God,Guns,Gays,Gitmo and Girls-more Sotomayor

In full throated campaign cry, Barack Obama was in Nevada last night defying his critics to prove that Sotomayor was not qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. On the AC360 blog at CNN, Dave Gergen called his pick "one of Obama's finest hours". Noting that Sotomayor first won confirmation to the federal bench by unanimous consent and then to the Court of Appeals by 67-29, Gergen notes that Republican party-builders know the heavy price they paid with Hispanics when they sided with the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 inCalifornia. They have never recovered.

The Washington Post this morning covered the national celebrations among the Hispanic community on the nomination. Forming 15% of the population,Hispanics are the largest minority and one that went 2-1 for Barack Obama in the last election. To be a competitive party, Republicans need to secure 35-40% of this vote, something which they will not do if they mount an attack on the first Hispanic woman nominated to the Supreme Court.

(*For history's sake, technically the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court was Benjamin Cardozo.)

But never fear, reader, the party of torture and the lack of empathy is trudging down the lonely path by attacking Sotomayor as an affirmative action candidate (notwithstanding her excellent academic credentials and many,many years on the bench.) To make the case, they reeled out anti-immigration king Tom Tanredo who accused her of being racist. Karl Rove,a college dropout himself, suggested on Fox News that she was not "intellectually strong"--like,say, Harriet Meirs, and that she was not respected by her colleagues. Richard Viguerie issued a call for an anti-Sotomayor campaign: "This is an enormous opportunity for conservatives to define President Obama as a radical liberal in a way Republicans have so far failed to do." Viguerie said it was a good time to re-identify the conservative movement and replenish the coffers with donations.

n May 1, Bill Kristol spoke at the Washington Federalist Society and suggested she would be hard to oppose , pointing out she was first appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush. he told the audience he didn't believe she could galvanize meaningful opposition and he didn't encourage a full-scale campaign against her. Knowing Kristol's almost absolute fallibility onall things political and domestic,the attack ads began even before Sotomayor was nominated.

Conservatives have already stepped in it by denouncing Obama's use of the word "empathy". After all, their hero, Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court in the word of President George H.W. Bush for his"empathy and good humor." Senator Sessions promptly shot himself in the foot when he went on cable news yesterday and said clearly that courts make policy, a line used against Judge Sotomayor for her comments to a conference on judicial interns. To make matters worse,the American Bar Association has rated Sotomayor as a solid moderate on the bench. The reporting side of the Wall Street Journal reviewed her over 4,000 decisions and found she defended corporate interests most of the time.

The Washington Post said an all-out assault on Sotomayor by the Republicans could alienate Hispanic and women voters, deepening the GOP's problems after two crushing electoral cycles. But sidestepping a court battle would deflate the party's base and hurt efforts to rally conservatives going forward. John Weaver, the former campaign adviser to John McCain, confirmed,"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that we need to tread very carefully." Need and will are two different things.

Both Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine received calls about the appointment beforehand from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. Both senators need to be on board as a preventive measure in case the Republicans go complete kamikaze and decide to filibuster.

Followers of Rev. James Dobson have opposed Sotomayor as do the Christian Defense Coalition and the Faith and Action groups who are militantly anti-abortion. Concerned Women of American also weighed in about her "immodest bias"--this is the reverse racism tag--when she said "A Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a while make who hasn't lived that life."

Better yet for those of us who notice that conservatives are still fixated on the 1960s and Saul Alinsky type figures and Bill Ayres, conservatives have found that Sotomayor's senior thesis at Princeton was on Puerto Rican identity. In the thesis, she wrote about the long history of Puerto Rico's status to the United States, covering the Commowealth debate led by Munoz Marin and the various independence efforts. Naturally, in this thesis written in the 1970s, the FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorists are mentioned. And Sotomayor suggests she favors (at that time) independence for Puerto Rico as a way to preserve its culture, noting the disappearance of indigneous culture when both Hawaii and Alaska became states. Ergo, like Barack Obama, she is linked to terrorists.

So far the best line in all this was Rush Limbaugh's line about Barack Obama being a reverse racist. One blogger asked "If you're part white and part black, how can you be a reverse racist?" Never mind, as the great Robert Anton Wilson frequently said,"There is no room for rationality in politics." But you have to feel a little sorry for Pat Buchanan, who now looks lost and weepy about everything.

You can bet the screaming will continue because the screaming hasn't stopped since Obama was elected.

You would think conservatives would rejoice at the California Supreme Court's upholding Prop 8 banning gay marriages. You could also imagine the outrage if Obama had nominated the sole dissenter Carlos Mareno to the Supreme Court. But The California court decision was a small detour on the road to gay marriage. The Court begrudgingly allowed California voters the right to decide the issue at the ballot box. But they also did not backdown from its vigorous support of gay rights and even the use of marriage to describe the legalizing the 18,000 who did get married. Not the most courageous decision but the California court planted the seeds for reversal right in the middle of the decision.

Enter former Bush administration solicitor general Theodore Olson--also the lawyer for the McCain campaign-- who has filed suit with co-counsel David Boies of the Bush v. Gore cases to overturn Prop 8 and re-establish the right of gay couples to marry. The suit filed on behalf of two same-sex couples asks the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to issue an injunction that would stop enforcement of Proposition 8 and allow same sex couples to marry while the case is being decided.

Interviewed by former American Spectator reporter Byron York about conservatives objecting to his asking the court to overturn the will of the people, Olson responded:" It is our position in this case that Proposition 8, as upheld by the California Supreme Court, denies federal constitutional rights under the equal protection and due process clauses of the constitution. The constitution protects individuals' basic rights that cannot be taken away by a vote. If the people of California had voted to ban interracial marriage, it would have been the responsibility of the courts to say that they cannot do that under the constitution. We believe that denying individuals in this category the right to lasting, loving relationships through marriage is a denial to them, on an impermissible basis, of the rights that the rest of us enjoy and I also personally believe that it is wrong for us to continue to deny rights to individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation."

Asked why he took the case, Olson said," I personally think it is time that we as a nation get past distinguishing people on the basis of sexual orientation, and that a grave injustice is being done to people by making these distinctions. I thought their cause was just."

Olson was also the lawyer in the McCain campaign who was most vocal in denouncing the "birthers", who claim that Obama was foreign-born, saying it was "utter nonsense". He also came to the defense of Harold Koh, nominated to be State Department counsel, who was denounced by Fox News as allegedly supporting Sharia Law.

The game is on. The creaking sound you hear is the Republicans closing the casket lid on themselves.