(h/t Mugsy)

Fox News Sunday apparently decided that the top news stories of the day were Newt Gingrich's and Laura Bush's new books (in that order, too). What oil spill? What battles in Iraq and Afghanistan? What economy? What Supreme Court nominee? What immigration reform battle? Nah, none of those are important...what Fox News viewers need to learn about is the literary efforts of "super-relevant" Republicans like the disgraced former Speaker of the House and the former First Lady of the least popular president in US history.

But eagle-eyed C&Ler Mugsy noticed something in the Bush home, where Chris Wallace interviewed Laura Bush, that should make the hairs on Glenn Beck's neck stand up on end:

LAURA BUSH IS A MAOIST SCHOLAR!

Look at the bookshelf behind Chris Wallace. Right behind his shoulder appears to be this book. Interestingly, most of the Amazon reviews describe the book as somewhat "sympathetic" to Mao.

Wait a second...you don't suppose that it's not actually Pickles who read the book, do you? That would mean that it belongs to former President George W. "I read three Shakespeares" Bush.

Does Glenn Beck know?????

Above the Law: Elena Kagen and Me: One semester of Civil Procedure with the new SCOTUS nominee

Grist: Political fallout from the Gulf oil spill: Hill hearings, climate-bill questions, MMS reorganizing

Miller-McCune Online: Unconscious bias amplifies anti-Obama rhetoric

A Tiny Revolution: Seymour Hersh describes "battlefield executions" by U.S. in Afghanistan

Legal Schnauzer: Insider on Siegelman prosecution fears for his life

Apoliticus: Top 10 Craziest Election Results

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?

Glenn Beck starts the smearathon of President's possible Supreme Court nominees with his usual racist-homophobic-Bircher philosophy. Righties try to preempt their smears by saying that if they comment on race, gender or the ethnicity of a candidate---they will be the ones who are smeared.

Riiiight.

Replacing a liberal judge with a liberal judge is too much for right-wing ideologues, who constantly bitch and complain about "activist" judges and insist that Obama must pick a centrist (whatever a centrist is) or he hates America.

Beck really should be outraged at the Citizens United activist ruling by the Roberts court, if he was being honest about the "activist judges" thing, because that overturned decades of settled law on how big business was regulated in what they can spend in politics, or so I've been told. Though the California Chamber of Commerce pulled their smear attack ad of Jerry Brown because some of their members objected to it (and didn't even know they had made it), nonetheless, this ad is one of the previews of what will happen as we move forward with elections because of that ruling.

Not good.

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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I've spent the past three days participating in the Reform Immigration for America summit in Washington, D.C. I've experienced more than my share of disappointments over the past few years in watching advocates come up short in the fight to bring sanity to the nation's misbegotten immigration laws.

Many of those wounds have been somewhat self-inflicted, largely because of the disparate nature of the many different organizations and interests who have made up the coalition of interests seeking comprehensive immigration reform.

And what was so encouraging about this summit is that it was clear that they are all coming together with a remarkable focus and ferocity. They will need it for the fight ahead.

The summit preceded President Obama's meeting 10 days hence with members of Congress on how to proceed on immigration. So the attendees fanned out after a rally Thursday to speak with their congressional delegations.

Eric Ward at Imagine 2050 has a terrific rundown:

Among cheers of “Sí se puede!” and “Time is now!” hundreds packed into the Church of the Reformation for a National Town Hall meeting on Capitol Hill. Their calls were clear - we can’t wait, we need comprehensive immigration reform now.

... Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) said 80,000 faxes were sent to Congress in the last 24 hours, and freshman representatives from swing districts are willing to put their seats on the line for comprehensive immigration reform. Let’s hope many more members of congress are willing to go out on a limb for the millions of people suffering in limbo.

There's plenty of reason to feel optimistic this time out as well. America's Voice has done some recent polling (details in the PDF here) showing that the public, by a large margin, favors fixing the mess that is our current set of laws:

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Newt Gingrich confirms that he's running for President in 2012 because you know he would never backtrack from a statement like this:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday he shouldn't have called Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist, but said he was still concerned that she would bring bias to her decisions.

