Kagan Confirmed To Supreme Court

The Supreme Court official photo at the beginning of the term this October will be even more diverse this fall.

For the first time in US history there will be three women serving on the Supreme Court at the same time with the confirmation earlier today of Elena Kagan to the court.

The 50 year old Kagan becomes the fourth female justice in US history and the 112th Supreme Court member. She was confirmed on a 63-37 vote with all except one Democrat (Ben Nelson-NE) voting for her, both independents and five Republicans.

She'll be sworn in on Saturday.

The ideological balance still remains 5-4 conservafools, which is one very cogent argument for an Obama second term.

Time To Put This Sistah On The Supreme Court

Ever since Clarence Thomas began earning his 'honorary white male' status by desecrating the proud Supreme Court legal legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall, many African Americans have hoped and prayed for the nomination of a progressive African-American justice to counterbalance the conservaidiocy and lockstep voting with Antonin Scalia coming from Uncle Thomas.

With the recently announced retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, President Obama now has a second opportunity to shape the Court. One of the candidates on the short list for the Supreme Court vacancy that has popped up in recent days is Leah Ward Sears, who ironically is a friend of Clarence Thomas.

She's a Cornell University and Emory University Law School grad who was the former chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. She stepped down last year and is now in private law practice in the ATL.

She's also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

She's turning 55 in June, and once again, it would be a historic pick as the first African American woman Supreme Court jurist.

Sears is already used to being a history maker. When she was nominated for the Georgia Supreme Court by then-Gov. Zell Miller in 1992, she became the first woman and the youngest person to ever sit on the court.‬‪ She later became the first female African-American chief justice in US history.

And best of all, in 2004 she handily won reelection as chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court over her Republican opponent by a 62%-38% margin.

If President Obama is looking to put Republicans in a box like he did during last summer's confirmation fight with the Sotomayor nomination, Leah Ward Sears would be the perfect candidate.

One the Republifools would be hard pressed to filibuster without looking as racist and sexist as they did during last summer's Sotomayor confirmation hearings.

I'm hoping that Judge Sears not only is nominated by President Obama, but we get to see her in this fall's SCOTUS photo in October after she's confirmed.

New SCOTUS Photo

The new session of the Supreme Court starts Monday October 5, and as per tradition they take a group photo at the beginning of it.

There's a lot more interest in this year's photo session because of the historic nature of it. For the first time in our country's history a Latina will sit on the highest court in the land.

Doesn't Justice Sonia Sotomayor look lovely in it?

Now we need a Native American justice, an Asian justice, one that GLBT and an African-American female to counteract Injustice Thomas' self hatred.

It'll be even more beautiful when there are more progressive judges and more diversity in future SCOTUS pictures as well and less right wing ones.

13-6

Sonia Sotomayor is one step closer to joining the Supreme Court on the first Monday in October after yesterday's 13-6 affirmative vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to send it to a full Senate vote next week.

Surprisingly, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was the only Republican vote in favor of the nominee. The rest of the Republicans cast NO votes, including Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) who have previously never failed to vote for a Supreme Court nominee.

Despite the GOP Hateraid for Sotomayor, the nomination now goes to the full Senate next week for the up or down vote she's expected to handily win for her historic confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Justice Sotomayor will sure look good in that group photo this October.

Standing With Justice Sotomayor

In addition to Dwight DeLee's trial starting today in Syracuse, most of the media's unblinking eye will be focused inside the Beltway.

The confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court will be starting today.

Of course, you know I'm in favor of more diversity on the Supreme Court besides white male conservatives.

And yeah, I count Clarence Thomas as part of the white male conservatives. Uncle Thomas was declared by Pat Buchanan as an 'honorary white man' so y'all can have his sellout behind.

I'm hoping that before President Obama is done he gets to nominate an Asian justice and an African-American woman to counteract Clarence Thomas' self hatred.

The Republicans have been ironing their white sheets over the last few weeks and trying to paint a distorted picture of this eminently qualified nominee.

As usual when it comes to the GOP, they subscribe to the propaganda principles of the master Joseph Goebbels.

Tell a big lie long enough so it becomes the truth.

The truth is that Judge Sotomayor is far more qualified for the court than many of the current justices seated there. She's also served as a prosecutor at the district court level as well.

