Jon Kyl (R-AZ) announced his opposition to the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotmayor for the Supreme Court. Certainly his right to do so. I have argued that the Senate owes the President no deference on judicial appointees. And this is not the first time Kyl blocked a Latino nominated by a Democratic President. Kyl was a part of the GOP cabal that blocked the confirmation of Clinton nominated appeals court judge Richard Paez (Paez was eventually confirmed.) But it is a reversal from Kyl's stated views on the deference due to a President's choice for the Supreme Court. When it was Judge Alito, Kyl was outraged that Democrats would vote no:

U.S. Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) today issued the following statement regarding his intent to support the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court.

"Given her judicial record, and her testimony this week, it is my determination that Judge Sotomayor is well-qualified to serve as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. "Judge Sotomayor is knowledgeable of the law, would be a fair and impartial judge, and seems to have a good understanding of the limited role the judiciary plays in our democracy.

"Judge Sotomayor's rise to the Supreme Court is testimony to the fact that the American dream continues to be attainable. As an Hispanic American, I take great pride in Judge Sotomayor's historic achievement. Given her qualifications and testimony this week, I intend to vote in favor of her confirmation."

When I get copy of Senator Olympia Snowe's statement announcing her support for Sotomayor, I will post it here.

U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar released the following statement on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court:

“I have listened to the testimony of Judge Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary Committee, carefully reviewed her public service record, and reviewed recommendations from Indiana constituents and colleagues here in the Senate. Judge Sotomayor is clearly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court and she has demonstrated a judicial temperament during her week-long nomination hearing. Judge Sotomayor has had a distinguished career of public service. She is well regarded in the legal community and by her peers. I will vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Craig Crawford:

. . . Racially-tinged inferences, snide liberal bashing and the shameless pandering to anti-intellectual sentiment that once won the day for Republicans are now falling flat. The Sotomayor nomination has proved to be yet another test case for the efficacy of traditional conservative attack lines.

Republicans might have hoped to use this hearing to put limits on how far the President can safely go in picking liberals for future openings. Instead, they showcased just how narrow and out of touch their political base has become. . . . Until Republicans get past calling 1-800-HATE there will be fewer and fewer voters on the other end of the line.

Indeed.

Speaking for me only

The ABA representatives presented their report that rated Judge Sotomayor as "well qualified," its highest rating.

The Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, is testifying in support of Judge Sotomayor. I blogged about a call with General McDaniel in this post. Of note is McDaniel's criticism of the Supreme Court's Ricci decision.

Apparently I missed quite the show with the witnesses, judging from the comments. Sorry, life intruded. Apparently the panel on the firefighters' legal opinions is now over.

David Cone, former Royal, Met, Blue Jay and, most importantly, Yankee, speaks about his experience before Sotomayor when he was a MLBPU leader. Nice story, and I like David Cone, but the relevance of his testimony is not apparent to me.

The nonsense continues today. I am watching intermittently. Tom Watson shot 65 at the British Open.

Jon Kyl misstating what happened in Ricci. The case he will never mention is Griggs. The law he will never mention is the 1991 Amendments to Title VII enacted by congress AFTER the Supreme Court decision in Ward's Cove.

To remember about Ricci, here was the Constitutional Accountability Center's analysis.

Though I must say Sotomayor does a terrible job of explaining this issue. [More...]

There are very real and important differences of judicial and political philosophy between the Democratic and Republican parties in the current political climate. The differences in views are fundamental and stark. They are incredibly important. But the Republican Party's Paranoid Style, its insistence on the Southern Strategy, made it inevitable that these important differences were never discussed.

Professor Jack Balkin argued that "what the candidates actually say is far less important than what the Senators expect them to agree with. By shaping the constitutional catechism at hearings, the Senate gives an account of what Americans expect from their Supreme Court Justices.

That certainly did not happen in these hearings. This was due to the Republican obsession with race. "The Wise Latina." Indeed, Balkin himself implicitly acknowledges that. His only post on the hearings is titled The Declining Utility Of The Politics Of Racial Resentment, hardly a substantive discussion of weighty constitutional matters. Balkin writes:

Ilya Somin, who is scheduled to testify against the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, restates a position he and I have held consistently about Senatorial deference to a President's judicial nominees:

The bottom line is that Supreme Court justices wield great influence and serve for life. It is dangerous to give any one man unconstrained power to choose them. It is almost equally dangerous to give him unconstrained power to appoint anyone with appropriate professional qualifications, since the president can almost always find a technically qualified nominee who will reflect his views - even if those views may be seriously flawed or show excessive deference to the executive. The current confirmation process has many flaws. But one that gives the President largely unconstrained authority to pick justices would be worse.

I've presented this exact argument many many times. Now, where are the Nuclear Option proponents (when Bush was President) to rebut this argument today? Listen to the crickets.

Speaking for me only

Specter is up. I can't follow it right now. Please do so in the comments.

Update: I saw Specter's riff on judicial legislation and the ridiculous "proportionality and congruence" standard the Court invented for determining whether the Congress was acting within its Commerce Clause power. Best thing in the questioning I have seen.

Update (TL): The transcript from this morning (part 1)is available here. Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here and Part 4 is here.

More . . .

Hillary Clinton is slated to give a "major speech" today. I have no idea what it is about or where it will be given. Just heard Andrea Mitchell say that.

The Tour de France has been uneventful the past 2 days. Big days in the Alps lie ahead.

President Obama seems to be putting his shoulder to the wheel on health care. Senator Dodd's Health Committee pushed out a bill with mandates (employer and individual). Max Baucus' committee has yet to be heard from.

While actual legal issues and judicial philosophy have not really been a part of the Sotmayor hearings, particularly with regard to the Ricci case, it is still worth noting the actual facts and law of that case. The National Women''s Law Center provides a good post on the matter.

This is an Open Thread.

We have learned that Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) has a favorite Puerto Rican jurist -- Jose Cabranes. Sessions demanded to know why Judge Sotomayor did not follow Judge Cabranes' lead:

Interestingly, Sessions was very critical of Judge Sotomayor's involvement, as a member of the Board of Directors, of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Sessions seemed not to know that his favorite Boricua judge, Cabranes, was also a member of the Board of the PRDLEF. Now right wing groups allied with Sessions and following his lead are running an ad attacking Sotomayor as a "terrorist:"

Senator Whitehouse should provide something of interest.

Apparently, being boring and uninteresting is the Dem strategy today. So I am going to return to the politics of the Sotomayor hearings. Matt Yglesias writes:

Consider the case of Jeff Sessions (R-AL). We’re talking about a guy who’s too racist to get confirmed as a judge, but just racist enough to win a Senate seat in Alabama. And it’s not because Alabama is a lilly white state. With 65 percent of its electorate white, and 29 percent of its electorate African-American, Alabama is much more demographically favorable to the Democrats than is the country at large. But while McCain pulled 55 percent of the white vote nationwide he scored 88 percent of white vote in Alabama. And this is what you tend to see in the Deep South, white Americans exhibiting the kind of high levels of racial solidarity in voting behavior that you normally associate with African-Americans in the US political context.

(Emphasis supplied.) It is certainly possible that in the South and in places like Utah and Idaho, the GOP can get 95% of the whote vote. But that will not provide the GOP any political benefit. I'll explain on the flip.