With Sotomayor Vote, The Year’s Biggest Non-Event Is Finally Over
Your blogger can’t wait for today’s Senate vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor. It will finally put an end to a month of pointless Senate rhetoric.
To emphasize the utter predictability of the confirmation process, let’s take a look at the opening paragraphs of the preview story that ran in the Daily Journal on Monday July 13, the day the hearing began:
WASHINGTON – For U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whose confirmation hearing begins today, 60 is the magic number.
That’s how many Democratic votes there are in the U.S. Senate – enough to overcome any Republican attempts to block her confirmation.
Sotomayor, who brings 11 years of experience as a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and would be the first Hispanic justice, is still likely to be confirmed even if the hearing doesn’t go as smoothly as she hopes, political pundits say.
That’s why the consensus in Washington is that nothing short of a total debacle can prevent her eventual confirmation.
Not much else to say, really.
Lawrence Hurley 