G.O.P. Threatens Confirmation Of Pres. Obama's Future SCOTUS Nominees (Serious G.O.P. Attacks)

MSNBC, NY Times----


(As her Confirmation Hearing neared an end Wednesday, Judge Sonia Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she never discussed the subject of abortion with anyone at the White House, and that a fictional judge, Perry Mason, had influenced her as a child. NBC's Pete Williams reports.)

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WASHINGTON - As the two parties skirmish over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, some of their rhetorical fire is aimed not at her but at the next justice President Obama may get to pick.

After three days of testimony, Judge Sotomayor appeared to have made no major mistakes that would jeopardize her confirmation in a Senate dominated by Democrats. So both sides are trying to use the Judiciary Committee hearings to define the parameters of an acceptable nomination in case another seat opens up during Mr. Obama’s presidency.

By forcing Judge Sotomayor to retreat from Pres. Obama’s desire for justices with “empathy,” Republicans have effectively set a new standard that future nominees will be pressed to meet. The Republicans hope their aggressive questioning of Judge Sotomayor on race discrimination, gun control and the death penalty will make it harder for Mr. Obama to choose a more outspoken liberal in the future.

Liberal activists, by contrast, hope the hearings demonstrate that a Democratic president has nothing to fear from Republicans who have not rattled Judge Sotomayor. If she is confirmed by a commanding vote that includes a number of Republicans, the activists argue, they will have given Mr. Obama more political running room next time to name a more full-throated champion of liberal values.

“Democrats want to draw lines in one place in the sand, and Republicans want to draw lines in another place in the sand,” said Rachel Brand, a former assistant attorney general who helped manage the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Bigger confrontation looming?

For all sorts of reasons, Mr. Obama’s next nomination fight could easily be a bigger confrontation than this one. At the moment, the president still enjoys strong popular support and is replacing a retiring liberal, Justice David H. Souter, with another liberal. But if his next choice alters the political balance or comes when his poll numbers are down, the battle could become much fiercer.

“It depends on who’s left the court,” said Fred McClure, a former White House official who worked on the confirmations of three Republican-appointed justices. “If the departing justice falls into the middle-to-liberal wing of the court, then I think the president is free to nominate a similar candidate. If on the other hand, the nominee is to replace the middle-to-right wing of the court, then I think he’s got to think differently.”

One lesson the White House has learned is to expect a fight on any nomination, fueling its desire for a strong vote for Judge Sotomayor. White House officials say they hope to generate momentum for the next one, though cautioning that each nomination is unique.

Harder to pick a more Liberal Justice?

Several legal experts said Judge Sotomayor’s testimony might make it harder for Mr. Obama to name a more liberal justice next time.

She repudiated the president’s assertion that “what is in a judge’s heart” should influence rulings and rejected the liberal idea that the Constitution is a “living” document whose meaning evolves with society. Instead, she said the Constitution was “immutable” and did not change except by amendment. And she dismissed any role for foreign law in deciding cases, an influence some liberal legal experts argue should be considered.

Louis Michael Seidman, a Georgetown University constitutional law professor, said Judge Sotomayor adopted a “fairy tale” definition of judging that ignores the discretion they have to decide hard cases where the legal materials do not dictate outcomes.

“She reinforced the official ideology, and it makes it that much harder for other judges later on to talk to the American people as if they were adults about what courts actually do and what constitutional law consists of,” Mr. Seidman said.

James R. Copland, director of the Center for Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute, said it was significant that Judge Sotomayor had endorsed a “traditionalist” view of judging and distanced herself from liberal theories. “That limits somewhat his ability to go far afield from the mainstream public understanding of the law,” Mr. Copland said of the president.

Manuel Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference, a conservative advocacy group, said Judge Sotomayor could make it easier for conservatives to attack future nominees. “She is portraying herself as someone who is bound by the rules that conservatives have been articulating for so many years,” Mr. Miranda said. As a result, if Mr. Obama picks someone with different views, Republicans “now can say, ‘You don’t meet the Sotomayor test.’ ”

Taking the measure of each other:

But Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, said that if Judge Sotomayor ended up being confirmed by a significant margin, it would represent a “strong vote of confidence in President Obama’s judicial picks in the future” at both the appeals court and Supreme Court levels.

“Everyone has been saying get a good vote, and this administration will have a firm foundation and a good record to move forward on pushing back against the ultraconservative hold that currently exists on this court,” Ms. Aron said.

