I confess I haven’t been watching the confirmation hearings of judge Sotomayor for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, nor listening to them. It’s been a lot easier to avoid doing so than it was ducking the 
coverage of Michael Jackson’s death and its aftermath, quite frankly. Apparently our news outlets don’t consider this “newsy” enough. In any case, what I’ve heard and seen have been snippets of interrogations by Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama… I think the “R” stands for “Racist”) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina, a.k.a. “McCain’s brain”), also a bit from Dr. Coburn (R-Oklahoma). Certainly on that side of the partisan divide, the Judiciary committee comes off as a kind of cracker-town. And because the Democrats are, on the whole, utterly spineless and all-too-willing to fold on matters of principle, it is very often the core “values” of these southern conservative senators that end up carrying the most weight.
Sure, they won’t get their way- most likely- on the Sotomayor nomination, but that’s to be expected. They are in the minority, the presidency is no longer in their hands, so as Jon Stewart has so aptly put it, “it’s supposed to taste like a shit taco.” The problem is more with the timidity of the other party. Leave us face it – Sotomayor, distinguished jurist that she is, is not exactly a leftist version of Justice Scalia. Even with a virtually filibuster-proof majority, a Democratic president would never dare make that dramatic an appointment. Frankly, if Obama had named someone like, I don’t know, Jonathan Turley, he would have gotten howls of protest from the Republicans… exactly what he’s gotten with the appointment of a relative centrist, in the mold of Justice Souter (whom Sotomayor would be replacing). It’s the same dynamic as with proposing a single-payer health care system instead of some market-driven hybrid destined to fail – they’re going to call you a socialist anyway, so why not go for the gold?
Still, even though we’ve reached the point in American political culture where in order to be considered for nomination to the Supreme Court a judge must declare his/her love for gun ownership, disavow any position 
on abortion, and practically dance on Emmett Till’s grave, the Republicans are finding a great deal to complain about with this nominee. It’s frankly laughable to hear Jeff Sessions – who considered the voting rights act a “piece of intrusive legislation” and who had no problem with the KKK until some were caught smoking dope – and Lindsey Graham raising the banner against discrimination. Have they taken a look at their own panel? Are there a whole lot of black and Latino members of the Judiciary Committee? The Senate itself? Any chance that “reverse racism” is going to whittle away at their advantage in that august body? They need to calm down a bit. Though I suspect this is more about positioning the G.O.P. as a defender of Joe Six-pack (a.k.a. white working guys) than any genuine concern about the nominee. (See: Pat Buchanan)
Fact is, these guys are fine with non-white judges… so long as they behave exactly like southern white guys.
luv u,
jp
Hi, friends. Just caught me going over the list of necessities for our upcoming interstellar tour de force. Here’s an item destined to cause trepidation. Radioactive deutronium fuel – $5,600.00 per pint bottle. Jesus H. Christmas. I guess prices on Aldebaran have been anything but stable over the past year. (The Aldebarans were heavy investors in Bear Stearns, rumor has it.) Not sure why they need to earn it back off of our asses, but there you have it. Anyway, it’s on the list because, as you may have surmised, Big Green has indeed secured transport for our tour. I’m glad to be the one to tell you that it will not be one of those Korean missiles. No sir, this is a proper space vehicle. Or so we’re told.
crashing on a desert isle, modifying it for a seafaring voyage, etc., etc. It was a bit worse for wear when we got back, needless to say. I suppose if they had a rating system for spacecraft renters, we’d probably only get one star. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) felt a bit embarrassed by our rank carelessness with another person’s property. (This was all the more remarkable since embarrassment hadn’t been programmed into Marvin by that point – Mitch Macaphee had, in fact, programmed it out and replaced it with joy…. yes, unbridled JOY.)
impact. It’s like throwing a hammer at a wall. If it’s one of those little featherweight rubber hammers that come in a child’s carpentry set, the wall won’t mind at all. But if it’s a big old drop-forge hammer of the kind that used to be made at the Cheney Hammer Mill, well…. that wall will duck if it’s got the sense the god of walls gave it. I mean, hell… wouldn’t you? Think about it.
insurance. In America, it really takes a major illness to know whether or not you have what could be termed adequate coverage (and if you’re one of the 47 million who have no insurance at all, the question doesn’t even arise). But the utter failure of this system shows up in the little details as well. Not to bore you with my personal foibles, but for the last five or so years I’ve had dental insurance… which means, in my case, if I have any substantial work done – crowns, for instance – I can expect to pay $1,000 out of pocket instead of $1,600 (assuming it happens no more than once a year). Don’t know about you, but that grand is a little hard to put my hands on, so I tend to throw it on the old credit card and whittle it down month by month. That, in miniature, is one illustration of how people can get into serious financial trouble simply by being unfortunate enough to get sick or injured. 
of “lemon socialism”; privatize the profitable part of a business and socialize the costly part. The government provides coverage for the elderly, the poor, the infirm, etc. … all of the folks who require more care. That leaves the rest of us to the marketplace, where these massive private health insurance companies can decide who to cover, whose bills to pay, etc. Young and middle aged workers tend to pay in more than they take out of health insurance – by leaving them out of the government system, we create a situation where that system will inevitably run massive deficits over time. If we all participated in the same system, the healthy would compensate for the chronically ill, the elderly, etc. That’s the way it works in other industrialized countries – it could work here.