Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The right wingers who are passing out the pitchforks and torches to do away with all empathetic judges have yet another such judge to throw on the fire. This judge was introduced by the president upon making his nomination as a "warm, intelligent person who has great empathy." In his confirmation hearing, he spoke eloquently of his own upbringing in terrible poverty and how this would give him a perspective that other judges would not have because of their privileged lives. In response to one question he said:
And I believe, Senator, that I can make a contribution, that I can bring something different to the Court, that I can walk in the shoes of the people who are affected by what the Court does. You know, on my current court I have occasion to look out the window that faces C Street, and there are converted buses that bring in the criminal defendants to our criminal justice system, bus load after bus load. And you look out and you say to yourself, and I say to myself almost every day, "But for the grace of God there go I."So you feel that you have the same fate, or could have, as those individuals. So I can walk in their shoes and I could bring something different to the Court. And I think it is a tremendous responsibility and it's a humbling responsibility and it's one that if confirmed, I will carry out to the best of may abilities.
The name of this justice, as I'm sure you've figured out by now: Justice Clarence Thomas. I'm sure Rush Limbaugh will be comparing him to David Duke any minute now.
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And, as we all know, Clarabelle Thomas has proven time and time again to be unable to separate his "empathetic" liberal agenda from the law in his opinions on the cases before the court.
Posted by: democommie | June 1, 2009 9:41 AM
I like the satirical video on the subject of empathetic judicial nominations that Greg Laden has on his sciblog:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/05/jesus_too_empathetic.php
Posted by: Umlud | June 1, 2009 10:52 AM
@democommie
I find it interesting that neither the left or the right can talk about people they disagree with without resorting to name calling.
Posted by: yoshi | June 1, 2009 1:03 PM
No, it's only the poor debaters in each camp that do that.
Posted by: MomTFH | June 1, 2009 1:10 PM
*I* find it interesting when someone has absolutely no answer to an opponent's argument, so they attack *how* the argument was "framed".
Posted by: LanceR, JSG | June 1, 2009 2:26 PM
@democommie and LanceR
*My* argument, which I'm framing just as carefully as you would, is that you and democommie are poo-poo heads.
Please disprove my argument in no less than 1000 words, typed, double-spaced with at least 10 citations from the peer-reviewed literature.
Posted by: cyborgsuzy | June 1, 2009 4:08 PM
yoshi:
Would you rather I called Thomas, "Bush the Elder's handpicked black jurist"? I gather from your comment that you think he is not a clown; we disagree.
As to his qualifications compared to say Ms. Sotomayor's--he spent a few years as Asst. AG in MO and then about a year and a half on the appeals court before becoming a member of SCotUS.
Thomas is reckoned by some to be a brilliant jurist, count me as outside that group.
Posted by: democommie | June 1, 2009 4:14 PM
Actually, after looking them up on Wiki, it appears that Sotomayor has more experience on the bench than Thomas, Alito, Roberts or Scalia--or all four of them put together. She is shy of experience in two rather critical areas--toadying to corporate masters and helping to fix elections.
Posted by: democommie | June 1, 2009 4:29 PM
The notion that experience on the bench makes one more qualified to be a Supreme Court justice is obviously false. If it were true then the longest serving appeals court judge would automatically be the most qualified. Indeed, the whole idea of one being "qualified" to be a Supreme Court justice is mostly useless. Everyone under consideration has the credentials to make them qualified for the job. What makes one person a better choice than another person is not their technical qualifications but a number of other factors, some intellectual and some even outright political.
As for calling Thomas a "clown," that's a cognitively empty statement. It's just a sneer, not a serious argument. I would not call him a brilliant justice, but I think he's a more consistent thinker than most others on the bench (more consistently wrong, I think, but at least his views are coherent and consonant with one another). But even if one is not brilliant, it's hardly true that the only alternative is that he must be stupid or clownish. Yoshi is right, this is the kind of casual dismissal that doesn't really have much substance to it.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | June 1, 2009 4:53 PM
Yoshi--
I find it interesting that neither the left or the right can talk about people they disagree with without resorting to name calling.
