Oh, how I love the political drama that arises with the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice. Such classics like Robert Bork whose nomination was so disastrous that a verb was created to describe it (“borked,”follow the link if you don’t know, it ain’t good), Clarence Thomas who graced America with the only R-Rated hearing discussing squirrel genitals, and G. Harrold Carswell who just so happened to be a white supremacist (whoops) – oh the entertainment.

So when I heard that Souter was going to step down because he didn’t like living in DC (quick aside: nobody likes living there that’s why they all live in the surrounding areas, suck it up Souter), I was excited for the nomination hyjinx to ensue and sure enough they have. Let’s look at some of the chicanery.

1) Mark Krikorian doesn’t like her name
The Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies and renowned xenophobe, Mark Krikorian, says he doesn’t like the fact that Sotomayor is insisting that people pronounce her name properly. How dare she? Krikorian likes the American way of pronouncing words – how ever we damn well please.

Dickorian states, "Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. An unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to." So I suppose this guy is for us going back to using the Queens English. Or would that be giving into the British? This guy deserves an entry in the Dickipedia.

2) She’s a damn socialist and she hates whites.

Seen above is a Sotomayor’s quote from a feature on her during her days at Princeton. As expected, the right-wing comentariat has seized her quotation of Norman Thomas, prominent American Socialist, and say that she is in fact a socialist. Let me remind everybody that GWB was a huge fan Winston Churchill and quoted him a lot. Did that make him a competent leader of a superpower? (that was rhetorical, you know the answer) Just because you quote someone doesn’t mean you take on their abilities or points of views.

Sotomayor has also taken fire for saying at a commencement speech: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” I’m not even sure why people get huffy at this. All she is saying is that regardless of your background, privileged or not, we all must strive to be wiser than some of the low-lights of our male white Protestant dominated culture of the past has (i.e. slavery, genocide of the natives, and ill-conceived wars).

3) The Case Against Sotomayor
Legal writer and editor for The New Republic Jeffrey Rosen wrote a blog on their website entitled The Case Against Sotomayor. The article included less than flattering accounts from unnamed sources and very flattering accounts from some named sources. The right-wing blogosphere and right-wing infotainment pundits jumped all over the article, citing it continuously to undermine Sotomayor’s nomination.

Only problem with the Republican echo chamber’s claim of Sotomayor’s inability is that Rosen supports her nomination. Also, he didn’t name the article itself, which he now says unfairly frames his piece. Now he says he “maybe” could have been a bit more careful with the nuances of the article. Rosen says he’s learned a lesson about how his essay was interpreted by both sides of the aisle and says he won’t be blogging any more. He says he’d rather take his time before publishing his articles. Yeah Rosen, do that. Blogging is for the quick and the snarky, not the litigious and wordy.  Next time they ask your opinion in blog form maybe you should plead the...

If the right is going to hate on her, they should try to do better than picking on her name, out of context quotes, and mis-citing articles.