Turd Blossom's Tedious Estrada Tale

(And I also had something to say here on a matter related to the former boss of the main subject of this post.)

In today’s Murdoch Street Journal, “political expert” and guru of his party’s last two major election losses (Karl Rove by name) pontificates on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor by President Obama for the Supreme Court (yes, this is a recording – I’ll try not to duplicate too much from this...and once more, I'm compelled to ask this question).

Rove rehashes the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, about which I’m sure you will hear quite a bit during Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing…

The Ricci case is an example: Whites were denied fire department promotions because of a clear racial quota. Ms. Sotomayor's refusal to hear their arguments won her stinging criticism from fellow Second Court of Appeals judge José Cabranes, a respected Clinton appointee.

As noted here in this Slate article (from yesterday’s post)…

When the case was argued before the Supreme Court last month, all of the justices seemed to agree that New Haven had to comply with valid federal statutes. Mr. Ricci did not challenge the constitutionality of Title VII (of the Civil Rights Act of 1964). So the only real question before the court was whether New Haven had reason to believe that if the city used the test results it would be sued under Title VII. Mr. Ricci's specific circumstances—his race, his dyslexia, and his professional aggravation—have no bearing on that legal question at all.

So why did every report on the case begin and end with Ricci's compelling employment story? Might it have something to do with the fact that the conservative organizations supporting Ricci used his sympathetic tale as the centerpiece of a successful media blitz leading up to oral argument before the court? Could it be that they wanted to make sure the justices understood just how Title VII could impact the lives of ordinary Americans like Frank Ricci? Could they—oh the horror!—have wanted the justices to empathize with Ricci's plight?

Oh noes – there’s that dreaded “e” word again! Whatever shall we do??!!

Seriously, it sounds as if the law needs to be revisited to make accommodations as noted for the New Haven firefighters or similar circumstances with other majority groups based on race; yes, I’ll admit that it’s dumb to throw out positive results just to accommodate a racial group whose results didn’t even qualify, but that’s something a legislature should fix, not a judge (maybe Sotomayor’s opinion in the case was so brief because she recognized that distinction).

But what really got me in Rove’s column was this…

The media has also quickly adopted the story line that Republicans will damage themselves with Hispanics if they oppose Ms. Sotomayor. But what damage did Democrats suffer when they viciously attacked Miguel Estrada's nomination by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second-highest court? New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was particularly ugly, labeling Mr. Estrada a right-wing "stealth missile" who was "way out of the mainstream" and openly questioning Mr. Estrada's truthfulness.

Well, I would say that any negative reaction Democrats may have received from Hispanics as a result of the Estrada hearing has been more than offset by your party’s intransigent stupidity on the matter of providing a path to citizenship for illegal/undocumented immigrants, Karl (again, all you need to do is look at the 2006 and 2008 electoral results for proof).

Besides, considering Miguel Estrada to be representative of the majority of Hispanics in this country (by virtue of his politics) is farcical. But beyond that, as Source Watch notes here…

"Mr. Estrada received disgraceful treatment at the hands of 45 United States senators during the more than two years his nomination was pending (in 2003)," said (Dubya), who aggressively tried to get the Senate to approve Estrada early this year but had been silent on the issue in recent months.

But (then) Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said, The stumbling block to Miguel Estrada's nomination all along was the administration's refusal to allow him to complete his job application and provide the Senate with the basic information it needed to evaluate and vote on his nomination.

Typical for a whining pissant like our former president; as noted here, Dubya "(had) a better record of having his judicial nominees approved than any President in the past twenty-five years. Only ten of 215 nominations (were) turned down."

As I and many others have pointed out already, Bushco considered Congress to be a subsidiary of the executive branch and nothing more.

And NOW tells us from here that…

During his confirmation hearing, Estrada, a Federalist Society member, in a move strikingly reminiscent of Clarence Thomas's behavior, refused to reveal his position on the correctness of Roe v. Wade and Romer v. Evans, the case that struck down Colorado's anti-gay rights measure. He declined to answer and was evasive when asked crucial questions about environmental and worker rights. His troublesome record entering the hearing included having defended anti- loitering laws which have been shown to have a disproportionately negative effect on minorities. His supervisor in the Solicitor General's office has said that Estrada "lacks the judgment" and is "too much of an ideologue to be an appeals court judge." With such troubling questions in his record, and significant concerns expressed by his former supervisor, we would think that he would welcome the opportunity of a hearing to fully explain his views.

Estrada (was) opposed by the National Organization for Women and many other organizations, including the Feminist Majority, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, People for the American Way, the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Earthjustice, the National Women's Law Center, the NAACP, the Sierra Club and AAUW.

And as far as the rest of Rove’s typical fear mongering and dog-whistle code language in the WSJ piece, I’ll leave that up to others to call it for what it is (here). However, trying to establish some faux equivalency between the circumstances of the Sotomayor and Estrada nominations is ridiculous, even for a rank propagandist like him.

Update: Keep digging, Karl.

Update 6/26/09: I had been looking high and low for this photo to communicate Estrada's insufferable sanctimony during his failed confirmation hearing, and luckily the New York Times republished it here.