Either way, each side has taken the measure of the other and will emerge from this nomination with ammunition for the next.

“There were some rigorous questions, but it wasn’t Armageddon,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was Ronald Reagan’s White House chief of staff and later managed the confirmations of Justices Souter and Clarence Thomas. “That’s left for another day and another nomination.”

Sources: NY Times, MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov

Sotomayor Digs In Her Heels & Prepares For More Hot Seat Senate Grilling (Day 3)

MSNBC, Politico----

(U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor enters her third day of confirmation hearings. On the second day, she faced tough questions about her use of the term “wise Latina.” NBC’s Pete Williams reports. )

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(Senator Lindsey Graham puts the pressure on Sotomayor regarding her personal views.)

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WASHINGTON - Sonia Sotomayor is relying on her 17-year record as a federal judge to rebut criticism that she is concealing a liberal agenda that will show up if she is confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor, the first Hispanic high court nominee, was set to return Wednesday to a cavernous Senate hearing room for another grueling day of questioning.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are using Sotomayor's confirmation hearing to raise doubts about her fairness, while Democrats are portraying the 55-year-old New Yorker as a model jurist.

Under questioning Tuesday, Sotomayor tried to take away one line of Republican attack when she distanced herself from the man who nominated her, President Barack Obama.

Asked whether she shared Obama's view — stated when he was a senator — that in some cases, the key determinant is "what is in the judge's heart," Sotomayor said she does not.

"I wouldn't approach the issue of judging in the way the president does," she said. "Judges can't rely on what's in their heart. They don't determine the law. Congress makes the laws. The job of a judge is to apply the law."

Pushing back on bias claims:

Time and again, she put her record on display to answer charges of bias.

Sotomayor backed away from perhaps the most damaging words that had been brought up since Obama nominated her seven weeks ago — a comment she made on several occasions suggesting that a "wise Latina" judge would usually reach better conclusions than a white man. She called the remark "a rhetorical flourish that fell flat."

"It was bad because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that's clearly not what I do as a judge," Sotomayor said.

Republicans were not satisfied with her answers.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he could end up voting for Sotomayor but wants to make sure she is the judge with what he called a moderately liberal record, not a liberal activist.

"That's what we're trying to figure out — who are we getting here?" he said.

Democrats clearly enjoyed being on the other side of the confirmation process, defending a Democratic nominee.

"When we asked questions of the white male nominees of a Republican president, we were basically trying to ... make sure that they would go far enough in understanding the plight of minorities, because clearly that was not in their DNA," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said.

"The questions being asked of you from the other side primarily are along the lines of, will you go too far in siding with minorities?" Durbin said.

Republicans focused on one case to make that point, the appeals court ruling that she joined dismissing the claim of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who alleged racial discrimination over the city's decision to scrap a promotions exam after too few minorities did well.

The Supreme Court reversed the ruling late last month.

Sotomayor's response was simple and oft-repeated: "We were following precedent."

When the committee finishes its first round of questioning, it will go into the customary closed session to discuss the FBI report on Sotomayor and other personal matters.

The 19 senators can then take up to an additional 20 minutes each to question Sotomayor, although Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee chairman, advised his colleagues Tuesday that they don't need to use their entire allotment.

Leahy has voiced confidence that Sotomayor will be confirmed, and with some Republican support.

Sources: MSNBC, Politico, LA Times, Media Matters

Is Sen. Jeff Sessions Jealous Or Empathetic Of Sotomayor? ...He Wasn't Confirmed But She Will Be

Talking Points Memo, MSNBC----


Blast From The Past: '80s News Coverage Of Sessions Controversy

As we reported earlier this week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was spiked in 1986 from becoming a district court judge by the Republican controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. Sessions was known to be, at least, insensitive to minorities, and his nomination was considered too controversial to advance. Now that he's the ranking member on that very committee, it's news all over again. But it was a big deal then, too. Watch:




(Pres. Obama's SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor responds to Sen. Jeff Sessions' doubts about her being an impartial Supreme Court Justice.)

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It looks like Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) will be, at least for a time, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. That's an interesting role for a man with Sessions'...history. In a 2002 New Republic article, Sarah Wildman detailed the Alabama senator's rise through the ranks of politics in Alabama and in Republican Washington.

