Why Do So Many White Guys Still Have Red Necks?

Some old white Senators are still rather unreconstructed, aren't they?

From Newser.com:

Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation is in the bag, but this week's hearings have a real value, writes Eugene Robinson: They are exposing the Republican Party's "refusal to accept the basic principle of diversity." For the Washington Post columnist, the anger surrounding the judge's "wise Latina" remark rests on a creepy belief that only minorities and women have special identities, and "being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things."

The nomination of a Latina justice by a black president is a serious milestone for the nation, but some of the old white men on the Senate Judiciary Committee "seem a bit touchy about it." Jeff Sessions, in particular, laid into Sotomayor for acknowledging a judge's opinions and sympathies, experience and background—as if there are some judges who don't have any. With her confirmation assured, Robinson writes, the GOP should realize that "they can't damage her. They can only damage themselves."

Sessions once said, "I may have said something about the NAACP being un-American or communist, but I meant no harm by it."

Sessions is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. That same committee nixed his nomination to the federal bench in 1986 because of comments like the one above and his lousy record on civil rights.

Oh, For Christ's Sake...

GOP Confederates still can't keep 'em separated...

From Bloomberg:

Republicans temporarily blocked Senate committee action on President Barack Obama’s first judicial appointment, attacking the nominee for rulings based on separation of church and state.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned the fitness of U.S. District Judge David Hamilton of Indiana to be promoted to a federal appeals court in Chicago.

“Our members are concerned about this nominee,” Sessions said at today’s committee meeting. “He has had a number of troubling rulings dealing with a series of prayers at the Indiana legislature.”

The Democratic-controlled panel, which will have the job of screening Obama’s nominee to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, postponed a preliminary vote on Hamilton’s nomination.

In 2005, Hamilton ruled that prayers used to open the Indiana State Legislature must be nonsectarian. Sessions also said he is concerned about Hamilton’s decision to ban religious displays in public buildings.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, in agreeing to delay consideration of the nomination, defended the judge’s record. “He is, after all, the son of a minister and he believes very strongly in the constitutional separation of church and state,” the Vermont Democrat said.

“The reason it has taken as much time and there has been as much discussion about it is because he is controversial,” Sessions said after the meeting.