Obama Confident That Sotomayor Will Be Confirmed

The White House is confident that Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed, after two days of rigorous questioning in which the Supreme Court nominee offered few details of her judicial philosophy and even fewer missteps.

"The president believes he has a nominee of rich and diverse experience, somebody who is going to uphold the law, and I think -- judging from how she has fared so far in the hearings -- somebody who will be approved by [the Senate Judiciary] committee and by the Senate to be the next justice on the Supreme Court," said spokesman Robert Gibbs during Wednesday's briefing.

The remarks showed a hint of confidence from a White House that so far has been pleased simply to let the Supreme Court process play itself out. On Wednesday, the third day of hearings for Sotomayor's nomination, the Supreme Court pick was asked about a bevy of judicial and personal issues. She largely evaded direct answers, other than calling her infamous "wise Latina" remark ill construed and to emphasize that she will not let a sense of empathy affect her jurisprudence.

The latter point seemed to contradict the very tenet that Obama once said he valued in prospective judges. But Gibbs said the president was not disappointed that he would not be getting an empathetic judge in Sotomayor.

"The president picked the person that he believed was the best possible nominee to fill an important vacancy on the court," he said. "I'm pretty sure that over in the White House residence there is not complete agreement on everything that is discussed.... But the president is not troubled."

Gibbs went on to note that Sotomayor's disavowal of allowing empathy to play into her decisions should put the "concerns" of critical conservative senators "to rest."

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Comments

[ForVivi]

Remember what W labeled himself?:
A "compassionate conservative".
Anybody want to comment on this?

[Weirdwriter]

It speaks for itself.

[igorz]

Doesn't it strike you that for a political party that is about one national election away from anonymity, Republicans sure do bluster a lot.

[GunneraGirl]

works for me!

[LeLoup]

"and to emphasize that she will not let a sense of empathy affect her jurisprude­nce."

The conventional wisdom states that she kind of "had to" distance herself from this whole "empathy" stuff, right?

I disagree. I think she completely missed a golden opportunity to politely, but mercilessly jackhammer the Reichtuglicans here.

How?

“In my work with the defendants, I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men.

Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

-- Captain G. M. Gilbert, Army psychologist assigned to watching the NAZI defendants at the Nuremberg trials.

Game, set, match!

[CitizenJ]

As long as the nominee is not a nominee put forward by a Republican, then the Republicans will never have their concerns settled.

[LeLoup]

Of course not. As the present edition of the Supreme Court abundantly demonstrate, the Republicans want conservative activists who will systematically dismantle every judicial doctrine that favors the individual over the State, the corporation or the powerful at large.

[GunneraGirl]

yup. we can be thankful that we didn't hold a national drinking party based on the phrase 'wise latina' because the entire nation would be still be unconscious on the floor from just the first day! some of those senators have no problems with nominating a light weight, pro-corporate Harriet Myers or the appearance of impropriety presented by Scalia palling around with Cheney, or with charges of sexual harassment for Thomas, or have yet to make comments about the Alberto Gonzalez mess over at the 'Department of Law'. Yet on and on and on and on they go about the 'wise latina' comment, deliberately distorting the sense of her speech, not once or twice, but repeatedly.