Sessions first appeared on the scene in 1986 D.C. when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to serve on the U.S. District Court in Alabama. At the time, the Judiciary Committee was controlled by Republicans, but his appointment nonetheless went absolutely nowhere--a fact that may have had a thing or two to do with stories like this:

Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU ) "un-American" and "Communist-inspired." Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups "forced civil rights down the throats of people." In his confirmation hearings, Sessions sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as "un-American" when "they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions" in foreign policy. Hebert testified that the young lawyer tended to "pop off" on such topics regularly, noting that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases. Sessions acknowledged making many of the statements attributed to him but claimed that most of the time he had been joking, saying he was sometimes "loose with [his] tongue." He further admitted to calling the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a "piece of intrusive legislation," a phrase he stood behind even in his confirmation hearings....

Another damaging witness--a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures--testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." Sessions claimed the comment was clearly said in jest. Figures didn't see it that way. Sessions, he said, had called him "boy" and, after overhearing him chastise a secretary, warned him to "be careful what you say to white folks." Figures echoed Hebert's claims, saying he too had heard Sessions call various civil rights organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, "un-American." Sessions denied the accusations but again admitted to frequently joking in an off-color sort of way. In his defense, he said he was not a racist, pointing out that his children went to integrated schools and that he had shared a hotel room with a black attorney several times.

The committee ultimately voted 10-8 against reporting his nomination on to the floor. In a perverse form of poetic justice, Sessions will soon be that committee's most powerful Republican. And in that position, he'll no doubt be leading the charge (such as it is) against whomever President Obama nominates to the Supreme Court--or any court, really. Having been given the Robert Bork treatment in the past, it's hard to imagine Sessions treating Obama's picks all that genially.

As Wildman wrote, "it has been on judicial nominees that Sessions has really made a name for himself."

When Sessions grabbed Heflin's Senate seat in 1996, he also nabbed a spot on the Judiciary Committee. Serving on the committee alongside some of the senators who had dismissed him 16 years earlier, Sessions has become a cheerleader for the Bush administration's judicial picks, defending such dubious nominees as Charles Pickering, who in 1959 wrote a paper defending Mississippi's anti-miscegenation law, and Judge Dennis Shedd, who dismissed nearly every fair-employment civil rights case brought before him as a federal district court judge. Sessions called Pickering "a leader for racial harmony" and a "courageous," "quality individual" who was being used as a "political pawn." Regarding Shedd, he pooh-poohed the criticism, announcing that the judge "should have been commended for the rulings he has made," not chastised.

And after carefully reviewing Sessions' record, Republicans in Washington took appropriate measures to limit his influence gave him an extremely influential position in the Senate. It'll be...enlightening...to hear conservatives defend the move, or, better yet, excuse it on the grounds that the GOP's only giving these views special prominence for about a year and a half.

Sources: MSNBC, Talking Points Memo, LA Times, Zimbio

Don't Call Sotomayor A Racist! She Denies Bias During Confirmation Hearings

MSNBC----

(Sotomayor responds to being questioned about her "Wise Latina" remarks.)

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WASHINGTON - Sonia Sotomayor pushed back vigorously Tuesday against Republican charges that she would bring bias and a liberal agenda to her seat as the first Hispanic woman on the Supreme Court, insisting repeatedly she would be impartial as GOP senators tried to undercut her with her own words from past speeches.

For all the pointed questioning in a grueling, daylong hearing, there was little doubt that President Barack Obama's first high court choice — with solid backing from the Democrats and their lopsided Senate majority — would be confirmed. Sen. Patrick Leahy, Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said as much — and predicted she would receive at least some Republican backing.

Sotomayor, 55, kept her composure — judge-like, supporters said — during the intense day of questions and answer, listening intently and scribbling notes as senators peppered her with queries, then leaning into her microphone and gesturing for emphasis as she responded. She returns for another full day of questioning on Wednesday.

"My record shows that at no point or time have I ever permitted my personal views or sympathies to influence the outcome of a case," the appeals court judge declared during a tense exchange with Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the committee that is conducting this week's confirmation hearings. He repeatedly questioned her ability to be objective as a Supreme Court justice, citing her own comments.

Sotomayor backed away from perhaps the most damaging words that had been brought up since Obama nominated her seven weeks ago — a 2001 comment suggesting that a "wise Latina" judge would usually reach better conclusions than a white man. She called the remark "a rhetorical flourish that fell flat."

