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Photo by Charles Dharapak/AP
Mayor Bloomberg was running a tad late today when he flew down to Washington on his private plane in order to testify on behalf of Sonia Sotomayor. The mayor quickly livened up what have been my most accounts slow-going confirmation hearings with the early line, "I strongly believe that she should be supported by Republicans, Democrats and independents. And I should know because I've been all three."
A drier speech on behalf of Sotomayor was given by her old boss, Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau. Morgenthau said that Sotomyor "didn't treat minorities different than anybody" during her 5 years as ADA and she "took on every kind of criminal case that comes into an urban courthouse, from turnstile-jumping to homicide." He also recounted an early case against child porn in 1983 where Sotomayor "left the jurors in tears."
Bloomberg was in fine form today, addressing the issue of diversity that has been such a hot button topic since President Obama first announced the nomination. The mayor said, "On the issue of diversity, the Supreme Court currently includes one member who grew up in Brooklyn and one who grew up in Queens. And so there's no doubt that having someone who comes from the Bronx would improve the diversity of this court."
Both Bloomberg and Morgenthau defended Sotomayor's involvement with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. After the two of them spoke, the afternoon's hearing also heard from former Yankee and Met pitching great David Cone, who talked about Sotomayor's role in issuing an injunction during the 1995 players' strike. Cone said, "Because of her decision, baseball is in far better shape today that it was 15 years ago.”
The confirmation hearings are getting ready to wrap up with the judiciary committee expected vote on Tuesday.
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She's getting off very easily.
She better not fuck up.
Are you threatening a likely Supreme Court justice?
I think she handled the hearings really well. Of course, I don't think all the hardball questions were necessarily unfair (although some of them were).
All in all, I think she'll do a great job as a Supreme Court Justice. (And if support from a player of America's favorite pastime doesn't convince the most mainstream American, nothing will.)
Four days of these wasted hearings? What else is new with politicians. They never do their job anyway.
Thank you Steven. This is obviously the most important job interview in the land, but there should be some sort of rule that if the nominee is pretty much guaranteed the freakin gig, then politicians need to do something important for 4 days rather than stroke each other's egos.
She leans left because our president is of similar form (totally what I'm for), but Alito and Roberts lean right because so did the jackass that nominated them. Harriet Meyers was technically derailed because Sam Brownback didn't think she was conservative enough, but the other 98% of the country saw she was a retard and knew she needed to get grilled by Congress if something else didn't get in the way. There's no way she could have defended herself and spoken slightly eloquently for 4 days, which is why the theatrics would have meant something.
If Congress can't derail the inevitable with a non-moronic nominee, all they can do is whine with a national audience watching and waste all our time. It would be nice if politicians thought like that and moved the F on to important things that actually require debate.
Did you see clips from these hearings? Almost every single one of those jackasses talked about themselves for part of the hearing!!! They talked about where they grew up, what they did to become senators, etc.
Thanks assholes, you really earned your paychecks and lobbyist contributions this week.