Just because democommie resorts to name-calling fairly regularly does not mean that "the left" resorts to it routinely in turn. You are using democommie as a barometer of the entire left, and it is a false and illogical thing to do.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | June 1, 2009 5:25 PM
Ed:
I hardly think that experience on the bench is the only qualification. I mention it because of statements like Liddy's. As for Thomas being a clown being a "casual dismissal that doesn't really have much substance to it."--fine. I'll go back to this. He wouldn't be on the SCotUS if he wasn't a black conservative. His selection for the position had nothing to do with his jurisprudence and everything to do with his politics.
Sadie Morrison:
You're right of course--not that it will change anything.
Posted by: democommie | June 1, 2009 6:16 PM
democommie wrote:
I would agree with that. But it's also true that Sonia Sotomayor also wouldn't be the nominee if she wasn't an Hispanic female. And Sandra Day O'Connor would not have been a justice if she hadn't been a woman. And I don't think there's anything wrong with any of those realities. There is a deep and diverse pool of talented and accomplished people to choose from and there's nothing wrong, in my view, with using these kinds of factors in choosing between them. Clarence Thomas is well qualified for the bench and has acquitted himself well in that job regardless of the fact that he was chosen primarily because he was the highest ranking black conservative Bush could find. The same may well turn out to be true of Sotomayor.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | June 1, 2009 6:36 PM
Ed,
I have to agree and disagree with you.
First I agree with you regarding Thomas as a consistent legal mind, including the fact that he is consistently wrong.
On the other hand I disagree with your statement regarding the value of judicial experience, or bench experience. I would consider it a valuable criteria for SCOTUS selection. The more experience you have on the bench, the more opportunity you have had to explore constitutional law, work with a variety of legal minds, write opinions, etc. To dismiss this experience as irrelevant is a mistake. I agree that other factors are as important and potentially more important, but dismissing experience is, IMO, a mistake. Also, I don't believe anyone is trying to make the argument that the longest serving federal judge is the most qualified for the court, simply that Sotamayor's experience is a positive aspect to her other qualifications. I would argue that she is more qualified for the job than many of the other justices were when they were nominated. Does that mean she will be a better or worse justice? Not a clue.
Posted by: dogmeatib | June 1, 2009 6:51 PM
I can offer one suggestion in support of Ed's argument that experience doesn't reign supreme in SCotUS nominations: do you think any modern president will ever nominate anyone from the 9th Circuit? It wouldn't matter how experienced that judge would be because that would be such a political hot button among many people.
Posted by: Jon Lester | June 1, 2009 8:05 PM
Jon Lester:
Why?
Ed:
Since you bring it up, what are the qualifications necessary for sitting on the SCotUS, iyo. Based on your comment about Thomas, O'Connor and Sotomayor I wonder if there are any that matter--aside from race, religion, ideology and politics. And if there aren't, then why go through the charade of vetting them and having them appear before congress for the dog and pony shows?
Posted by: democommie | June 1, 2009 9:59 PM
democommie, I thought you'd know the 9th's "activist" reputation among (but not always limited to) conservative voters in general, but here's a pretty exhaustive discussion:
http://ask.metafilter.com/89596/Is-the-9th-Circuit-Overturned-More-Often
Posted by: Jon Lester | June 2, 2009 12:03 AM
Jon Lester:
Thanks, I thought that might be it, but I was not sure.
Am I correct in thinking that Sotomayor is the first pick for the SCotUS, in quite some time, who doesn't have a resume that includes extensive apparatchiking for the party in power or a bench record that is very supportive of the party in power?
Posted by: democommie | June 2, 2009 7:55 AM
@17, I think I'm not the one to ask, but it would be a sad state of affairs if that turned out to be true. I would have expected more modern SCotUS nominees to be both too busy and too focused for party activism but there's no reason to assume that.
Posted by: Jon Lester | June 2, 2009 12:32 PM