Republicans and Sotomayor

Yesterday's historic swearing-in of Judge Sonya Sotomayor as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court was marred by the politics of the Republican party. I only hope that it comes back to haunt them at the polls. With Hispanics as the largest growing segment of the voting population, Republicans beware: it isn't just ethnic and racial politics either. It's also the disruptive nature of their opposition to health care reform, economic policies, and the reality of climate change.

According to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, hosted by CQ Politics, those Republican senators who voted for Sotomayor's confirmation were not themselves up for reelection. All twelve of the Republican senators who are up for reelection next year voted against Sotomayor. That could easily go either way: will Hispanic voters in their states have longer memories?

However, according to Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, the nea votes by Republicans were really about fear of getting a negative score from the National Rifle Association. Of the seven Senators likely to retire between now and 2010, four voted for Sotomayor, including Mel Martinez, Senator from Florida, who then quickly annouced his early retirement. Supposedly they didn't need to care about Hispanic voters (except for Florida, the other nine Senators who voted for Sotomayor come from states with tiny Latino voters), and defied the NRA.

With the GOP overtaken by nuts and extremists, will the Democrats be able to get anything done, or will they, too, sabotage an energetic president who wants to change the culture of Washington?

(un)Democracy

The spectacle of the Sotomayor confirmation process in the United States Senate makes me ashamed. This is no beacon of democracy. This is an example of politics gone wild, desperation, and pandering. It makes me wonder, having once taught Constitutional Law, how much we forget about the real history of the country. And how far we might have come, if we didn't have 24/7 cable news.

This is the place where the indigenous people were slaughtered with survivors rounded up, pushed off of their own land to make way for the settlers. This is the place where slavery made our economic system feasible. This is the place where public schools closed down rather than admit African American students. This is the place where in waves new immigrants came and helped moved America to its next phase of prosperity.

This is also the place where the rule of law forced institutions to open their doors to qualified people of color, where the president of the United States, yes, a citizen, is a man of color who can slip his voice into preacher patter and always make sense. Yet we don't seem to realize that some aspects of the American experiment in self-rule should be above politics. One is health care reform, the other is appointment of qualified judicial nominees. That only six Republican senators are willing to vote for Sonia Sotomayor speaks volumes about the desperation of the party, and the hypocrisy of the ultra-right. Sotomayor was appointed to the bench by George Bush, Senior, and elevated to the Court of Appeals by Bill Clinton. But what has history got to do with it, when Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and Michael Savage are the idiots spouting the "values" of the Republican Party.

Lag Time For Confirmations

With Sonia Sotomayor's nomination up for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee today, and only Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (you will get confirmed unless you have a melt-down) agreeing to vote in favor of her moving onto the Senate for a full vote, Congressional Quarterly has a fun chart: it shows the length of time required to confirm the most recent Supreme Court nominees.

Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan nominee and the current swing vote, won for the longest confirmation bout, and John Paul Stevens, a Ford nominee and currently the eldest member of the court, for the shortest.

Republicans should watch out for the back lash from Hispanic voters, since one rarely sees such a qualified candidate so articulately respond to so many pointed questions about her writings.

And Who Says We Live in a Colorblind Society?

Whether it was the arrest of Henry Louis Gates in his own home or the circulation by an anti-health care reform doctor Dr. David McKalip who serves as a delegate to the AMA of a racist doctored photograph of President Obama as a "witch doctor," this is all proof that race is very much a factor in American life.

I'd be indignant, too, if a police officer asked me to identify myself in my own home. I'd be indignant, too, if someone felt comfortable sending out a doctored photograph of me as an indigenous "witch doctor" when the debate about the reform of health care isn't being advanced by that email, but inflamed instead.

Which all goes to show us, right in our faces, that we are far from living in a post-racial society. Are you paying attention, Chief Justice John Roberts, from your cozy life? Are you paying attention, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who believe that Sonia Sotomayor doesn't have another perspective that might be an asset to the Supreme Court?

Blogging with Sonia

The spectacle of the Senate Judiciary Committee interrogation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is proof certain that old white men don't get that they are making fools of themselves by claiming that they don't operate on the basis of their race, class, and yes, gender.

Some of the bloggers who are following the grilling of this highly disciplined woman are doing the kind of analysis those of us with full-time jobs can't. I'm listing some so that you can check in during the day as the next round of public hearings continues. To keep updated, you will have to hit the refresh button on your internet browser every once in a while.

The New Yorker (observant of the gender and ethnic dynamics)

Talkingpointsmemo.com (Andrew Pincus is really smart and has himself argued nineteen cases before the Supreme Court, so he knows what he is writing about.)

New York Times (each day a variety of reporters chime in with their observations)

The Daily Beast (watch their fifteen best moments of the confirmation hearings and you won't have to waste all of your time waiting for the most sardonic exchanges)

The Myth of Colorblindness Revisited

Wouldn't it be great if race weren't the first characteristic we checked off upon meeting a new person! But it still is, no matter who we are. It's about clan, it's about tribe, and the negative aspects of this way we identify ourselves gets exacerbated when there are hierarchies: when one race predominates over another.

In America there is no meritocracy, not yet, not even close, so let's not pretend that race doesn't play an enormous role in decisionmaking, both public and private.

And as the Judiciary hearings begin today into the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, think about all of the code words that will be used, both brazen and more subtle, to distinguish her being Puerto Rican as either a plus or a minus.

Listen. Listen carefully.

