I found this article from a tweet by GGreenwald.

President Obama thinks Republicans will engage in a full battle over his Supreme Court nominee regardless of the person's ideological leanings, and in some ways "that realization is liberating for the president" to choose whomever he pleases, an administration official told TPMDC.

In comments that are at odds with the conventional wisdom about what Obama needs to do to make sure the Senate confirms his nominee to replace John Paul Stevens, a White House official involved in the confirmation process tells TPMDC that the President isn't taking a cautious approach to selecting a nominee. Despite having one less Democrat in the Senate than when Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed last year, the administration isn't limiting itself to reviewing only centrist candidates for the court vacancy, the official said.

"It doesn't matter who he chooses, there is going to be a big 'ol fight over it. So he doesn't have to get sidetracked by those sorts of concerns," the official told me. The GOP has attempted to obstruct "anything of consequence" put forth by the Obama administration since he took office, the official said. "The president is making this decision with a pretty clear view that whoever he chooses is going to provoke a strong reaction on the right," the official added.

I hope TPMDC is right. At least the White House knows what is in store for them when they make the nomination so they should just go for it. Will they have the courage?

I remember arguing with Democratic strategists about the Alito and Roberts nominations to the Supreme Court. I said instead of focusing on abortion rights, a divisive issue, we should sound the alarm about their strongly pro-corporatist rulings. But hey, what do I know?

And now, the predictable results. I can't tell you how depressed I am about this:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.

Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority apparently agreed.

"The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

However, Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting from the main holding, said, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens' dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

Advocates of strong campaign finance regulations have predicted that a court ruling against the limits would lead to a flood of corporate and union money in federal campaigns as early as this year's midterm congressional elections.

Unfortunately, Scalia's right. According to the rule of after-discovered evidence (I became familiar with it when I was a reporter and covering a similar case), an innocent man can still be put to death if the evidence that could have exonerated him should have been brought forth during the original trial. There are exceptions, but that's the gist:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal trial court in Georgia to consider the case of Troy Davis, who is on death row in state prison there for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer. The case has attracted international attention, and 27 former prosecutors and judges had filed a brief supporting Mr. Davis.

Seven of the witnesses against Mr. Davis have recanted, and several people have implicated the prosecution’s main witness as the actual killer of the officer, Mark MacPhail.

The Supreme Court’s decision was unsigned, only a paragraph long and in a number of respects highly unusual. It instructed the trial court to “receive testimony and make findings of fact” about whether new evidence clearly established Mr. Davis’s innocence. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined the court this month, did not participate.

The decision set off a sharp debate between Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia about Supreme Court procedure, the reach of a federal law meant to limit death row appeals and the proper treatment of claims of innocence.

“The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death,” Justice Stevens wrote in a concurrence joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, “clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing.”

Justice Scalia, in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said the hearing would be “a fool’s errand,” because Mr. Davis’s factual claims were “a sure loser.”

He went on to say that the federal courts would be powerless to assist Mr. Davis even if he could categorically establish his innocence.

“This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

What if everyone on the Senate Judiciary Committee took a Jack Nicholson pill?

Open Thread below...

The blogosphere and groups like American's Voice have been wondering why MSNBC employs such a racist asshole like Pat Buchanan. His behavior during the Sonia Sotomayor hearing s has been reprehensible. White supremacy has always been his mantra and he's been given a license to spew his hatred at an alarming pace. We expect this type of thinking to be displayed on FOX News, but then you listen to what Alex Castellanos says on a daily basis on CNN:

Alex Castellanos, a GOP strategist and CNN contributor, said Obama may be taking the country back to the era of identity politics.

"He didn't play that card in the campaign, he fought against that. And he said we're now at a new place," he said. "And now the question is ... is he taking us back to identity politics saying that someone is a better judge because of their race or their gender or their ethnicity?

...and you realize a simple truth. This is what the conservative movement has to offer. There are no thinkers that can get beyond the race barrier and their hatred for all minorities is palpable. The Sonia Sotomayor hearings reveals this in epic fashion. Here's Pat trying to defend his hatred with Maddow.

BUCHANAN: Affirmative action is to increase diversity by discriminating against white males. As Alan Bakke was discriminated at the University of California at Davis; As Brian Weber, that worker in Louisiana was discriminated against; As Frank Ricci and those firefighters were discriminated against; As Jennifer Gratz, was discriminated against and kept out of the University of Michigan which she set her heart on, even though her grades were far higher than people who were aloud in there. That's the type-affirmative action is basically reverse discrimination against white males and it's as wrong as discrimination against black females and Hispanics and others. And that's why I oppose it.

Gasbag racists like Buchanan, who have lived an elitist life with never any worries about eating food and supporting their families actually thinks he knows what it's like to be a working class family in America. Take away his elitist gifts and let him live in the real world for a year and let's see what happens.

Pat Buchanan is the affirmative action conservative talker for MSNBC because who's left to choose from? Michael Savage. The choices they are left with are extreme right wing radio talk show jocks. So the only reason he's on there airwaves is because they needed to fill that slot. What do you call that, Pat?

Here's a petition to ask MSNBC to fire him: Ask MSNBC to Fire Pat Buchanan

Even Villagers like Bob Shrum are freaked by Uncle Pat's racism.

