The 10 Dumbest Things Republicans Have Said About the Sotomayor Hearings
By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet. Posted July 15, 2009.
A list of the most ridiculous questions, jabs and rants by GOP lawmakers and other conservatives. At her Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, judicial nominee Sonia Sotomayor had to keep a straight face while Republicans heaped shame upon their party with a flood of ridiculous questions, unjustified jabs and tangential, pointless rants.
From sexist attacks about Sotomayor's "temperament" to a rigorous interrogation about the definition of nunchucks, GOPers came up with a multitude of embarrassing ways to try to hinder the Supreme Court nominee's confirmation.
The craziness and incompetence on display at the hearings has been more than matched by the absurd smears leveled at Sotomayor in the conservative media. The shining lights of conservatism -- such intellectual heavyweights Pat Buchanan, G. Gordan Liddy and Rush Limbaugh -- have outdone themselves with uninformed, offensive rants about the nominee.
AlterNet has compiled the 10 dumbest, most ridiculous statements about Sotomayor to issue from the lips of GOP lawmakers and other conservatives in the past few weeks.
1. Early this morning, Jeff Sessions seemed surprised that Sotomayor's legal decisions sometimes diverge from those of other judges of Puerto Rican descent. During a series of questions about Ricci v. DeStefano, Sessions scolded:
You voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And in fact, your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge (Jose) Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could've changed that case.
An interesting tack, especially considering that since Sotomayor's nomination, Republicans have desperately clutched at her "wise Latina" comments in order to unconvincingly argue that Sotomayor would let her personal experience dictate her judicial decision making -- thereby continuing the grievous oppression of white men.
Sessions' barely suppressed racism comes into even sharper focus when we consider Steve Benen's point: "Imagine how absurd it would have been if, during (Samuel) Alito's confirmation hearings, (Wisconsin Sen.) Russ Feingold pressed him on why he didn't vote in a certain case with another Italian American judge." ..........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/141321/the_10_dumbest_things_republicans_have_said_about_the_sotomayor_hearings/
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