Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Richard Lugar (R-IN)
John Thune (R-SD)
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Many of Sessions’ implausible attacks on Judge Hamilton appeared more at home on Glenn Beck’s show than they did on the Senate floor.  At one point, Sessions embraced false claims that Hamilton gave Muslims preferential treatment over Christians. Sessions also deemed Hamilton unfit for the bench because Hamilton spent one month working for ACORN in 1979. Yet, for all of his impotent rage against President Obama’s first nominee, Sessions couldn’t even convince much of his own caucus to support a filibuster. Hopefully, Sessions’ utter powerlessness against Hamilton’s nomination will embolden Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to move forward with dozens of other Obama nominees currently being held up in the Senate.

Four months later, nothing has changed. Since taking office last January, only four of President Obama’s judicial nominees have been confirmed, despite the fact that President Bush’s judges received very different treatment:

Consider, for example, the judicial nominations process during President George W. Bush’s last two years in office, 2007 and 2008. Bush was deeply unpopular at the time, and he faced a Senate firmly under Democratic control. Still, a large number of Bush nominees sailed through. The Senate voted on more than one-third of Bush’s confirmed nominees (26 of 68) less than three months after the president nominated them. [...]

The story was similar in the first two years of Bush’s presidency: A Democratic majority in Congress confirmed 100 of Bush’s nominees in 17 months, even after delays due to a change in party control of the Sen. after Senator James Jeffords left the Republican Party in May 2001.

Blocking nearly every single one of a President’s nominees is unprecedented, but conservatives have played Calvinball with the Senate’s confirmation rules for decades.  During the Reagan and Bush I Administrations, then-Senate Judiciary Chair Joe Biden (D-DE) followed a longstanding rule allowing a nominee’s home state senators to block a judicial nominee, but only if both senators agreed to do so. After President Clinton took office and conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) became judiciary chair, however, the rules suddenly changed to allow a single-home state senator to veto a nominee — a power that segregationist Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) used to block every single one of Clinton’s nominees from North Carolina. Yet when Bush II took office, Hatch eliminated the home-state senator veto altogether.

This time, however, the right doesn’t even have enough votes to maintain a filibuster if the Majority Leader insists that President Obama’s nominees deserve the same favorable treatment he gave to President Bush’s; the only question is how long Reid will let the “Party of No” say no to Obama’s judges.

CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”

Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

Listen here:

Pelosi is right to be dismissive of the fringe right-wing theory behind this question, which has no basis in the Constitution itself. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power “[t]o regulate commerce…among the several states” as well as the authority to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” its power to regulate commerce.-Een ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia acknowledges that these constitutional provisions give Congress sweeping authority to enact laws that regulate “economic activity.”

CNSNews’ question to the House Speaker essentially parrots a claim by two discredited right-wing attorneys that a provision of health reform known as the “individual mandate” exceeds Congress’ authority because it does not regulate economic activity. This claim is wrong.

When confronted with the “tenther” question, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) offered an entirely novel argument against the individual mandate. Although Boehner admitted that he is “not a constitutional lawyer,” he added that “it’s wrong to mandate that the American people have to do anything”:

Boehner said: “Well, I’m not a lawyer and I’m certainly not a constitutional lawyer, but I think it’s wrong to mandate that the American people have to do anything.

“You know, one of the things that’s great about America is that we have the freedom to do anything that we want, as long as it doesn’t infringe on somebody else’s freedom,” said Boehner.

For the record, nothing in the Constitution says that an Act of Congress is unconstitutional simply because John Boehner thinks that it is “wrong.”

Texans will converge on Austin to deliver a petition to Restore America by Demanding our Sovereignty or we will be forced to call a vote for Secession.

This is straight out of the Declaration of Independence and our right to “alter or abolish” our government if it has, “after a long train of abuses” refused to protect the rights of the people.

At present, the Texas Nationalist Movement has a petition with 1 Million signatures directly calling for a vote of secession.

We are calling for an orderly process that will allow our federal government to fall back in line with the Constitution. We are reclaiming our states rights and our individual rights. [...]

We must stand up and be counted or we will find ourselves in another government. Either we restore America, we will live in a Marxist dictatorship, or we will secede and start over again.