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"Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another." -- Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama

I was struck by this key sentence in Sessions' opening remarks Monday in the Sonia Sotomayor hearings, especially because he presented it as the essential logic behind their opposition to Sotomayor -- their abiding fear that when she sits on the court, she'll be ruling against every white man who crosses her path.

We know this, according to their logic, because she is Latino -- and because she emphasizes her "empathy" for other Latinos, she will be prejudiced against any non-Latinos in her courtroom.

It is, as logic goes, about as obviously faulty as syllogisms get. Normal human empathy is not exclusive -- that is, our ability to feel empathy for one party does not necessarily exclude empathy for another party (or moreover, in Sessions' formulation, necessitate an animus to any other party). Being empathetic typically means the ability to place oneself in another person's shoes regardless of background. Identifying closely with one group at the exclusion of another typically is the antithesis of empathy.

What Sessions is describing is not empathy but rather the crude tribalism that underscores and animates most racist belief systems, and has done so since time immemorial. It is, essentially, an almost astonishing confession to being racist on Sessions' part.

And it animates not just Sessions but nearly the whole of movement conservatism and the Republican Party. If you were to poll Republican senators this week and ask them if they agreed with Sessions' "logic," I'd wager the numbers would be in the vicinity of 90 percent.

Nor is it just the senators. Look at Pat Buchanan yesterday, and Rush Limbaugh every day. The same core belief -- that empathy for Latinos, or black people, or any nonwhite, equals prejudice against whites -- indeed animates nearly the entirety of the conservative movement. I'd like to find a single conservative who would repudiate Sessions' formula. I bet I won't.

Rachel Maddow provided an ample survey of how bad it is out there last night. She was especially appalled by his column calling for Republicans to indulge in nakedly racial appeals to gain the sympathy of white voters -- though of course, for Buchanan, this is nothing particularly new. Back in 1989, he was arguing to the GOP to gradually adopt David Duke's positions at the time. And you know what? They did.

Maddow says Buchanan will be on her show to explain himself tonight. That should be entertaining. She won't need to ask Buchanan if he agrees with Sessions -- I think we already know the answer.

My oh my, I don't think the Republican Party is trying very hard to disprove the widely held notion that they are the party of privileged white men. Let's look at their perhaps unintentionally revealing tactics in questioning Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

First, we have Sen. Jeff "I couldn't become a federal judge because of my racist tendencies" Sessions basically telling Sotomayor that he expects her judgments to fall in line with other Puerto Ricans on the bench, because they're Puerto Rican. (h/t Think Progress)

And then Sen, Jon "We don't want no stinkin' Gazan refugees" Kyl goes off on a SEVEN minute rant to Sotomayor over his out-of-context interpretation of her "wise Latina" remark (thinking and talking points courtesy of Rush Limbaugh), despite the fact that Sotomayor had already addressed this issue a number of times.

And then Sen. Lindsey "I'm going to throw a tantrum and shut down the Senate if you get to see what we enabled" Graham treated Sotomayor with such attitude that even MSNBC's Tamron Hall and Mike Viquera termed it "patronizing".

And then to really hit home how the GOP's exposure to minorities come almost exclusively from TV sitcoms, Sen. Tom "Don't Ask, Don't Tell about my fellow GOP's sordid affairs" Coburn invokes none other than Ricky Ricardo to warn Sotomayor if she--metaphorically speaking, of course--attacked him.

Really, GOP...how do you think you're gonna attract that all-important Latino bloc of voters to your side in 2010-- with fried chicken and potato salad?

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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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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Sen. Pat Leahy gave Sonia Sotomayor today the chance to set the record straight regarding the fake controversy over her "wise Latina" remarks:

SOTOMAYOR: Thank you for giving me an opportunity to explain my remarks.

No words I have ever spoken for written have received so much attention.

(LAUGHTER)

SOTOMAYOR: I gave a variant of my speech to a variety of different groups, most often to groups of women lawyers or to groups, most particularly, of young Latino lawyers and students.

As my speech made clear in one of the quotes that you reference, I was trying to inspire them to believe that their life experiences would enrich the legal system, because different life experiences and backgrounds always do. I don't think that there is a quarrel with that in our society.

I was also trying to inspire them to believe that they could become anything they wanted to become, just as I had. The context of the words that I spoke have created a misunderstanding, and I want -- and misunderstanding -- and to give everyone assurances, I want to state up front, unequivocally and without doubt, I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.

What -- the words that I use, I used agreeing with the sentiment that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was attempting to convey. I understood that sentiment to be what I just spoke about, which is that both men and women were equally capable of being wise and fair judges.

That has to be what she meant, because judges disagree about legal outcomes all of the time -- or I shouldn't say all of the time, at least in close cases they do. Justices on the Supreme Court come to different conclusions. It can't mean that one of them is unwise, despite the fact that some people think that.

So her literal words couldn't have meant what they said. She had to have meant that she was talking about the equal value of the capacity to be fair and impartial.

LEAHY: Well, and isn't that what -- you've been on the bench for 17 years. Have you set your goal to be fair and show integrity, based on the law?

SOTOMAYOR: I believe my 17-year record on the two courts would show that, in every case that I render, I first decide what the law requires under the facts before me, and that what I do is explain to litigants why the law requires a result. And whether their position is sympathetic or not, I explain why the result is commanded by law.

LEAHY: Well, and doesn't your oath of office actually require you to do that?

SOTOMAYOR: That is the fundamental job of a judge.

MSNBC has more.