Why Not An Atheist To Balance The Scales Of Justice?

Marc Cooper makes a great argument for nominating an atheist to the Supreme Court:

As President Obama considers nominees to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a debate bubbles as to whether religion should play a role in his choice.
This is a no-brainer. The religious views of the next justice of the high court must absolutely be a decisive factor.
Though the court without Stevens will be left with six Catholics and two Jews, the open seat should not go to either domination. Nor should it go to a Presbyterian, a Lutheran, a Methodist, a Muslim or even a Zoroastrian. If it did, that would make nine people who all have one religious principle in common: a belief in religion.
Clearly, the next person to take the bench should be an atheist.

While few sitting politicians have the political courage to name a declared nonbeliever, it is something that Thomas Jefferson (and several others among the founders) might well have done.
In an 1823 letter to John Adams, Jefferson was forthright about his views of religion, and Christianity specifically. "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter," Jefferson wrote. "But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors."
In other words, Jefferson liked what Jesus, the man, stood for, but could definitely do without the rest of the bunk.

Cooper's whole piece is here.

Sam The Sham.

It appears as if Alito can't quite fathom the implications of his own anti-democratic (small "d") vote in favor of corpocracy.

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.

Oxy's Moron Is Stuck On "Fail."