The organization’s petition echoes language used by other “tenther” activists who believe that everything from Social Security to Medicare to the federal highway system violates the Tenth Amendment. According to the petition, Texas officials must either “immediately move for the restoration of the complete and unadulterated Sovereignty of Texas, explicitly adhering to the 10th Amendment wording of the U.S. Constitution,” or “move immediately for complete Secession from the United States of America.” In light of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent expression of support for Texas secession, the petition could receive a friendly hearing.

Author and historian David Barton, the president of WallBbuilders, [sic] says Shea-Porter’s comments reflect her view that Washington government should run everything. He notes that both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments say anything that is not explicitly covered in the Constitution belongs to the states and to the people.

“All of those issues belong to the states and the people. Healthcare is not a federal issue. It is a state and people issue — the same with transportation. The Constitution does say that the federal government can take care of what are called the post roads — those on which the mail travels — but outside of that, states are responsible for their own highways, their own roads, their own county, local, state roads,” he notes. “And her comment about, ‘Well, the Constitution doesn’t cover drug use and drug abuse’ — yes it does, and that is under the criminal justice issues that belong to the states.”

As ThinkProgress previously reported, conservatives are increasingly enraptured with tentherism, which claims that landmark federal programs such as Medicare, Social Security, the VA health system and the G.I. Bill are violations of the 10th Amendment — and many leading conservative officials are determined to impose the tentherism on the country. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) is a tenther, as are Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas embraces tenther claims that the federal minimum wage and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters, among other things, are unconstitutional.

Indeed, even federal highways opponent Barton is no small figure in conservative politics; Barton is one of six “experts” tasked with rewriting Texas’ public school textbooks to teach a right-wing alternative history to Texan children. Apparently, Barton and his fellow tenthers also want to rewrite the Constitution.

Fox anchor Megyn Kelly tells O’Reilly in the same segment that she is not sure whether an individual mandate is constitutional because it would “require days and weeks of research” for her to determine whether it is.

Kelly could spend days and weeks researching this question, but the Wonk Room already addressed it on Monday.  As the Supreme Court held in Gonzales v. Raich, the Constitution empowers Congress to enact broad regulatory schemes that “substantially affect interstate commerce.”  This power includes authority to enact broad reforms that concern “economic activity,” and an individual mandate unquestionably falls within the scope of this power:

The [individual mandate] would require most uninsured Americans to buy a product — health insurance coverage — which pools thousands of people’s premiums together and pays those people’s medical costs as they become ill. … [T]he individual mandate would lower premiums nationwide by requiring more healthy individuals to buy into the system; while reducing the risk of catastrophic financial loss should a person who was previously uninsured experience catastrophic illness. It is difficult to imagine a law which has a more obvious economic impact than a requirement that all Americans be insured.

So O’Reilly’s constitutional attack on health reform is entirely without merit. Sadly, however, it is also one of the least virulent theories being advanced by right-wing constitutional theorists. A number of elected conservatives, including Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) are proud members of the “tenther” movement — a movement that believes that landmark progressive reforms such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, federal education funding, the VA health system, the G.I. Bill, the federal minimum wage, and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters are all unconstitutional.  Since they could never pass such a radical agenda through Congress, conservatives now want to rewrite the Constitution to suit their ends.

Transcript:

KELLY: There are some questions. And they have been totally ignored, interestingly enough.

O’REILLY: They have been?

KELLY: By most of the media.

O’REILLY: Right.

KELLY: And by most constitutional scholars. Everyone just assumes that President Obama and the Democrats can impose this tax on us, this — basically the legislation coming out of both houses of Congress proposed would say you have to get health insurance. And either have to get it through your employer, if you don’t have it through your employer, you have to pay for it. You have to buy it if you don’t.

O’REILLY: Yeah, but if you’re governmental funded.

KELLY: Right.

O’REILLY: But they do this in Massachusetts already.

KELLY: They say if you don’t do it, then you’re be fined by the federal government there.

O’REILLY: Right.