"It was bad because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that's clearly not what I do as a judge," Sotomayor said.

She also distanced herself from the man who nominated her, after Republican Sen. Jon Kyl asked whether Sotomayor shared Obama's view — stated when he was a senator — that in some cases, the key determinant is "what is in the judge's heart."

"I wouldn't approach the issue of judging in the way the president does," she said. "Judges can't rely on what's in their heart. They don't determine the law. Congress makes the laws. The job of a judge is to apply the law."

Republicans sounded unconvinced by Sotomayor's defense.

"I am very troubled that you would repeatedly over a decade or more make statements" like the one in 2001, Sessions said.

And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sotomayor's answers Tuesday were starkly at odds with her previous comments. "That's what we're trying to figure out — who are we getting here?" he said.

During her first chance to answer questions publicly, Sotomayor stopped short of calling the right to abortion settled law but also said, "All precedents of the Supreme Court I consider settled law subject to" great deference but not absolute. Under repeated questioning, she said she'd have an open mind on gun rights.

She also defended her most frequently criticized ruling: a decision by a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year to dismiss the claim of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who alleged racial discrimination after being denied promotions.

The Supreme Court reversed the ruling late last month, and critics point to it as evidence that Sotomayor lets her own racial bias trump the law.

"People all over the country are tired of courts imposing their will against one group or another without justification," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, questioning how Sotomayor approached the case.

Sotomayor said the lawsuit, in which New Haven scrapped the results of a promotion test because too few minorities did well, was not about quotas or affirmative action.

"We were following precedent," she said.

Leahy was the first to question Sotomayor on the case, and he teed up a sympathetic portrayal of her approach, saying she would have been criticized however the panel had ruled — "You're damned if you do and damned if you don't," he said. Prodded by Leahy, Sotomayor said she "absolutely" would have approached the case differently in light of the new standard she said the Supreme Court laid out in its recent ruling.

Democrats devoted much of their time to lobbing friendly questions at Sotomayor, but they also tried probing the nominee's views on their supporters' top concerns, such as abortion rights — a staple of Supreme Court confirmation fights for decades.

Sotomayor, who hasn't ruled on the issue during her 17 years on the federal bench, shed little light on her view, confining her answers to legal-speak that never went beyond what the high court has said on the subject. She said the right to abortion is "the Supreme Court's settled interpretation of what the core holding is," as affirmed in a separate 1992 ruling.

Sotomayor's came close to saying the issue was settled law — but stopped short of that flat declaration. Under questioning by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., Sotomayor did say she considered the existence of a right to privacy — considered a key precursor of Roe — to be "settled law."

Under questioning by Graham, she also professed ignorance of cases in which the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a civil rights group she advised as a board member between 1980 and 1992, argued for taxpayer-funded abortions.

"I never reviewed those briefs," Sotomayor told Graham.

Leahy was first to ask about the "wise Latina" comment that has sparked so much controversy.

"I want to state upfront, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that any racial, ethnic or gender group has an advantage in sound judging," Sotomayor said. "I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences."

On gun rights, Republicans and Democrats alike questioned Sotomayor about her view of whether the Second Amendment protection against curbs on the right to keep and bear arms applied to states.

Her response showed Sotomayor — and the White House coaches who have helped prepare her for the hearings — is cognizant of the political potency of the issue.

"I understand how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans," Sotomayor told Leahy, adding that one of her godchildren is a member of the National Rifle Association and she has friends who hunt.

Obama named Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter, who retired last month. While Souter was appointed by a Republican, President George H.W. Bush, he frequently sided with the court's liberal bloc on controversial issues such as abortion and affirmative action.

As a result, if confirmed, Sotomayor appears unlikely to alter the court's balance of power on those issues.

Sources: MSNBC

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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Sources: Politico, Day Life, Google Maps

The Two Sides Of Sonia Sotomayor: Which One Will Be Confirmed?

Newsweek, Politico----

Meet The Sotomayors:

One is a Latina firebrand, the other a model of judicial restraint. It's the latter who will appear before the senate judiciary committee. But it's the former, conservative critics fear, who will sit on the highest court in the land.

Will the real Sonia Sotomayor please stand up? Which one will be confirmed?

In the press portraits written since Pres. Barack Obama named her to the Supreme Court in May, two Sonia Sotomayors have emerged.

