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(h/ Heather)

Tom Tancredo stormed off the set of the Ed Show when he was debating health care with Markos Moulitsas. Poor baby.

It all started when Tancredo started trash-talking the Veterans Administration, at which point Markos brought up his chickenhawk past. He got angry and tried the standard conservative whine, realized he was better quitting while he was behind, and then stormed off. The truth hurts, right Tom?

As a Republican student activist, Tancredo spoke out in favor of the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of Northern Colorado in June 1969, he became eligible to serve in Vietnam. Tancredo said he went for his physical, telling doctors he'd been treated for depression, and eventually got a "1-Y" deferment.

Too many of these cowards discuss our troops when they themselves refused to serve when they had the chance. Here's Jed Lewison:

A few minutes ago on The Ed Show, Tom Tancredo tried to make the case against government health care by claiming that the Veterans Administration is unpopular with U.S. military veterans. The only problem for him was that he was up against Markos...who is one of those veterans, unlike Tancredo, a pro-Vietnam War chickenhawk who got a 1-Y deferment.

When Markos pointed out that Tancredo was (a) wrong about the Veterans Administration and (b) not qualified to speak for veterans, Tancredo exploded in anger, demanding an apology. Markos did not oblige, and Tancredo stormed off the set.

Funny, too, how the most thin-skinned of the wingnuts are the same people most prone to making vicious, uncivil, frequently racist and xenophobic remarks. Tancredo, after all, is a guy who claimed the National Council of La Raza was just like the Ku Klux Klan, and called Sonia Sotomayor a racist, and told the people of Brownsville, Texas, that they should build the border fence on the northern side of their city.

And then goes whimpering and whining off the stage when he gets a clean shot to the gut with hard facts. There's a street name for that, but this is a family blog.

(Thanks, Jed)

Glenn Greenwald wrote about this yesterday and I finally got to post about it today.

Justice Sam Alito on empathy and judging

With regard to that last point -- how completely different is the reaction to Sam Alito and Sonia Sotomayor -- just consider this exchange that took place at the beginning of Alito's confirmation hearing (h/t sysprog):

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Judge Samuel Alito's Nomination to the Supreme Court

U.S. SENATOR TOM COBURN (R-OK): Can you comment just about Sam Alito, and what he cares about, and let us see a little bit of your heart and what's important to you in life?

ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point....

Anyone who is objecting now to Sotomayor's alleged "empathy" problem but who supported Sam Alito and never objected to this sort of thing ought to have their motives questioned (and the same is true for someone who claims that a person who overcame great odds to graduate at the top of their class at Princeton, graduate Yale Law School, and then spent time as a prosecutor, corporate lawyer, district court judge and appellate court judge must have been chosen due to "identity politics").

But the attacks thus far -- not just from the Right but from the sterling Respectable Intellectual Center -- say far, far more about the critics than they do about her. How can her "empathy" views possibly be distinguished from what Sam Alito -- at Tom Coburn's urging -- said when he was confirmed?...read on

Glenn has the entire transcript up from the Coburn questioning and should be read. The idea that our own personal experiences do not shape the way we view life is absurd and Alito used it to try and sell himself to Congress, but for Sonia Sotomayor, that's a disqualifying event.

Digby writes:

Yesterday I dashed off this glib little bon mot, which deserves a much more serious treatment:

One can't know for sure that the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts, who has so far voted every single time with the ruling elites, was affected by his personal experience as a privileged white male -- coddled, groomed and rewarded from his earliest days by the conservative establishment he served -- but it certainly isn't unfair to think he might have been.

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