There will be an interesting side note to this developing drama. Newly sworn in Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) will get his first taste of the national spotlight as the newest member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

We'll also have to stay tuned to see just how far the GOP goes in terms of the race baiting that will surely ensue. They are in the no win position of having their rabid base demanding a nasty fight and alienating Latino voters more than they already have.

So political junkies, grab the popcorn and get ready. The latest chapter of 'As The Beltway Turns' is about to hit the air.

But the end result of it will hopefully be we liberal/progressives seeing Judge Sotomayor's smiling face in the Supreme Court group photo on October 5.

Shut Up Fool! Awards-Take Me Out To The Ballgame Edition

Our Shut Up Fool! Awards mascot made an appearance at Wrigley Field this week. He threw out the first pitch for the Cubs game versus the Pittsburgh Pirates and attempted to sing 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame' during the 7th inning.



Okay, now that you survived viewing this video, let's see what fool we get to pity this week.

As Mr. T would say, so many fools so little time. Once again I had a target rich environment in terms of fools to select this week.

The GOP put on their pointed hoods this week to trash President Obama's historic nominee for the Supreme Court in Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

So out of all the outrageous lies, accusations, obfuscations and distortions of her record, and Mike Huckabee calling her Maria, the most outrageous came from the winner, ol' Turd Blossom himself, Karl Rove.

Bush's Brain had the nerve to part his lips and say, “I’m not really certain how intellectually strong she would be, she has not been very strong on the second circuit.”

Okay, you have a college dropout calling someone who graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton stupid.

She also was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate, went on to Yale Law School and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order.

Sotomayor brings more in terms of judicial experience and serving on a federal court in 100 years. She has more judicial experience than all the current justices sitting on the Court.

Karl Rove, Shut up RACIST fool!

There They Go Again-RepubliKKKan Racism

It didn't take long for the right wingers to attack President Obama's pick of Judge Sotomayor.

The privileged white males of the GOP and their puppet ruler Michael Steele within hours of the nomination were merrily attacking her education, cherry picking rulings from her long judicial career, called her an 'affirmative action hire' and based on a snippet of a YouTube video were calling her 'racist'.

It takes one to know one.

I found it laughable that two GOP college dropouts in Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove would have the cojones to call a summa cum laude Princetnn grad and editor of the Yale Law Review 'stupid'.

You boys been chomping on those Hater tots again haven't you?

But these aren't the only white sheet wearing haters that have come out of the GOP woodpile.





Sen. James Imhofe (R-OK) stated, "Of primary concern to me is whether or not Judge Sotomayor follows the proper role of judges and refrains from legislating from the bench. Some of her recent comments on this matter have given me cause for great concern. In the months ahead, it will be important for those of us in the U.S. Senate to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences.

Oh yeah, and the 110 other people who sat on the Court, especially the 107 past and present white males who occupied those seats all made rulings without their personal biases and upbringing coming into play.

The bottom line is that the GOP is hatin' on the fact that President Obama has once again put them in a political bind. They can't go overboard on attacking this historic choice or else they not only look like the intolerant bigots they are, they risk losing the support of Latinos for decades and cement their status as the 'rich white male party.'

It's Sonia Sotomayor!

Can I call it or what?

I've been saying since 2007 that the next Supreme Court justice pick would be a Latino/a. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that it was going to and needed to happen. It's also smart politics to start including the fastest growing ethnic group into the upper echelons of our government.

President Obama made more history today by selecting US Second District Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. It was something that was long overdue in terms of adding more diversity to the highest court in the land and more women on a court dominated by seven white males and honorary white man Clarence Thomas.

Looking forward to seeing her in the Supreme Court photo this October once she's confirmed.

Supreme WMP

I've been chuckling over the whining coming from conservative white male pundits about the leading candidates being considered by President Obama for the soon to be vacant Supreme Court seat of Justice David Souter. The grousing from them has centered on the meme that he's not considering white men for the position.

Let me give you some cheese to go with that whine while I point out just how ludicrous this latest conservarant is.

Since the founding of the United States, there have been 118 people who have served as Supreme Court justices. Out of the 17 Supreme Court chief justices, all 17 have been white males.

In terms of the 118 past and present supreme court justices, only two, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor have been women. Only two have been non-white,
African-Americans Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas*.

Clarence gets an asterisk because his status as a Black man is questionable and his Black Like Me card has been suspended.