One is the fiery Latina activist who formally complained to the Federal Government about her university's alleged ethnic bias; who sat on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund when it accused New York City of discrimination in hiring and voting rights; who sometimes suggested that judicial opinions should reflect the gender and ethnic backgrounds of the judges who write them; who asserted that "a wise Latina woman" was likely to reach a better decision than "a white male." The other is the federal court of appeals judge who writes careful, narrowly reasoned opinions that are unexciting but unalarming, that rarely stray from the mainstream.

This week, at her confirmation hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be eager to find out which Justice Sotomayor will show up at the Supreme Court on the traditional first Monday in October that begins the court's year. There is no way the senators will be able to know for sure. Sotomayor's judicial record reveals little. Judges on the federal courts of appeals are supposed to stick to the law and to obey precedent. Supreme Court justices, on the other hand, have a freer hand. While they are supposed to respect the slow evolution of the law, they have more discretion than lower-court judges to express personal views, to vote their consciences, to make the law fit what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. called "the felt necessities of the time."

At her confirmation hearings, Sotomayor is not likely to tip her hand. Her testimony will be carefully considered and undoubtedly guarded. But it is possible to look at the experience that she says did more than any other to shape her—her undergraduate years at Princeton—and get a sense of how her mind works and how she approaches problems. The portrait that emerges is of a shrewd politician who wants to change the system by working within it.

"My days at Princeton … were the single most transforming experience I have had. It was here that I became truly aware of my Latina identity—something I had taken for granted during my childhood when I was surrounded by my family and their friends," Sotomayor said in a speech to the Third World Center at Princeton in 1996.

Her sentiment is not unusual among minorities at the school, which has the most Southern and conservative heritage in the Ivy League. Michelle Obama, who attended Princeton in the early '80s, wrote in her senior thesis that she had never felt more aware of her "blackness" than when she was a student at the university. Although Princeton has become quite diverse, many nonwhite students still say they feel a heightened sense of racial identity.

Princeton transformed Sotomayor in another way that she did not mention in her speech. It taught her how to play a particular sort of power game, to get ahead the Princeton way—not by assertion or bullying, but by reason and carefully prepared persuasion. These are values that Princeton has long taught and still tries to teach. Change is to be achieved by working within the system, not by tearing things down.

When Sotomayor arrived in the fall of 1972, she recalled in her 1996 speech, Prince-ton was "an alien land for me." She was a member of only the fourth class to take women. There were very few blacks or Hispanics. It seemed to Sotomayor that the other students had all gone to prep school and taken tennis lessons and enjoyed ski vacations. In the summer after her freshman year, she read the children's and adolescents' classics she had missed but that seemed familiar to all the prep-school students—Alice in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, and the novels of Jane Austen.

Sotomayor apparently never encountered outright discrimination. Princeton students are usually too polite for that. Exclusiveness was more subtly, even unconsciously, conveyed. On Sotomayor's very first day, a Southern girl turned to her and two other Hispanic girls and said how wonderful it was that Princeton had all these strange people.

In her freshman year, Sotomayor took a survey course on Latin American history. "She was clearly very intelligent and engaged, but very rough," recalls her professor, Peter Winn. "She was intimidated. She didn't speak in class. She had no idea what she was getting into." Sotomayor has recalled that her writing was "stilted and overly complicated," her "grammar and vocabulary skills weak." Winn undertook to improve it, showing her how to write clear, declarative sentences. More important, he taught her critical thinking. Sotomayor had come from a Roman Catholic high school, Cardinal Spellman, where learning was rote and students were taught to obey authority. Winn's rule was simple: "Be critical of everything, especially things you agree with." Sotomayor was extraordinarily determined to learn, but also cautious and deliberate. "She was slow to join things," Margarita Rosa, who was an activist and a member of the student group Acción Puertorriqueña, told The Daily Princetonian. "She sized up things for a while before she decided to become a part of something." But by the end of her sopho-more year Sotomayor was co-chairman of Acción Puertorriqueña and involved in other groups, as well as a member of the student-faculty Discipline Committee, a powerful position campuswide. Along with other Hispanic leaders at the university, she filed a complaint with the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare accusing Princeton of "an institutional pattern of discrimination" against Puerto Ricans and Chicanos. The letter is full of strong language, alleging a "total absence of regard, concern, and respect for an entire people and their culture" and "an attempt—a successful attempt so far—to relegate an important cultural sector of the population to oblivion."

