Cameos From Obama and Bush 41:

Like Alfred Hitchcock inserting himself into each one of his movies, the president scripted himself a small walk-on role by declaring that he was looking for a justice with “empathy.”

That’s not a particularly novel statement — allowing nonjudicial factors to influence court rulings was first articulated in the landmark “Brandeis brief” exactly 100 years ago, and Alito emphasized the importance of personal experience in his own confirmation hearings.

But coming from Obama, Republicans see the “empathy” comment as a harbinger of liberal judicial activism — and will likely press that case against Sotomayor.

Former President George H.W. Bush will also make an appearance: Committee Democrats will push back against GOP attacks by pointing out that it was Daddy Bush who gave Sotomayor her first federal judicial appointment back in 1991.

Arlen Specter’s Sitting Next to That ‘Saturday Night Live’ Dude at the End of the Podium:

Oh, how the mighty hath fallen — into the after-lunch question-and-answer period.

Four years ago, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter lorded over the Roberts and Alito hearings as the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Now he’ll be sitting at the end of Democratic side of the dais, one slot up from the lowest-in-seniority senator, Al Franken of Minnesota.

Specter, an abortion-rights advocate, has been supportive of Sotomayor and has taken his demotion in stride.

Still, he’s a serious constitutional scholar and no patty-cake questioner — and he has been cramming for the hearings by requesting reams of cases and commentaries from his counsel, according to his staff. And he’s expected to press the nominee on several out-of-the-box issues, including the televising of SCOTUS sessions and his belief that the court has been taking on too few cases despite beefed-up staffing levels.


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