Harumph!

What happened? All this terror and fear about a Hispanic (Gasp) Female (GAASSP) with a brain (GAAAAAASSSSP!!). I expected Sessions to be in full regalia complete with hooded robe and torch.

@ManchuCandidate: Nah, Sessions is pissed that he didn’t get confirmed as a judge but he stopped liking the Klan when he found out they were pot-smokers.

@SanFranLefty: Listening to Sessions now – he’s stamping his widdle cowboy-boot-clad feet, and he knows he can’t do a FUCKING THING to stop her. What a douchebag.

The empathy attack stuns me. Would the GOP be happy if we only appointed mindless robots to the bench?

Oh, shit. I just gave them an idea. Never happened. I wasn’t here. EJECT! EJECT!

@chicago bureau: Well according to the great anthropologist David Brooks, Sotomayor has pushed down all feelings or natural womanly desires to marry and breed. So maybe she is a robot. Damn, the ladies are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Meanwhile, Dr. Regina Benjamin, Obama’s nominee for Surgeon General, is getting criticized by the right wingers as another “empathetic” person because she opened public health clinics for poor people where she wouldn’t even charge them. Oh, and she’s black so she must not be qualified. Oh, and she’s fat. And she prescribed birth control pills to her patients.

Good God. Orrin’s going into nunchaku bans.

Sonia should go Bruce Lee on his sorry ass. “You have offended my family… and you have offended the Sotomayor Temple.” And then: whack bam boom.

The good thing about these hearings is that it’s brought more attention to Sessions’ past.

@chicago bureau: E.J. Dionne believes that the “robot offense” against SoMayo, who is utterly centrist, is a way to frame the debate for future nominations by Black Eagle.

@chicago bureau: I’d like her to invoke the current proceedings against Charles Taylor and say “Sir, I’m just glad to have at least one arm to write English with”.

OandBTW, I dare you to read that piece about Taylor and the armless witness or the rape victim forced to carry a sack full of heads including her kids’ and not weep a little. The dog and pony show conducted by Leahy and Sessions right now aint’ nuttin’….

See, guys — I told you Wendy Long’s Twitter feed was going to be hilarious today:

Sotomayor, Record vs. Rhetoric: note to Senators, rhetoric cannot change her record. #SCOTUS #Sotomayor
10 minutes ago from web

In the case of Sotomayor, Record v. Rhetoric, RECORD trumps. Rhetoric cannot alter the record.
44 minutes ago from web

This whole morning has been like stepping through the looking glass. Her rhetoric to the Committee bears no resemblance to her record.
about 1 hour ago from web

That’s three tweets saying precisely the same thing. Dude be pissed off. Hell, I can hear her hyperventilating from here.

Note to Sessions. Don’t go screaming about how a certain friend (a Judge Cedarbaum) of Sonia’s has a better approach when she’s in the room and can vouch for Sonia or you might look like the Klansman’s horse’s ass you are.

Wolf to Leahy: “Let me read you the entire quote.” Upon which Wolf doesn’t read the entire Wise Latina quote, just the part Republicans like to pick out.

And after which I switch to MSNBC.

@ManchuCandidate: Oh, but some of their best friends are Latino.

ADD: Grassley fully admits there’s a double standard being applied to the Wise Latina Lady Judge.

This is what I get for sleeping in: I missed the Nunchuck Colloquy.

Hey – but is the Jessica Jinx over for Dallas?

@redmanlaw:
Only if she’s not an “unflushable” see BBC Coupling for explanation.

@nojo: Video here.

Holy fuck, Sessions has really lost his mind – now Puerto Ricans are supposed to all vote alike.

ADD: Watch the video. It is hilarious. Sotomayor gets major props from me. When he says the line that she didn’t vote like another Puerto Rican, she calmly stops writing, pauses, and looks up at him, managing to control the impulse to say “Bish pleeez” or start cracking up.

Advisory on C-SPAN liveblog: “The host has disabled reader comments.”

[golf clap]

What time is Sen. Coburn going to start crying about baby killers?

Nunchucks! Drink!

@blogenfreude: Ah. Whatever asshole feared she might “shank” Sessions has new material to work with.

@nojo: I believe the shankee (may or may not be a word) in question was Scalia.

@mellbell: Correct. I should have looked it up.

Meanwhile, local bitch: The one time in seven years I actually want to watch C-SPAN 3, and I discover Cox hides it on a paid tier. Streaming no good — I have work to do on the StinqueBook Pro.

nojo: C-SPAN 3. Created By Cable. Offered As A Public Service. Except If You Do Not Haz Teh Munnie.

@chicago bureau: On the other hand, local PBS has Curious George. Decisions, decisions.

Okay, now I’m a little worry about her grasp on reality. Asked about the Japanese internment decisions,

“She called it ‘inconceivable’ that a decision today would permit the arrest and detention of people based solely on their race. ”

Inconceivable? Really?? Do we live in the same America?

@nojo: The guy who made the shank comment has clarified, and done himself no good.

@Mistress Cynica: Kyl’s bringing up Wise Latina, but being very respectful about it and related issues. But she’s being evasive about the answer, where it shouldn’t be that difficult to address, even in a politically heated circumstance. Take the diversity issue head on, explain how anybody’s experience informs their judgment, which is why we have nine warm bodies on the court: insights welcome from all angles.

“I understand there are some who have read this differently.” That’s the point, never mind that some are deliberately reading it differently. Use the quote as an example of the very principle at issue.

@Mistress Cynica: Tell that to every Muhammad and Zaid who’s been yanked out of the security line for a special search or added to the no-fly list since 2001.

It’s Roe v. Wade time!

Lindsey reads out her anonymous evaluations, which read very much like student riffs on professors. I’d be curious to read similar takes on Scalia.

Lindsey brings up 9/11, asks whether Sotomayor thinks we’re “at war,” what she thinks of the place of women in other (read: Islamic) cultures.

WT-fucking-F? Indefinite detention, of course.

@SanFranLefty: Late to the party, but:

Well according to the great anthropologist David Brooks, Sotomayor has pushed down all feelings or natural womanly desires to marry and breed. So maybe she is a robot.

So, does that mean that Ann Coulter is also a robot? Or did she get hitched and pop out a wee sprog while I wasn’t paying attention? Or Condi Rice? Sorry, this is so easy, even I can do it.

@blogenfreude: He’s absolutely right. I mean, look at what happened today just by dint of her presence on Capitol Hill.