ONE MORE THING

I swore that my last post would be my final word on the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, but then I watched a bit of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn's questioning of Judge Sotomayor, and I could not believe my ears. Coburn was trying to get Sotomayor to say that Americans have a RIGHT to self-defense -- this a propos the whole business of carrying your own personal sub-machine gun and such. She tried to explain to him that the right of self-defense was written not into the Constitution but into the laws of the several states [you would have thought he would like to hear that, yes?], but Coburn, an Ob-Gyn, was having none of it. Americans want to know, he said, what you feel in your gut about this question.

Now, stop and think about this for a moment. Sessions, Hatch, Cornyn and that crowd have been hammering away at her for weeks because she once made a speech in which she suggested that a wise Latina might have some special wisdom to bring to the judicial process. NOT A BIT OF IT, they have been thundering. The law, nothing but the letter of the law, pure, unadulterated law, completely unaffected by life experience! And here is poor, simple Coburn suggesting that on one of the most hotly contested issues in constitutional law, Judge Sotomayor should be guided by her gut.

Why, I ask you, didn't Sessions and Hatch rise up and strangle Coburn in his own afterbirth?

ADVISE AND CONSENT: THE LAST LEGALLY PERMISSIBLE BLOOD SPORT

In an odd, twisted sort of way, it makes a certain amount of sense. If you are going to be elevated to the highest court in the land, there to sit for the rest of your life, empowered to issue legal rulings affecting generations of Americans yet unborn, you ought first to be required to wait quietly, a smile frozen on your face, while a brain-dead racist pipsqueak, a smarmy hypocritical Mormon wannabe, and a mean-spirited country-club Texan snarl at you and try their ineffectual best to besmirch your character. What better proof of judicial restraint? It is, I suppose, a salutary reminder to the candidate that though she is certain to be confirmed, and will, when she takes her seat next October, never again have to suffer the likes of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, Orrin Hatch, and Jon Cornyn, still she will have to contend with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Everything intelligent and useful that can possibly be said about this sorry spectacle has already been said. The most important observation, now a part of the conventional wisdom in the neighborhoods I frequent, though not yet more than a whisper in the rest of America, is that white and male are distinguishing and limiting markers as much as are Latina and female. The ultimate expression of the power of white men is their ability, like the cheshire cat, to fade from view, leaving only the benign smile of unchallengeable privilege. I speak with objective judicial impartiality, because I am a white man, which is to say fully human. You must prove to me that you are capable of speaking with a like impartiality, because you are Hispanic and a woman.

I mean, Puleeeeze.