The Sotomayor show

If you think Republicans have a prayer of stopping the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, you must not have heard her comments today at the start of her hearing.

She said people have been asking for her judicial philosophy. This is, she said, “Fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make law, it is to apply the law.” (Watch her comments here.)
That sounded like something straight out of the conservative playbook. And no matter what evidence may be brought to contradict what she said, Republicans appeared too disorganized for it to make any difference.
I did enjoy the comments of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, however. He said he “found guidance” from President Barack Obama’s comments, back in 2005 when he was a senator, during the confirmation hearing of Janice Rogers Brown. She is African-American, and she was nominated by Republican George W. Bush to an appeals court. Obama opposed her.
Obama’s first test, he said, was whether the nominee could “set aside her personal views and, as he (Obama) put it, ‘decide each case on the facts and the merits alone…’”
Second, Hatch said Obama studied Brown’s speeches to learn her “overarching judicial philosophy.”
Third, he said Obama identified race, gender and life story as important, but not as important as “the kind of judge she will be.”
Sotomayor will be confirmed, but at least Hatch pointed out the hypocrisy that runs rampant during confirmation hearings. It cuts both ways, of course. If the Senate had more Republicans, Sotomayor would be in trouble.
But it’s hard to forget people like Miguel Estrada, who was mugged by Senate Democrats for little reason other than that he was a Republican nominee to the U.S. Circuit Court.