And then read the New York Times this morning. In a front page story, a reporter disingenuously wonders why unemployment has hit African Americans so much worse in New York than people without color.

By the end of March, there were about 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites, according to the report, even though there are roughly 1.5 million more whites than blacks here.

It was that question from an African American reporter at a news conference last month, asking what the President was doing for men and women of color, when President Obama, who likes to ignore the issues of race, stumbled for the first time, claiming that the stimulus package was helping everyone. Well, it isn't. It doesn't seem to be helping anyone except for the bankers, frankly. And it isn't helping people of color because African Americans have the least job seniority, security, and are often employed in marginal industries that are heavily dependent upon a soaring economy.

If we all listen, we might learn about the hidden advantages that skin color offers or withholds, and find some room to grow inside ourselves.

Why It Matters Who You Are When Acting on Behalf of the Public

As I've written previously, we are all constructed by identities: gender, race, religion, ethnicity, region, family style and makeup, and class. To ignore these aspects of character is stupid, especially now, when we have so many personal narratives that explore how different experiences bring perspective to decision-making. As a country of immigrants and misfits, too long we have allowed white men to make all public, and too often, private decisions.

Not anymore.

Just as we might not know what aspects of President Obama's character derive from his white mother or his African father, we also know that his experience in the world was heavily influenced by the fact that he is bi-racial. He wrote an entire book on claiming his identity: Dreams From My Father.

Sonia Sotomayor is Obama's nominee to replace David Souter as associate justice on the US Supreme Court. Her perspective has been forged from the experiences of being a woman, growing up Puerto Rican, attending elite schools where Puerto Rican women were more likely to be the custodians and housekeepers than the students, and being first a trial court and then an appellate judge. Her moderation appeals to our president. That there should be more than one woman on the US Supreme Court appeals to me. I won't be satisfied until half the court is comprised of women!

There is a fascinating interview with Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the upcoming New York Times magazine section that you can access now. It's long, but it's interesting, because Justice Ginsburg has spent her lifetime being a woman in places where women weren't intended to feel comfortable. As women, we all understand that feeling of being an outsider, of having to prove ourselves not according to the rules, but to defy some unspoken assumptions of incompetency. I remember being a young attorney and how many opponents assumed that I was sleeping with a partner, or was available to anyone with any power. I can't imagine the confluence of gender and race or ethnicity on the challenge of competency. Listen to the critics of her nomination and then think about what they are saying and why.

How We Are Made

Back in May, Jeffrey Toobin wrote an insightful piece about Chief Justice John Roberts, in the May 25, 2009 issue of the New Yorker. His conclusions, which are harsh to someone who has studied the court and its role in American society are clear, and accurate:

After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

Where did this understanding of the role of the Supreme Court derive? Despite protestations to the contrary, Chief Justice Roberts who is personally youngish looking, handsome, and quite charming, although alarmingly combative in his questioning from the bench during oral argument, is the product of his upbringing: Catholic family where his father was an executive and his mother a homemaker; private boarding school; Harvard College; and then Harvard Law School. He is white, he has always been conservative, and he was groomed through various positions within Republican administrations.

His lack of empathy and his seemingly unrepentant support for the status quo, which means keeping white men in power (his votes and decisions on race issues, especially are disturbing), are the product of the circumstance of his birth, and he brings that to every decision he makes on the bench. That he is a white man, born into privilege, is never discussed until it is compared with the narrative of someone like Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy left by the resignation of David Souter.

This is an example of how race is invisible, along with all of its privileges, if one happens to be white and male. No one ever speaks about how race has provided these men with opportunities unavailable to most others. We can't allow these assumptions to remain invisible, and must, especially as debate on the Sotomayor nomination begins, keep annoucing to the country and to our elected representatives that we know the source of their power.

Sonia Sotomayor represents true meritocracy, unlike the wunderkind John Roberts. She battled where he glided. And we need people who have fought these kinds of battles for respect, position, and success to hear the stories of people, not just corporations, but people, too. The Supreme Court is not an umpire, but a policy maker, and let's never pretend that it isn't.

Hypocrisy in High Places, Oh, Gosh, Not Again!

So now the illustrious senator from Nevada, Republican John Ensign, is screwing his aide's wife, despite his public outcry that Bill Clinton should have resigned back then because of Monica, that Christianity prohibits adultery, and all of the other bullshit that goes along with this ultraright agenda. Human frailty is not a capital crime.

Most disturbing however is the report that forty major news organizations kept the kidnapping of New York Times reporter David Rohde quiet for seven months, fearing that any publicity might risk his life and the lives of his companions who were also held by the Taliban.

How are these stories connected? In both instances, news organizations made decisions not to publish accounts.

Frankly, I'm sick and tired of the hypocrisy of these politicians who claim a higher ground and then we find out they are corrupt, actually more corrupt than we are because most of us don't claim to judge everyone else for their human failings, and don't get paid with taxpayer money to rail against their enemies. I'm also sick and tired of these diversions. Who sleeps with whom doesn't interest me.

I want the senate to do the work of the senate, to get these nominations through: Dawn Johnsen, Harold Koh, Sonia Sotomayor. I want the senate to pressure the White House to investigate the use of torture as part of our national security, a practice that might not have ended with the change of administration. And I want the news media to regain our confidence by doing some investigative reporting again, not about affairs, I don't care about affairs. I care about the money, where the money flows and how decisions are made. Like in financial bailouts, TARP, banking regulation, and the home mortgage industry. There seems to be a lot of work to be done on these issues.