KELLY: And there’s a real question about whether the Congress has the power to do that to you. They’d be doing it probably under their commerce clause power, which is the broadest power that they have. But the courts in the past decade or so have really cracked down a little bit more on commerce clause power and just don’t give Congress an empty check.

O’REILLY: So are you saying it is not constitutional to force people to buy health care?

KELLY: I’m saying that would require days and weeks of research.

O’REILLY: Days and weeks.

KELLY: So we don’t have that.

O’REILLY: And you don’t have that, do you, Kelly?

And not only do I not have it.

O’REILLY: Yeah.

KELLY: .but the constitutional scholars don’t have it yet. What do you say?

WIEHL: Constitutional scholars are all over the place.

O’REILLY: Constitutional?

WIEHL: I say that it is constitutional. I don’t like a lot of parts of this health plan but the.

O’REILLY: I don’t care what you like or not like.

WIEHL: But Commerce.

O’REILLY: .why is it constitutional? All right, nobody, hold it, Wiehl.

KELLY: Any time somebody drives a truck.

O’REILLY: Wiehl, stop talking. Nobody understands what the commerce clause is.

WIEHL: Right.

O’REILLY: Please explain it briefly.

WIEHL: Okay, Article I in the constitution.

O’REILLY: Yes.

WIEHL: .the Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. That is anything that goes from one state to the other.

O’REILLY: Okay, so what?

WIEHL: So a trucker. They can – and takes your lettuce from one state to the other. They can.

O’REILLY: What does that have to do with health care?

WIEHL: Health care itself may be local. Your doctor may be in your state but the medical supplies that come to you, the medical equipment, all of the things.

O’REILLY: So what? Why can they make you buy anything?

WIEHL: Because they can regulate interstate commerce. Those things go through interstate.

O’REILLY: Okay.

WIEHL: They can force you.

O’REILLY: Now I want the audience to know this is total B.S. This is why people hate lawyers.

KELLY: This is the constitution.

O’REILLY: This is nuts. All right, here’s the question, Kelly. And I’m going to give one more shot, Wiehl. The government is saying you have to buy health insurance. You have to do it.

KELLY: Right.

O’REILLY: I say that’s unconstitutional. The federal government doesn’t have the power to force an American to buy anything.

KELLY: That is the distinction between this case and most of the cases that come under the commerce clause power. It’s more like a taxing power. I mean, the Congress has the power to tax us, too. Let’s not fool ourselves.

O’REILLY: Okay, but this is it has nothing to do with taxes.

KELLY: Well, no, but.

O’REILLY: It has defining – they’re finding, I understand it. But I think on the upfront, Wiehl, the government cannot buy that dress, Wiehl. You have to buy that dress because it’s good for you. They can’t tell to you buy anything.

WIEHL: Or they can tax you. They can’t tell you to buy it, or they can tax you. Megyn’s absolutely right one way or the other.

O’REILLY: But they’re telling you to buy it. And if you don’t, you’re punished.

WIEHL: Because and they’re also saying you are going to get a benefit a government benefit.

O’REILLY: I think the Supreme Court would say.

KELLY: You have a decent point because.

O’REILLY: Yeah.

KELLY: .normally they can’t tax you unless they had the power to regulate the behavior they want to tax you for in the first place. So we’re back to the commerce clause and do they have the power.

O’REILLY: I don’t want to hear it. Give me a headache. I’m going to go on the record a saying now this is unconstitutional. The federal government cannot force you to do or buy anything.

Gonzales’ attempt to whitewash his previous statement, however, does not jibe with the facts. Here’s what Gonzales actually wrote in a 2002 memo to President Bush:

The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments.

So while Gonzales did indeed criticize provisions which supposedly require the United States to provide detainees with athletic uniforms and scientific instruments, he also clearly rejects the Geneva Conventions’ limits on torture and other abusive interrogation techniques as “obsolete.”

Moreover even if Gonzales’ defense of his prior views could be taken at face value, they, at best, reveal him to be a completely incompetent attorney. Many of the provisions Gonzales labels as “quaint” simply do not exist. For example, nothing in the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War requires a detaining power to provide detainees with “athletic uniforms” or “scientific instruments.” The only provisions which even vaguely resemble such a requirement are Article 27, which mandates that detainees must be given appropriate “[c]lothing, underwear and footwear,” and Article 72, which provides that detention guards cannot seize mail sent to detainees which contains harmless items such as “scientific instruments” and “sports outfits.”

