Sotomayor's a Bore -- What Ever Happened to the Days of Bork and Thomas?
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There's been a lot of Web and TV chatter about the continuing importance of Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees—given the relative non-newsworthy hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor and her two predecessors, now-Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. It's a legitimate question, given the fact candidates are so thoroughly prepared by surrogate questioners and communications persons not to make news.
Are the days of rough-and-tumble hearings over? Not since Justice Clarence Thomas's nomination process has there been a truly nasty Supreme Court nomination process, Mrs. Alito's tears notwithstanding.
Conservatives remember Sen. Ted Kennedy's ferocious attack on "Robert Bork's America," the pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can humiliations visited upon Clarence Thomas and the way that Samuel Alito's wife cried after Sen. Lindsey Graham recounted the Democrats' charges against her husband.
So does this mean Judiciary Committee hearings have gone the way of the party conventions and become totally pre-staged events thoroughly vetted by PR professionals so that only a concocted partisan message gets through?
It's interesting to note that there was a time, not too long ago, when the Senate Judiciary Committee didn't bother with confirmation hearings. But confirmations without hearings took place in an era when the public expected a heckuva lot less "sunlight" to be shone on government operations:
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson's nomination of Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish nominee to the Supreme Court, embroiled the Judiciary Committee in a four-month debate. At the time of his nomination, it was not the practice of the Senate to hear testimony from Supreme Court nominees. Instead, the Committee conducted its own investigations, often in executive session and without record of their deliberations.
I cannot see a return to executive session hearings with no public testimony, although it's interesting to note that took place as recently as 93 years ago. Judiciary Committee hearings didn't start until 1925, when Harlan Stone became the first nominee to testify before the committee.
So despite the lack of drama at recent confirmation hearings, they still serve the purpose of allowing last-minute evidence to be entered into the record. Consider Anita Hill's last-minute decision to go public during the Clarence Thomas hearings. That alone makes it a worthwhile venture to continue the process (which some would call a charade) for now.
- Check out our political cartoons on Sonia Sotomayor.
- See our photo gallery of the Sotomayor confirmation hearing.
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Reader Comments
Not Wise Enough To .....
I don't think she should be on the Supreme Court,but Im not Wise enoughe,or feminine enough for my opinion to be of any value. Maybe if all of us un-wise caucation males stayed home from work for a couple of weeks,America would be a better place to live. Oh and Maybe we should quit shopping and eating out too during our sabatical from being in public,that may help America be better too. After all we are just not wise enough to make important decissions about things. Maybe we should stay home for a couple of months,and let the wise people of society take care of things like policing the streets and fitghting fires and performing emergency medical rescues.Thanks
John wants tax-provided Bible porn in public schools
Scripture has many pornographic dirty stories. Lot has a son by each of his VIRGIN daughters. King David as Peeping Tom watches a nude married woman as she bathes. He's the king so he has sex with her after arranging to have her husband killed. He makes her pregnant, and that's a sin so God kills the baby. For old men, there's the tale of Abraham having a baby with the household help and then later, with his very old wife. From the servant's baby comes the hero of the Muslim faith, an insult that still inspires jihad. If the Bible were sold as a paperback thriller, it would be fitting to have a cover showing bare-breasted women being raped. Publishers of religious literature have made trillions of dollars by selling stuff that doesn't seem to be recognized as porn. Puzzling over other fiction, I wondered why a novel that glorified a slave-holding Rebel family would be a best-seller and movie. Then I remembered the marital rape scene, with the husband's intoxication somehow excusing him--the same theme in the Lot sex-crime tale. We need more science labs and computers in public schools. If religious parents want porn for their kids, let them share their Bibles.
according to the poll in USnews
we ain't gona put with her racist remarked according to history if it wouldn't be for the white man that fight the indian, the Brit, the French, the Mexican we wouldn't have this land and this country to begin with, we should thanks the white man who created this nation and i think this Latina is really a racist ban her ass from the supreme court judge for ever. I have alot of Latina GF in HS, and College but they never make a n racist comment like this old stinky women that motor mouth of her keep going around say bad thing to white people. The people who don't wana get the house catch on fire shouldn't go around and set flame on other person home. If u say u truely love America and you vote with her then shame on you. I'm a truely patriot as it can be, Hispanic Women and Black Men condition right now are throwing the economic of CA into the thrash they will cary their shame to with them to eternity if they ain't fixing it.
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