(John Amato: I'd like to welcome Big Tent Democrat onto the pages of C&L. He'll be handling our new Supreme Court Blog: Third Branch for the hearing. He's a regular on Jeralyn's most awesome site Talk Left and a former Daily Kos front pager. He also is a man of the law.)

After being introduced by New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand, Judge Sonia Sotomayor presented her opening statement. The key part from Judge Sotomayor's opening statement:

In the past month, many Senators have asked me about my judicial philosophy. It is simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make the law – it is to apply the law. And it is clear, I believe, that my record in two courts reflects my rigorous commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its terms; interpreting statutes according to their terms and Congress’s intent; and hewing faithfully to precedents established by the Supreme Court and my Circuit Court. In each case I have heard, I have applied the law to the facts at hand.

The process of judging is enhanced when the arguments and concerns of the parties to the litigation are understood and acknowledged. That is why I generally structure my opinions by setting out what the law requires and then by explaining why a contrary position, sympathetic or not, is accepted or rejected. That is how I seek to strengthen both the rule of law and faith in the impartiality of our justice system. My personal and professional experiences help me listen and understand, with the law always commanding the result in every case.

The complete statement on the flip.

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You knew Jeff Sessions wouldn't be able to hold back his true feelings about race. Jeffrey Toobin calls him out for his gender/ethnicity prejudices. Really, only white, superior men are unbiased and understand the ills caused by racism and sexism because they are a blank slate. Sure thing there Jeff.

Big Tent Democrat:

Jeff Toobin captured the entire philosophy of the Republican Party, embodied by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, only white men are oppressed. Only white men are unbiased and without prejudice.

JEFF TOOBIN: What’s worth noting about what Jeff Sessions -- the line of questioning, was that being a white man, that’s normal. Everybody else has biases and prejudices[,] . . . but the white man, they don’t have any ethnicity, they don’t have any gender, they’re just like the normal folks, and I thought that was a little jarring.

Good on Toobin

Yes, because our history shows that white men have been oh so kind to minorities and the ladies. That's what's inside of a mind like Sessions.

And let's remember what Sessions said about Roberts.

During the John Roberts confirmation hearings, when Roberts argued against applying discrimination laws in memorandum, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was adamant in defense of judges who "respected precedent"...read on

When Jeff Sessions speaks, weird things happen.

He was talking to Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, about scheduling a Senate Judiciary hearing on the disparity of the penalties for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine

Sessions said he and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had been talking about it. "Senator Leahy and I were talking during these hearings, we're going to do that crack cocaine thing you and I have talked about before," Sessions said.

The hearing room cracked up.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., looked over at Sessions. "Please rephrase it, Senator. Please rephrase," he said.

Sessions laughed along with the crowd. "I misspoke," he clarified. "We're going to reduce the burden of penalties in some of the crack cocaine cases and make them fair."

We have learned that Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) has a favorite Puerto Rican jurist -- Jose Cabranes. Sessions demanded to know why Judge Sotomayor did not follow Judge Cabranes' lead

Interestingly, Sessions was very critical of Judge Sotomayor's involvement, as a member of the Board of Directors, of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Sessions seemed not to know that his favorite Boricua judge, Cabranes, was also a member of the Board of the PRDLEF. Now right wing groups allied with Sessions and following his lead are running an ad attacking Sotomayor as a "terrorist."

The question needs to be asked of Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) (the KKK sympathizer; the person who said the NAACP was a "commie" group and who berated a white lawyer who worked for civil rights as a "disgrace to his race"), what do he and his allies make of the fact that their favorite Puerto Rican jurist, Jose Cabranes, was also a member of the "terrorist" group - the PRLDEF?

Politico writes:

GOP not buying 'Latina' explanation

Pretty funny if you ask me. For the Republicans do seem to be rejecting any desire for Latino votes.

Via Atrios, Craig Crawford describes the political disaster that the GOP has decided to perpetrate upon itself:

Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny. Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's condescending tone toward the Hispanic woman was costing them ethnic votes with each passing hour of Tuesday's Judiciary Committee hearing?

. . . Even if they vote for her, the fallout for Republicans could reach well beyond Hispanic voters. They are coming across as a bunch of snarky and bitter old white men who cannot bear the thought of their kind losing power.