Similarly, while the Geneva Convention does include provisions requiring that detainees be given access to a kind of store, such provisions exist solely to ensure that the detainees most basic needs are met. Under the heading of “QUARTERS FOOD AND CLOTHING OF PRISONERS OF WAR,” Article 28 provides that a “canteen” must be set up in prisoner of war camps which provides necessities such as “foodstuffs” and “soap” (possibly because many prisoners of war are addicted to cigarettes when they are captured, the convention also provides for access to tobacco). To enable detainees to obtain food and soap from the canteen, Article 60 provides for prisoners to receive a modest “advance of pay.”

In other words, the “commissary” and “scrip” provided for under the Convention are really just a way of ensuring that the detainees basic needs are provided for. It is a mechanism to feed and clean detainees, not a requirement that detainee camps house their very own Wal-Mart.

Despite his attempts to whitewash the past, the meaning of Gonzales’ 2002 memo is clear. Gonzales believed that Geneva’s ban on detainee mistreatment is “render[ed] obsolete” by modern day terrorism; and he affirmatively misrepesented the contents of the Geneva Convention in a memo to the President of the United States.

As Media Matters reports, two CNN anchors described reconciliation as a “nuclear option” being invoked by Democrats. Fox News’ Bill Sammon claimed that “Democrats are headed for, not the public option but the nuclear option.” Sean Hannity claimed that Senate Democrats are “talking about a nuclear option if they can’t get their 60-vote filibuster number in the Senate,” and Fox commentator Dick Morris labeled reconciliation “the so-called nuclear option.” Watch this video compilation:

This comparison, however, merely proves that CNN and Fox do not understand how the Senate works.

The most important difference between budget reconciliation and the so-called nuclear option is that the reconciliation process was created by federal law, while the “nuclear option” was dreamed up by an article published in the right-wing Federalist Society’s official journal. Under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Senate may pass a law bringing federal tax and spending levels in line with a previously enacted budget resolution by a simple majority vote.  This process allows senators to bypass the filibuster when enacting health reform provisions that impact the federal budget. President Clinton used it to enact his budget in 1993, and President Bush used it to enact trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the rich in 2001 and 2003.

Conversely, the nuclear option was an unprecedented proposal to simply eliminate the filibuster altogether if 50 Senators agreed. Although there is a very strong constitutional argument that a bare majority of the Senate can eliminate the filibuster immediately after a new Senate is seated, nothing in federal law provides for the nuclear option.

The distinction here is very clear.  Reconciliation is authorized by an Act of Congress; the nuclear option is a power play dreamed up by a right-wing policy shop. As former Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist said of reconciliation, “It’s legal, it’s ethical, you can do it.” Simply put, there’s nothing “nuclear” about progressives believing that they can pass health reform by a majority vote; that’s simply known as “democracy.”

Hatch is hardly the only conservative senator to float a 75-80 vote supermajority requirement for health reform.  Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is currently blocking attempts to fix the health care system, told the Washington Post that “[w]e ought to be focusing on getting 80 votes.” Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) demanded “a bill that 75 or 80 senators can support.”

Hatch, Grassley, and Enzi all sang a very different tune when they were in the majority, however:

– Tax Cuts For The Rich: In May 2001, the Senate passed President Bush’s budget-breaking $1.35 trillion tax cuts with only 58 votes.  Nevertheless, Hatch announced that he was “extremely proud of this bipartisan bill.” Grassley praised the tax cuts as “built upon bipartisanship,” and Enzi praised the Senate for passing the bill in a “bipartisan fashion.”

– Subsidies For Drug Companies: In November 2003, the Senate passed a prescription drug plan for seniors that was strongly backed by lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry with only 54 votes.  Nevertheless, Grassley released a statement praising himself as the “lead Senate architect of the bipartisan legislation” creating this plan.