One might think the Princeton administration would be irked by the negative publicity from such a wildly hyperbolic legal complaint. But "no, no, no, no, no," says former Princeton president Bill Bowen. "We were committed to making progress, and we were making progress" on minority hiring and admissions. Sotomayor and the other activists were, in effect, pushing on an open door. Princeton's largely liberal administrators were already committed to transforming the school from WASP bastion to multicultural meritocracy. The only debate was over timing—the university did not wish to act hastily. The important thing was that Sotomayor and the other student activists were working within the system. Though Princeton's campus was tamer than most during the tumult of the late '60s, university administrators were shaken by a building takeover by black activists in 1969.

"What I remember most [about Sotomayor] was just how mature she was," says Bowen. "We didn't see her as wanting to do anything except to improve the university. She wasn't trying to tear anything down." According to some Prince-ton contemporaries interviewed by NEWSWEEK, she reined in the hotheads who wanted to take more direct action, like occupying buildings. Sotomayor was a "true all-rounder," says Bowen. "All-rounder" is a term of high approbation at Princeton, which has long prized brilliant amateurs over narrow specialists.

In her senior year she won the Pyne Prize, the university's highest award, for the student who combines scholarship with leadership in campus organizations—the true "all-rounder." She was not a grasping careerist. "She was not one of these students who pushed herself on you," Bowen recalls. Rather, she mastered the very Princeton art of succeeding without appearing to want it too badly. She learned how to show a sense of scholarly detachment. In her 178-page summa cum laude Princeton thesis on the achievements and failures of a Puerto Rican leader named Luis Muñoz Marín, she begins by saying she will put aside her own view—a fairly radical one, that Puerto Rico should be an independent nation. The tone of the thesis is balanced and considered, though with a few bows to faddish radicalism, such as referring to the U.S. Congress as the North American Congress.

Sotomayor has said that she first became interested in the law watching the TV show Perry Mason as a young girl. It is unclear when she first decided that she wanted to be a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Winn, her Princeton mentor, says he would have guessed that after Yale Law she'd become a crusading civil-rights lawyer. Instead, she became a prosecutor representing the state—joining the Manhattan district attorney's office, where Robert Morgenthau, the politically powerful D.A. for life, became one of her champions. (She also continued the activism that started at Princeton by serving from 1980 to 1992 as an engaged board member of the Puerto Rican legal-defense group.) In 1984 she moved on to join a private law firm—gaining experience representing private clients that would serve her well in a career on the bench. Well-connected politically in the Manhattan legal establishment, she became a federal -district-court judge in 1992. When she was elevated to the court of appeals in 1998, there was widespread speculation that she would in time become the Supreme Court's first female Hispanic justice.

She has said nothing in her judicial opinions that would get in the way of that ambition. Her opinions are mostly solid, careful, noncontroversial. She has been a good deal feistier and more overtly liberal off the bench—showing her true colors, conservative critics say. Now their speculation is that she will abandon all restraint once she is given life tenure on the high court.

Says Ed Whelan, head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a leading intellectual conservative critic of the nominee: "As a lower-court judge, she's been obligated to follow Second Circuit and Supreme Court precedent, and she's had ample incentive to do so in order to preserve her viability for the Supreme Court. As a justice, she'd be liberated from the duty to follow precedent she disagrees with. Her disturbing speeches and her fervent embrace of quotas and other left-wing causes provide the clearest window into what to expect from a Justice Sotomayor."

But Whelan and the others may be misreading her. To be sure, she has a reputation for speaking curtly to lawyers appearing before her (especially when they are unprepared) and for occasionally confronting other judges.

And it's possible that she will tangle with the most outspoken and sharp-tongued conservative on the court, Antonin Scalia. But it's perhaps more likely she will take a low-key approach, sticking to careful and well-prepared opinions. Sotomayor is not a schemer or a conniver, says her old professor, Peter Winn. But he recalls that when she outmaneuvered those prep-school boys who had seemed so alien to her during freshman year, she permitted herself a wry laugh or two.

Sources: Newsweek, Politico

Sotomayor Explains "Wise Latina" Remarks, Gains Support From Leahy and Sessions

Politico--

Senate Democrats turned the usually staid meet and greet for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee into a full blown PR offensive Tuesday, defending Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s record while offering her first public defense of her controversial comments about race.