That means the 114 remaining people who have or currently sit on the Supreme Court have been white males. In the current composition of the Roberts Court, 7 of the 9 justices are white males, not counting 'honorary white man' Uncle Thomas.

So it's past time for some diversity to reign on the nation's highest court. We not only need a Latino/a justice, we need an Asian justice, a Native American justice and an African-American woman to counteract Uncle Thomas' self-hating bull feces.

So you conservacritics dripping with WMP need to sit down, shut up, go off in the corner somewhere and sulk while you ponder the reality that you lost.

Get over it. You had a 40 year run of implementing mean spirited policies that divided this country and a mad rush to deregulation that has jacked up our financial system and nearly bankrupted us. You got to select several supreme court justices that not only share your ethnic heritage, they care more about corporations than the American people.

Now it's time for progressive ideas, progressive policies and progressive justices to rule the day, clean up the mess y'all made and make this country one we can all be proud of again. It's also past time we had a Supreme Court that reflects the diversity of America as well.

Supreme Court Sistahs?

One of the reasons I definitely wanted President Obama in the Oval Office is because I recognized years ago the fact that we have several people old enough, especially on the liberal-progressive side who could retire and create Supreme Court vacancies.

If we got lucky one of those vacancies could open up on the conservative side and tip the balance back to the progressive side.

While I honestly believe that the Souter replacement nomination is going to go to a Latina and it's past time that a Latino/a get on the court, I think the nomination of an African-American woman to the Court is long overdue as well.

There are some well-qualified ones that should get that call, especially to counterbalance the self hatred of Uncle Thomas.

One who has been mentioned is current Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears. She became the first African-American woman to become a superior court judge in 1988. When she was appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court by Governor Zell Miller in 1992, she was the youngest person to sit on the Georgia Supreme Court.

On June 28, 2005 she made history again when she became the first African-American female chief justice anywhere in the United States when she was sworn in as the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Interestingly enough she has decided to retire from the Georgia Supreme Court at the end of her term in June 2009.

There's also another trailblazing sistah that President Obama can consider in Vicki Miles-LaGrange, the chief US district justice for the Western District of Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma City native has the legislative experience he's looking for, having been the first African-American woman elected to the Oklahoma Senate and serving in that body from 1986-1993 while conducting a private law practice.

She's not only served in the Department of Justice as a criminal trial attorney in Washington DC, she also prosecuted sex crimes as an Assistant DA in Oklahoma County.

She was nominated in September 1994 by President Bill Clinton and became the first African-American federal judge in the 10th District.

Then there's my personal favorite in Constance L. Rice, the second cousin of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

As the Co-Director of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund Los Angeles Office, Rice has filed class action civil rights cases redressing police misconduct, race and sex discrimination and unfair public policy in transportation, probation and public housing. Rice has led multi-racial coalitions of lawyers and clients to win more than $4 billion of injunctive relief and damages.

Talk about someone who would be the antithesis of Clarence Thomas.

There are other Supreme court quality sisters at various levels of the federal and state judiciary that we'll probably get to hear about in the next few years.

When that historic moment finally does happen, Thurgood Marshall can rest easy in the fact that the next African-American to take the bench will be light-years more worthy of building on his giant legal legacy.

Justice David Souter Plans To Retire

It's been a bad week for the Repugnican Party, and the news just got worse.

Justice David Souter, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, after 19 years on the Supreme Court plans to retire at the end of this session in June or when his successor is confirmed.

This gives President Obama his first chance to select a younger Supreme Court justice for the liberal-progressive wing of the court. They can definitely use it since Justice Stephen Breyer is 70, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 76 and Justice John Paul Stevens is 89. Souter at age 69 was the baby of the group.

So who will President Obama choose?

I think it will be either a Latino/a or an Asian, since neither group has never had a person from their particular ethnic groups on the Court. Latino/a's were critical to the president's election, and he needs to show them some love. There is also sentiment to have a woman appointed to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

There will be pressure to add another African-American to the court to not only cancel out Clarence Thomas. There has also never been an African-American woman selected as a Supreme Court justice either.

The conservative wing isn't exactly a bunch of spring chickens either. Antonin Scalia is 73, Anthony Kennedy is 70, Clarence Thomas is 60, Samuel Alito is 59 and Chief Justice John Roberts is 54.

Judging by the age of the members of the court, it looks like he'll have some additional opportunities to make Court appointments as his first presidential term moves along.