– Nuclear Option: Four years ago, when Senate Democrats filibustered seven of President Bush’s 205 nominees to the federal bench, conservatives deemed the filibuster unconstitutional and invented a tactic known as the “nuclear option” to ram the blocked nominees through the Senate.  Hatch and Grassley were on the vanguard of the movement to block any attempt to require judges to be confirmed by a supermajority.  Hatch described the filibuster as “unconstitutional,” and Grassley described judicial filibusters as “an abuse of our function under the Constitution.”

Now that conservatives make up only a tiny minority of the Senate, however, they’ve decided that even the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold isn’t a strong enough barrier to block much-needed reform. Instead, Hatch, Grassley, and Enzi now want to impose a 75-80 vote superfilibuster standard that will effectively kill any health care plan they don’t personally approve of.

It is not within our power as members of Congress, it’s not within the enumerated powers of the Constitution, for us to design and create a national takeover of health care. Nor is it within our ability to be able to delegate that responsibility to the executive.

Watch it:

Bachmann, however, is wrong about both the contents of the health care plan and the requirements of the Constitution. There is nothing in any of the health care bills under consideration which resembles a “national takeover of health care.” Conservatives like to use this language when referring to the public health option. Like other insurers, the public option would collect premiums from people who choose to buy into it, and then spend those premiums to insure these participants.

Had Bachmann bothered to read Article I of the Constitution before going on Fox, she would have learned that Congress has the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises” and to “provide for….the general welfare of the United States.”  Rather than itemizing specific subject matters, such as health care, which Congress is allowed to spend money on, the framers chose instead to give Congress a broad mandate to spend money in ways that promote the “general welfare.”

It’s unclear what the basis is for Bachmann’s claim that the public option is an unconstitutional delegation of power to the Executive. There is a 74 year-old decision — decided by the same right-wing Supreme Court which believed most of the New Deal to be unconstitutional — which holds that Congress could not simply grant President Roosevelt nearly limitless authority to do whatever he wanted in order to prevent “unfair competition.” But no one has proposed giving President Obama similarly unchecked authority over health care. Rather, pages 116-128 of the House bill that Bachmann will vote on provide extremely detailed instructions explaining how the Executive Branch must manage a public health plan.

It’s important to note just how radical Bachmann’s theory of the Constitution is. If Congress does not have the power to create a modest public option which competes with private health plans in the marketplace, then it certainly does not have the authority to create Medicare. Similarly, Congress’ power to spend money to benefit the general welfare is the basis for Social Security, federal education funding, Medicaid, and veterans benefits such as the VA health system and the GI Bill. All of these programs would cease to exist in Michele Bachmann’s America.

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.

So in Justice Scalia’s world, the law has no problem with sending an innocent man to die.  One wonders why we even bother to have a Constitution.

Such claims that Obama never defies progressives may accurately reflect the views of right-wing activists and Beltway pundits, but they have no basis in reality:

• Stimulus: Progressive economists — including at least one Nobel Prize winner — warned that the President’s stimulus package was too small to lift the sinking economy.  Similarly, progressives consistently warned the President not to replace highly-stimulative spending with ineffectual tax cuts.  Nevertheless, the President rejected progressive pleas for a more substantial package and brokered a deal with made tax cuts almost one-third of the stimulus. Obama allowed much of its final form to be dictated by a handful of Senate Republicans.
• Bank Nationalization: Many progressives unsuccessfully urged Obama to nationalize the failing banks, rather than risk making future bailout payments to an industry whose recklessness nearly destroyed the nation’s economy.
• Cap and Trade: Many of President Obama’s campaign promises for a robust cap-and-trade system have been watered down by a coalition of so-called “Brown Dog” Democrats loyal to Big Coal.
• Single-Payer: The House Progressive Caucus prefers a single-payer system to the almost-exclusively private insurance-driven system proposed by the President.
• Judicial Nominations: President Bush stacked the federal courts with young right-wing ideologues — one of whom even compared Social Security to “cannibalism.”  President Obama’s nominees, however, have been older and far more moderate than President Bush’s, and at least one has been actively opposed by disability rights advocates.
• Executive Power: President Obama embraced several Bush-era assertions of power, including signing statements and aggressive use of the state secrets doctrine to avoid disclosing information in court.
• Torture: President Obama initially opposed a commission to investigate Bush-era torture policies. His Administration also opposes prosecuting Bush Administration officials guilty of torture.
• GLBT Rights: Despite campaign promises to repeal bigoted laws like DOMA and Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, President Obama is “moving slowly” in carrying out this promise.  This, despite the fact that Obama has the power to unilaterally suspend DADT.

