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Sotomayor is Obama's SCOTUS pick

Brainster said:
Unless they can get the remaining GOP members of the Gang of 14 to go along with the filibuster, they won't have enough votes to avoid cloture. I would remind you that Bill Clinton's nominees both got overwhelming majority support, with Ginsburg receiving a 96-3 vote, and Breyer passing 89-7.

Essentially, this is not the one that counts; Sotomayor for Souter doesn't really change anything. In addition, the GOP will want to be very cautious about opposing the first Hispanic nominee. They don't need any more problems with Hispanic voters.

If I were to set an over/under on the votes for confirmation today I'd put it at 90.
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I think you know what you're talking about. I think your prediction might be pretty accurate.
 
Tricky said:
Since she pretty much coasted through her previous appointment hearing and since a few Republicans, notably Olympia Snowe of Maine, have praised the pick, I think it is a done deal. The most the GOP can do is spatter some mud on her.
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Politically, this is a very shrewd & smart move on the part of the Obama administration. Hispanics is a group the GOP is losing ground with, and if the Republicans want to have any chance of making inroads with this segment of the population they won't be too hard on Sotomayor. The problem is that if the GOP is too easy on Sotomayor, the Rush Limbaugh's on the hardcore right-wing will scream bloody murder.

I think the Dems are going to enjoy watching the GOP squirm on this one :)
 
Brainster said:
Unless they can get the remaining GOP members of the Gang of 14 to go along with the filibuster, they won't have enough votes to avoid cloture. I would remind you that Bill Clinton's nominees both got overwhelming majority support, with Ginsburg receiving a 96-3 vote, and Breyer passing 89-7.

Essentially, this is not the one that counts; Sotomayor for Souter doesn't really change anything. In addition, the GOP will want to be very cautious about opposing the first Hispanic nominee. They don't need any more problems with Hispanic voters.

If I were to set an over/under on the votes for confirmation today I'd put it at 90.
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Agreed. For this and other reasons noted, the GOP won't fight too hard on Sotomayor - though they may get dinged by the right-wingers for "being soft on a liberal/activist judge".

When Kennedy goes, then it'll be a fight in the Senate.
 
Cleon said:
We should start a betting pool on how many times we'll hear the phrase "activist judge" over the next couple of weeks.

(I would suggest a drinking contest, but I don't want to be responsible for half the forum dying of alcohol poisoning.)
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The other half already succumbed to cirrhosis playing the Camelot Caroline "you know" drinking game.
 
So far I've heard she's a right winger and a left winger. This is highly indicative of the fact that with the cases she had, one can not pigeonhole her views.

I'm calling her nomination a non-story until hearings take place.
 
MattusMaximus said:
Politically, this is a very shrewd & smart move on the part of the Obama administration. Hispanics is a group the GOP is losing ground with, and if the Republicans want to have any chance of making inroads with this segment of the population they won't be too hard on Sotomayor. The problem is that if the GOP is too easy on Sotomayor, the Rush Limbaugh's on the hardcore right-wing will scream bloody murder.

I think the Dems are going to enjoy watching the GOP squirm on this one :)
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I think the Dems will be disappointed by the paucity of squirming. Sure Rush and some of the core will scream, but the GOP will throw up a bunch of interesting "questions", just to establish their positions and appease their core, then knuckle under pretty quickly. Then they'll call it a moral victory.

Brainster's numbers might be pretty correct.
 
Tricky said:
Actually I'm just shocked that it wasn't Bill Ayers. Where is the old mad bomber in the Obama administration anyway? Weren't they supposed to be best buddies or sumpin'?
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Obama is saving Ayers for permanent director of ATF.
 
Cleon said:
We should start a betting pool on how many times we'll hear the phrase "activist judge" over the next couple of weeks.

(I would suggest a drinking contest, but I don't want to be responsible for half the forum dying of alcohol poisoning.)
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Remember my definition of an activist judge. Its the one that rules against what you want.
 
Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Court is Where Policy is Made

This quota pick doesn't do much for me, but it might be a step up from the gay blade Souter. We were all expecting an anti male, pro illegal immigration, legislate from the bench far left choice, and aren't disappointed. Unless she makes a few howlers in her confirmation hearings, she's in. Presidential elections have consequences.
 
kallsop said:
We were all expecting an anti male, pro illegal immigration, legislate from the bench far left choice, and aren't disappointed. Unless she makes a few howlers in her confirmation hearings, she's in. Presidential elections have consequences.
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Speaking of howlers, you can, of course, provide evidence for her being:

- anti male
- pro illegal immigration
- advocates legislating from the bench

In fact, in the link you provided, she says just the opposite of your third claim but I'm sure you can rebute her statement with other statements she's made.
 
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kallsop said:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Court is Where Policy is Made
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In other news, water is wet.

But as legal scholars have noted, Sotomayor's statement is entirely factual:

"She's not wrong," said Jeffrey Segal, a professor of law at Stony Brook University. "Of course they make policy... You can, on one hand, say Congress makes the law and the court interprets it. But on the other hand the law is not always clear. And in clarifying those laws, the courts make policy."

Eric Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University, was equally dismissive of this emerging conservative talking point. "She was saying something which is the absolute judicial equivalent of saying the sun rises each morning. It is not a controversial proposition at all that the overwhelming quantity of law making work in the federal system is done by the court of appeals... It is thoroughly uncontroversial to anyone other than a determined demagogue."
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(emph. added)
 
Jeff Rosen of the New Republic tried to head this nomination off at the pass a few weeks ago:

But despite the praise from some of her former clerks, and warm words from some of her Second Circuit colleagues, there are also many reservations about Sotomayor. Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.
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The SCOTUS blog points out that women and minority SC candidates have often had questions raised about their intellect:

Opponents’ first claim – likely stated obliquely and only on background – will be that Judge Sotomayor is not smart enough for the job. This is a critical ground for the White House to capture. The public expects Supreme Court Justices to be brilliant. Harriet Miers was painted (frequently, by conservatives) as not up to the job. The same claim (absurd to anyone who has talked with him) is still made by the left about Clarence Thomas. By contrast, John Roberts was described as brilliant and Sam Alito as exceptionally smart.
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I would add that questions were raised about Sandra Day O'Connor's intelligence, never mind that she graduated third in her class at Stanford Law (ironically the top person in that class was O'Connor's later Chief Justice William Rehnquist).

I'm not a lawyer and I've never interacted with Sotomayor. But it certainly seems to me that if somebody told me a guy had graduated near the top of his class at Princeton, and then made editor of the Yale Law Journal, I'd pretty quickly conclude that he was smart enough.

I hope the Republicans don't go after her on intellect; Rosen's article gives them the opportunity to do it obliquely. National Review's bench memos claims she was overturned more often than is usual. I'd like to see some backing for that assertion.

Nate Silver notes that 11 current Republican Senators (and slightly over half of the then 54 Republican Senators) voted against her nomination in 1998 to the 2nd Circuit. It's mostly the conservative wing, but McCain also voted against her (possibly with a weather eye to his 2000 presidential run).
 
SezMe said:
I'd be a tad reluctant to quote that article, Brainster. Not one single person is named who is quoted - not one. The two names are from a legal opinion and from an previous article.
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It's going to be brought up, but I certainly agree that the off-the-record nature of the complaints weakens Rosen's case. Like I said, I don't think the intellect question is entirely fair; if she can graduate at or near the top of her class at Princeton and Yale, then she's certainly smart enough.
 
Well, not hot like Sarah, but she probably doesn't have that annoying accent either.

She looked very young next to Obama this morning. Republicans gotta be taking a pause... thinking that they are going to have her around for a while.
 
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