The only thing that can make it worse for the GOP will be, as I noted earlier, if no Republicans vote for Sotomayor's confirmation. Here's hoping.

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Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, the other one, is certainly a master of the blah blah blah. Here's a helpful summation:

Kyl: Judge, isn't it true that you think having more women and minority judges in America is...gasp...a good thing? How dare you!

Ya know, after the nation watches these hearings, they might logically conclude that having more women and minorities in the SENATE would be an improvement. I know I do.

Full transcript of Kyl's "question" (?) below the fold.

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Rush Limbaugh tried to lie about George Allen's racist "macaca" remark that cost him his Senate seat by claiming that it was all made up out of thin air by Democrats trying to destroy him. Yeah, we just knew that Allen was waiting to utter a racial slur and call S.R. Sidarth a type of monkey, and then pounced and took it out of context. How did we do that, RushBo?

That's more lying nonsense, but then he went off on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, saying that what she said was much worse than that. What a guy that Limbaugh. I mean, this is all they have to work with and I thank you. Limbaugh is re-digging a ditch to throw George Allen back into and burying him in the process.

Thanks Media Matters:

LIMBAUGH: So Russ Feingold: A couple of words that Sonia Sotomayor said taken out of context. You mean, like, macaca? George Allen saying macaca -- we heard about that for weeks and months as The Washington Post and the Democrats sought to destroy Allen; he'd been a congressman, a governor, and a senator.

Sotomayor's comments are much worse than macaca; and they're frequent, and they are long-held. You see how this race thing works, folks. If you're a liberal, nothing you say can be held against you."

I think Limbaugh is feeling the heat from DenounciaRush.

Presente Action released this statement today: "Rush Limbaugh has no shame -- launching more racist attacks on Judge Sotomayor during a historic week when her credentials are on full display and our community is beaming with pride. Our elected leaders cannot remain silent in the face of these inflammatory comments polluting the public discourse. We demand that Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee denounce Limbaugh's latest remarks immediately."

Allen was thought to be the great right-wing hope to run for president in 2008, but being a racist wasn't very helpful to him now was it? Here's a reminder of what really happened to George 'macaca' Allen via The Situation Room back on Aug 14, 2006.

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Sen. Orrin Hatch doggedly pursued Sonia Sotomayor today on a series of questions about the Second Amendment, since the matter of gun rights -- especially the evil President Obama Secret Plan to Take Your Guns Away -- is probably the biggest legal issue on the minds of most Utahns.

As you can perhaps see from the excerpts, Sotomayor handled them all ably (one of the rulings Hatch raised, she pointed out, was a very narrow case involving nunchucks and not guns). At one point, she had to point out that Hatch essentially wanted her to issue a ruling on cases that she might actually have before her on the Supreme Court, so she couldn't answer those.

Nonetheless, you can rest assured that the National Rifle Association and the various gun fetishists out there -- convinced that their gun rights actually are what keep us safe from government tyranny -- will find whatever she says unconvincing and denounce her anyway.

Last night, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA was on Glenn Beck's show, and he made it abundantly plain that they were going to go through the pretense of listening to Sotomayor patiently before they denounced her.

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Essentially, the NRA is demanding that Sotomayor prejudge all her Second Amendment cases and pay fealty to their often cockamamie legal positions, or else they will denounce her.

Count on more of the same from the Senators they have in their pocket. Orrin Hatch being one of the more prominent.

The only thing amusing about it is realizing just utterly impotent they all really are.

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For Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, white men deserve preferential treatment. Given his stated sympathies for the KKK, this is hardly surpising. But it is worth noting. In his opening statement, Sessions said, Sessions said:

I will not vote for — no senator should vote for — an individual nominated by any President who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices, or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court.

(Emphasis supplied.) Yet, Sessions voted for Samuel Alito, who testified in his confirmation hearings that he does take his own personal background and sympathies into account as a judge.

Sessions demands preferential treatment for white men. He clearly applies a stricter standard to persons who are not white men. Given his history, this is hardly surprising. But it is also the perfect embodiment of the Republican philosophy.

h/t to Media Matters.