None of this means that Obama is a bad president. To the contrary, his economic policies are beginning to pull the nation away from the brink of an economic collapse caused by decades of right-wing policy, and his health care plan will protect millions of Americans from the insurance industry’s tactics.

If anything, the Obama Administration teaches that even an effective President must constantly be pressured to keep his promises. Although Obama has yet to make a big push on GLBT rights, pressure from gay rights groups convinced him to grant benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees and to pledge to overturn DADT by the end of his first term.  Similarly, under pressure from progressives, President Obama tacitly endorsed a torture commission and agreed that Attorney General Holder should have discretion to confront past abuses.  And the President backed off plans to nominate a CIA Director opposed by many progressives because of concerns about his views on torture.

Simply put, these Sunday show pundits have an axe to grind against “liberals.” But the reality of the Obama Administration’s actions thus far is one that defies such simple-minded criticisms.

Amazingly, after threatening to shoot SEIU’s members, the caller concludes by saying “stop the violence.”

The confirmation of this immensely qualified individual, with her long history of public service, is an historic moment for the Senate, the judiciary, the Hispanic community, and each and every American. Her life story is the essence of the American dream. Regardless of our differences, this is a moment in which we can all celebrate the belief that in America, all things are possible. History will recall this time when we crossed paths with the quintessentially American journey of Sonia Sotomayor, and when the country took yet another step forward in fulfilling the promise of our great Nation.

Interestingly, while Inhofe is convinced that the first Latina nominee to the Supreme Court is consumed by racial animus, he had very different things to say about a fellow Southern white conservative.  After former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) claimed that America would have avoided “all these problems” if it had put a segregationist in the White House, Inhofe quickly came to Lott’s defense:

“In an effort to honor the life and service of Strom Thurmond, Senator Lott made some comments that he probably wishes he had phrased differently,” Inhofe said. “I do not believe Senator Lott meant to be malicious or racist with the comments he made. I believe he was merely honoring a great American on his 100th birthday, but I believe he is right to apologize for the words he used. Racism of any type must not be tolerated.

“Many have been quick to criticize Lott, but few have been quick to accept his apology. I do not believe he harbors racist sentiments in his heart. He has apologized and appropriately clarified the meaning of his statements. I believe we should accept his apology and move forward.”

In Jim Inhofe’s America, Sonia Sotomayor is a dangerous bigot who must be stopped, but Strom Thurmond is a “great American.”

Bond’s willingness to break from his fellow conservatives may flow from his plans to retire from the Senate at the end of his current term. A coalition of prominent right-wing activists, led by disgraced computer hacker Manuel Miranda, delivered a letter to minority senators demanding that they filibuster Judge Sotomayor just one week after her nomination was announced. 

Right-wing attack dog Ed Whelan recently warned that conservative senators who do not share his views on judges “may discover that the next elections they face have unwelcome consequences for their political careers.” With no risk of a primary challenge in his future, however, Bond apparently feels comfortable voting his conscience, instead of the right wing’s “white voter strategy.”

Similarly, now that President Obama is in the White House, McCain feels comfortable opposing the President’s well-qualified first nominee to the Supreme Court. But in 2008, when McCain thought he might be president, he sang a very different tune:

When President Bill Clinton nominated Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg to serve on the high court, I voted for their confirmation, as did all but a few of my fellow Republicans. Why? For the simple reason that the nominees were qualified, and it would have been petty, and partisan, and disingenuous to insist otherwise. Those nominees represented the considered judgment of the president of the United States. And under our Constitution, it is the president’s call to make… It is part of the discipline of democracy to respect the roles and responsibilities of each branch of government, and, above all, to respect the verdicts of elections and judgment of the people. Had we forgotten this in the Senate, we would have been guilty of the very thing that many federal judges do when they overreach, and usurp power, and betray their trust.

