Senators talk away at Sonia Sotomayor's hearing

[FarCenter]

Supreme Court nomination hearings in the U.S. Senate are supposed to be an opportunity for senators and the American public to get to know a candidate. But they frequently turn into opportunities for senators to hear themselves talk. Who can forget then-Senator Joe Biden’s infamous 12-minute long “question” in 2006 of Samuel Alito?

This week’s hearing with Sonia Sotomayor was no different, with senators speech-ifying at great length before getting around to asking the nominee a question. Salon’s Axel Koppelman noted that, per tradition, the entire first day of hearings consisted “of the usual formalities — that is, the 19 senators of the Judiciary Committee basking in their camera time and getting to hear themselves talk.” The Washington Post’s Ben Pershing wrote an item titled “Sotomayor Hearings End With Few Lessons Learned” and confessed: “We know that senators like to hear themselves talk.” So bad was it that Sotomayor’s nephew was even caught dozing off during the hearings.

Using the transcripts provided on the Los Angeles Times’ website, POLITICO has crunched the numbers to find out who who spent the most time yapping away.

And the results are in: senators out-talked Sotomayor by about a third. And Republicans – clearly more leery of the Democratic-nominated Sotomayor than those on the other side of the aisle — spent the most time with Sotomayor. The average Republican had 5,908 words to the Democrats 4,217.

<SNIP> http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25088.html

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Why aren't Senate and Congressional "hearings" called "talkings"?

[LiberalAndProud]

1. Double-speak. Up is down. Hearing is talking.