This morning’s opening to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor got a tad fiery when the outburst of an anti-abortion protestor disrupted the opening statement of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. The man, promptly arrested by Capitol police, asked Sotomayor “what about the unborn?”
Committee chair, Sen. Patrick Leahy, was not impressed and had the man hauled out.
Time for lunch!
After a much needed break – they had to drain the hot air from the hearing room so no one would choke – the members got back to work, finishing their opening statements.
Although Leahy called on colleagues to avoid partisan politics, it didn’t exactly penetrate. The statements were pretty much what you’d expect. Consider the opening statement of our own Sen. John Cornyn, wherein Corny opined that the Supremes have “veered off the course” of “restrained and limited” framework of the Constitution. For example, he said, in recent years the Court has “micromanaged the death penalty, creating new rights spun from whole cloth.”
Yikes.
Meanwhile, he said, the court has ignored other fundamental rights including (until recently) – can you guess it?? – the Second Amendment. The court has demonstrated its willingness to get back on track, with, for example, the 2A case that struck down the Washington, D.C. gun ban. Corny wants to know if Sotomayor will get on board and keep things moving in the right direction, or whether she’ll join the “veer off course” crowd.
So much for banishing partisan crap. Not that one would really expect that to happen.
The committee is now in recess, until 8am CDT tomorrow, Tuesday. In the meantime, you can watch a replay of today’s action on C-SPAN (where you can check out Sen. Al Franken‘s first turn before the Judiciary Committee, and veteran Sen. Arlen Specter‘s first turn on the Committee as a Democrat).
For background and commentary, be sure to check out the always informative SCOTUS blog.
This article appears in July 10 • 2009.