In a letter to supporters, the Georgia Republican said that his words had been "perhaps too strong and direct" last week when he called Sotomayor a reverse "racist," based on a 2001 speech in which she said she hoped the rulings of a "wise Latina" would be better than those of a white male without similar experiences. Gingrich's remarks created a furor among Sotomayor's backers and caused problems for GOP figures who have been pushing to bring more diversity to the party.

Gingrich conceded that Sotomayor's rulings have "shown more caution and moderation" than her speeches and writings, but he said the 2001 comments "reveal a betrayal of a fundamental principle of the American system -- that everyone is equal before the law."

Sotomayor, 54, would be the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the high court.

He still won't put her words in context and when that is done, her words are not a betrayal. But he still acts a like a jerk when he calls her a radical:

So the question we need to ask ourselves in considering Judge Sotomayor's confirmation is this: Which judge will show up on the Supreme Court, the radical from her speeches or the convention liberal from her rulings?”

UPDATE:

Rush reacts to Newt's backtracking on Sotomayor "racist" charge: "I'm not retracting it."

LIMBAUGH: Have my words been too strong on Sotomayor? Are you asking me because Newt has retracted his -- no, my words have not been too strong. I just heard right before the program started. I didn't have a chance to do a lot of show prep late because of the Hannity interview, so I -- after the interview, I checked my email, and three members of the state-run media has sent me emails wanting my reaction to Newt's retraction of calling Sotomayor a racist, and I didn't know that he had, and I didn't know why he had retracted it, and I still don't. But -- what did he say? Why did he retract it? Did he say that he thought the word was too harsh or -- well, I have my own theory about what Newt's doing, but since I'm not doing it, I'm not going to comment.

I'm not retracting it. Nobody's refuted it. You know, they're out there saying, "It's too harsh. It's distracting, Rush. I mean, it's calling -- you know, you just don't want to use the word." Why? If the word means something -- words mean things -- and if it fits, I use it. Now, they may say, "Don't say it, Rush. Dial it back a little bit." But nobody's saying I'm wrong. Nobody's saying I'm making it up. I mean, when she says she'd do a better job than a white guy, what is it? It's racism, reverse racism, whatever, but it's still racism. She would bring a form of racism, bigotry to the court.

Newt Gingrich confirms that he's running for President in 2012 because you know he would never backtrack from a statement like this:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday he shouldn't have called Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist, but said he was still concerned that she would bring bias to her decisions.

In a letter to supporters, the Georgia Republican said that his words had been "perhaps too strong and direct" last week when he called Sotomayor a reverse "racist," based on a 2001 speech in which she said she hoped the rulings of a "wise Latina" would be better than those of a white male without similar experiences. Gingrich's remarks created a furor among Sotomayor's backers and caused problems for GOP figures who have been pushing to bring more diversity to the party.

Gingrich conceded that Sotomayor's rulings have "shown more caution and moderation" than her speeches and writings, but he said the 2001 comments "reveal a betrayal of a fundamental principle of the American system -- that everyone is equal before the law."

Sotomayor, 54, would be the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the high court.

He still won't put her words in context and when that is done, her words are not a betrayal. But he still acts a like a jerk when he calls her a radical:

So the question we need to ask ourselves in considering Judge Sotomayor's confirmation is this: Which judge will show up on the Supreme Court, the radical from her speeches or the convention liberal from her rulings?”

And of course, now the Republicans will accuse Obama of imposing a litmus test, since anything he does is evil:

The White House scrambled yesterday to assuage worries from liberal groups about Judge Sonia Sotomayor's scant record on abortion rights, delivering strong but vague assurances that the Supreme Court nominee agrees with President Obama's belief in constitutional protections for a woman's right to the procedure.

Facing concerns about the issue from supporters rather than detractors, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama did not ask Sotomayor specifically about abortion rights during their interview. But Gibbs indicated that the White House is nonetheless sure she agrees with the constitutional underpinnings of Roe v. Wade, which 36 years ago provided abortion rights nationwide.

"In their discussions, they talked about the theory of constitutional interpretation, generally, including her views on unenumerated rights in the Constitution and the theory of settled law," Gibbs said. "He left very comfortable with her interpretation of the Constitution being similar to that of his."