Democrats are also pushing an accelerated timetable for her confirmation, and are trying to lay the groundwork for a vote before the long August recess, despite Republican complaints that such a schedule wouldn’t give them enough time to scour Sotomayor’s judicial record. Democrats may lay out a hearing schedule before the end of the week, Senate sources said.

The Democratic push – coming as Sotomayor had a whirlwind day of visits with 10 senators – is aimed at building momentum for her nomination, while pressuring Republicans not to slow or block her path to the Supreme Court.


Sotomayor told several Democratic senators, in private meetings in the Capitol, that her comment that a “wise Latina woman” could render a better judgment than a white male judge was part of a much broader speech and that ultimately she was committed to following the rule of law above anything else.


In defusing the controversy over the “wise Latina” comment, Democrats sought to put the spotlight back on Sotomayor’s extensive legal career, assure the public she was committed to following the law and is not an activist judge.


Typically senators are largely mum about their private conversations with high-profile nominees. But Democratic senators, after watching Sotomayor get ripped for the past week by conservative commentators, chose to reveal much more of their conversations from Tuesday’s closed door meetings.

“What she said was of course one’s life experience shapes who you are,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who Sotomayor cleared to give her first public response on the controversy. “But ultimately and completely … as a judge you follow the law.”


But Sotomayor did not concede that she used a “poor” choice of words, as Obama himself suggested Friday even as he said that her statements had been taken out of context.


Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who also sits on the Judiciary Committee, said she didn’t acknowledge using a poor choice of words but put in a context for him to understand better. She told him: “’basically it means that’s part of my life experience that I bring to my judgment.’ She said, ‘Maybe it means with this background I’m a better listener, I listen for better things. But ultimately, it’s not going to decide any case for me.’”

“What Judge Sotomayor was saying was, ‘this is part of who I am. … This will be one of the things that I use to understand the people who come before – the cases that come before – but she said in the end that it’s the law that will decide.”

And another Judiciary Committee member, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who lunched with the nominee along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said Sotomayor pointed out that her comments in the speech where she made this remark also referenced the fact that Brown v. Board of Education was decided by nine white males, and she argued that her speech should be considered in its broader context.

In her 2001 speech, Sotomayor also explained that the experiences of white men affect how they render their law and that she has worked to overcome personal biases and assumptions to issue fair rulings.

Durbin said Sotomayor told her that her “judgment is not to be trumped by gender and race.”

While Democrats seemed willing to repeat the highlights of their conversation with Sotomayor as part of the PR offensive, Republican senators withheld judgment and offered skeptical questions over her approach to the law.


Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he was "very impressed" with her knowledge, experience and energy level. But he added that questions remain about her approach she would take to the law – even as she told him she “ultimately and completely” would follow the law.

“Some of the writings she has made, some of the speeches that she has made are troubling,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee who also met with the nominee Tuesday. “They’d be troubling to anybody who is fair.”


“I think we need to hold our fire until we examine all of these opinions and writings,” said Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who sits on the Judiciary Committee. “I think what this could boil down to -- and we'll have to examine very carefully all of the evidence -- is what this judge's view of judging is. Is it the same as the president's, which I reject, or is it more in common with what past judges and justices have done in deciding the cases on the merits rather their own feelings?”

Escorted by a handful of aides, Sotomayor was armed with talking points for her Senate visits, including telling several of them that the law was “ultimately and completely” the guiding force in how she makes decisions from the bench – even if her background helps guide how she comes to a decision.

Leahy and Sessions are planning to hold a critical meeting Wednesday morning to discuss timing on considering the nominee.


Leahy said Tuesday that Sotomayor has been the subject of “vicious” attacks – including one by Tom Tancredo likening her involvement with La Raza to that of the Ku Klux Klan and Rush Limbaugh calling her a “racist” – and he wants her to come before the committee as early as July. He said it would be “irresponsible” to wait until September to hold hearings since she would not be able to respond to the attacks, but Sessions disagreed.


“I don't think it will be irresponsible,” Sessions responded. “I hope the chairman will keep an open mind on this.”

If no deal is reached, Democrats expect an announcement on the hearing schedule to be issued in the coming days, with July a likely target, sources said.

"It will not be a fair process if they do that," Hatch said, adding that "some might" vote against her if that happened.

“I know how difficult it is for somebody who is nominated, they can’t answer charges, they can’t speak out when they’re a nominee,” Leahy said.

Sources: Politico, Day Life