The Party of Fat,Ugly,Rich White Men

Rush Limbaugh has weighed in that Sotomayor is a reverse racist as is President Obama. Naturally, he says he hopes she will fail, too as he assures his audience that Obama is going to fail. Charles Krauthammer has already penned a column that the choice is identity politics. And the newest Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, honorary whiteman John Yoo, the infamous author of the torture memo and supporter of the unitary theory of the executive branch of radical constitutional thinking, slammed the nomination because of the empathy issue and the fact that Sotomayor doesn't have the liberal firepower to initiate a change in the court revolution begun under Reagan. He may be right about the latter case,which is why I supported the one-legged lesbian law professor.

First, the empathy issue--which Orrin Hatch said was a codeword for an activist judge. If you lack empathy, you are likely to fall under the psychiatric classification of psychotic. The idea that empathy in a judge is a vice shows you how Orwellian our political debate has become. Hopefully, at some point, the fight will break into the open on this and the whole "activist" myth. Does the conservative theology of the Supreme Court still hold sway among the population at large? The cost has been enormous. Currently, the United States holds more of its citizens in prison that the whole combined as prisoners. A frightening reality for the Shining City on the Hill.

If you want our institutions to look more like America, then is appointing people of color identity politics or to avoid this must you appoint people who disown their background? I can't tell. 50% of the legal profession now are women. From the list created for Obama's choices, there are many extraordinarily talented women capable of being Supreme Court justices. Will the next woman be considered identity politics?

Or is the real identity politics here being that Sotomayor came from poverty? Only two other modern Supreme Court justices came from poverty--Clarence Thomas and William Douglas.

The conservative noise machine is likely to rabble rouse on this decision for the simple reason it needs to raise money. But the last weeks have been instructive in demonstrating that nothing President Obama does will not encounter the strongest resistance from the entrenched interests and the defeated conservative establishment. What is almost universal is that Obama's conservative critics, for the most part, are seriously overweight, ugly and very wealthy. The visuals have been unpleasant with Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh dominating the screen. Do you really want to belong to these guys?