In fairness to McCain, it may be premature to criticize the senator for opposing Sotomayor. After all, the Senate is not expected to vote on her confirmation until Thursday evening, and who knows how many times John McCain will change his mind between now and then?

Again and again, Judge Sotomayor seeks to amend the law to fit the circumstances of the case, thereby substituting herself in the role of a legislator. … To protect the equal, but separate roles of all three branches of government, I cannot support activist judges that seek to legislate from the bench. I have not supported such nominees in the past, and I cannot support such a nominee to the highest court in the land.

Despite his claim that he has never supported a judge who “seeks to amend the law to fit the circumstances of the case,” McCain voted in favor of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito; and he described both Roberts and Alito as “model judges” during the 2008 campaign.  A few of these three justices’ greatest hits include:

• Repealing the Twentieth Century: In three opinions that read like a tea-bagger’s wet dream, Justice Thomas would have restricted Congress’ power to enact economic regulation to a point unheard of since the Great Depression.  A short list of laws that would simply cease to exist in Clarence Thomas’s America includes “the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the sick leave portions of the Family and Medical Leave, the Freedom of Access to Clinics Act, as well as minimum wage and maximum hour laws.”
• Selling Justice To The Highest Bidder: Roberts, Thomas and Alito all joined dissents arguing that a West Virginia coal magnate could literally buy a judge for $3 million to overturn a verdict against his company.
• Corporate Immunity From the Law: Joined by Roberts, Alito wrote a dissent arguing that drug companies have almost-total immunity from the law when one of their dangerous products caused a former professional musician to lose her arm and her ability to play music.  Roberts, Thomas and Alito also joined a majority opinion giving sweeping immunity to the makers of dangerous medical devices.
• Massive Resistance: All three justices joined a radical opinion which not only held that it is unconstitutional for school boards to desegregate public schools, but which audaciously cited Brown v. Board of Education for this proposition.
• This Election Brought to You By Wal-Mart: Perhaps most ironic of all, all three of McCain’s justices are poised to declare McCain’s signature legislative accomplishment, campaign finance reform, unconstitutional.

As a Yale Law School study published before Roberts and Alito joined the Supreme Court determined, Justice Thomas is the one justice who is most likely to vote to invalidate an Act of Congress — doing so a massive 65.63% of the time. The Court’s two Clinton appointees, Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, are the least likely to second-guess Congress.  So McCain has no problem with judges who “substitute [them]self in the role of a legislator;” he’s just upset that Sotomayor won’t push the same right-wing agenda as his favorite justices.

The last thing the Democrats want is for the American people to know about the National Council of La Raza, their radical agenda and Sotomayor’s association with the group.

Sotomayor is a member of La Raza and her comments about “Wise Latinas” being superior to white men appeared in the La Raza Law Journal. The National Council of La Raza bills itself as “the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States” who works through “its network of nearly 300 affiliated community-based organizations.”

Among these affiliates are several chapters of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán) who La Raza helps fund. Aztlán is what radical “Mechistas”—as they refer to themselves on La Raza’s website—call the American Southwest, which they claim still belongs to Mexico. Their slogan is “Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada” meaning “For the Race everything, outside the Race nothing.” One chapter says on La Raza’s site that their mission is “empowerment of our gente and the liberation of Aztlán.”

For starters, Tancredo offers no explanation for his belief that Sotomayor, who is Puerto Rican, would somehow find common cause with Mexican-American separatists.  Mr. Tancredo may be unaware of this fact, but Puerto Rico is not part of Mexico.

Moreover, Tancredo’s claim that America is threatened by Mexican-Americans eager to start a second civil war is simply absurd hate speech.  According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Aztlán libel is based on a radical document published in 1969, which called on Mexican-Americans to “reclaim the land of their birth” and unite to fight “oppression, exploitation and racism.”  Although this document is nothing more than “a relic of the counterculture of the 1960s,”  nativist hate groups have seized upon it as a supposed “founding document of a bona fide conspiracy endorsed and backed by Mexico and, in some versions, by most Mexican Americans.”

For Tancredo, however, no theory is too bizarre, so long as it bolsters his deep-seated hatred of people who don’t look like him.