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Thursday, June 18, 2009

That damned Filibuster

What's Mallard raving about today?

Democrats, Republicans, Racism.

Te recap:

Democrats did not like Miguel Estrada's judicial philosophy and decided to filibuster his nomination because they knew that there was chance he could get nominated to the Supreme Court, in part because he was Hispanic.

Republicans do not like Sonia Sotomayor, although the only reason we know of to date is because one quote in her history suggests that she believes here Latina history could give her wisdom which people without her background lack. This, according to Mallard, is racism.

Also, according to Mallard, these two cases are equivalent.

Enjoy yourselves in the comments.

8 comments:

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

Um...could someone explain this incident to me? Because from this angle, it makes no sense. It was a foregone conclusion that whoever whatsisname nominated for SC would be bugshit crazy, so why were we evidently so concerned about Estrada? Is he uniquely bugshit? Why couldn't whatsisname have nominated him anyway if he were so deadset on it? And what does being hispanic have to do with anything? This seems all very strange to me.

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

That's "whomever." Tricky bastards.

Rootbeer said...

And pro-choice conservatives aren't "real conservatives", and anti-war Americans aren't "real Americans", and no true Scotsman wears knickers under his kilt, etc. etc. etc.

Yawn.

Squid Vicious said...

GeoX: There were a couple of reasons Democrats opposed Estrada. First, he was a right-wing idealogue with nary a judgeship or public legal opinion to his name. So, apart from knowing he was reactionary, D's could only guess at the sort of opinions he'd write. Second, he was nominated for the DC Circuit, which is important for two reasons: the DC Circuit has jurisdiction over a significant swath of administrative (i.e., federal agency) law, and many Supreme Court slots are filled by DC Circuit judges (e.g., Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Ginsburg all served on the DC Circuit). By appointing Estrada, Bush was certainly signalling that he was ready to appoint him to the SC.

Hope that helps.

rewinn said...

Ever notice how all of the recurring characters in this "comic" are either a duck or stuffed with straw?


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Personally, I hope the GOP tries to filibuster Sotomayor. They haven't hurt themselves enough yet, in my book!

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

Squid Vicious--thanks. So I guess it turns out that being Hispanic really doesn't have anything to do with anything? Not that it's a surprise, but I apparently naively expected ducky's talking points to at least have SOME vague congruence with something that actually happened.

Michael Foley said...

Is this a complaint that Democrats look beyond race and judge people by their character? "They say they like Hispanics so much, so why didn't they nominate a conservative one with no experience?!"

Jazzbumpa said...

Even a stupid, race-baiting duck finds an occasional truth. But here he made the mistake of expressing it in terms of a couple fundamentally misleading specifics, instead of the general case:

Conservatives* aren't really human.
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* Not real conservatives, like, frex, Obama, but the faux-conservatives of the reichfluegel, who have no coherent ideology.