A few days ago Sen. Ben Nelson said he wasn't sure how he'd vote on the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor:

Sen. Ben Nelson said Wednesday he has not decided whether he will vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nelson said he'll delay his decision until next week's scheduled Senate vote.

"I accept her judicial philosophy of fidelity to the law," Nelson said during a telephone conference call from Washington. Nelson said he also believes Sotomayor is committed to supporting settled judicial precedent.

But, he said, he needs to "convince myself she won't be an activist" on the court. "I need an opportunity to review a few things," the Democratic senator said.

What a guy. He makes sure to use republican talking points about activism, but when he had to consider John Roberts he said would take him at his word.
On September 22, 2005 - before the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for John Roberts had even been completed - Sen. Ben Nelson stated on the floor of the U.S. Senate:

"Only time will tell where Judge Roberts will come down on the prevailing legal matters that come before the Roberts Court. I can only take him at his word that he will approach his role on the court without a pre-determined agenda, without activism, and with only the intention to balance the scales of justice for all Americans.....

I will vote to confirm Judge John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court."

And he said the same thing about Alito.

At the time, the Associated Press reported:

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska on Tuesday became the first Democrat to announce he will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Nelson, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, said in a statement that he had made up his mind to support Alito "because of his impeccable judicial credentials, the American Bar Association's strong recommendation and his pledge that he would not bring a political agenda to the court."

Now, not to be undone by the Nelson gasbag is Max Baucus, the man who wants to undermine health care reform.

He's undecided as well.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Thursday he hasn’t made up his mind on whether he will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Baucus this summer has infuriated liberals on and off Capitol Hill by working to strike a deal with Republicans on healthcare reform. A “no” vote on Sotomayor would be adding fuel to the left’s fire at the Finance Committee chairman.

Baucus on Thursday twice told The Hill he is undecided on next week’s floor vote on Sotomayor.

Talk about slapping their president in the face. If Goober Graham said he's voting for Sotomayor then what is their hesitation except from a narcissistic ego trip to get more ink from the media. I wonder if Nelson is a racist or just hates women or both since he gave his vote to two white men so easily.

Dave N.: According to Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress, all of this waffling by Senate Dems -- which includes Alaska's Mark Begich -- is a result of pressure from the National Rifle Association, which indeed promised it would work to stop the Sotomayor nomination very early on; the NRA's Wayne LaPierre went on Glenn Beck and promised that if Sotomayor didn't agree to every jot and tittle of their agenda, they would denounce and oppose her. This is why so many Republicans grilled Sotomayor with questions about the Second Amendment.

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For Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, white men deserve preferential treatment. Given his stated sympathies for the KKK, this is hardly surpising. But it is worth noting. In his opening statement, Sessions said, Sessions said:

I will not vote for — no senator should vote for — an individual nominated by any President who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices, or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court.

(Emphasis supplied.) Yet, Sessions voted for Samuel Alito, who testified in his confirmation hearings that he does take his own personal background and sympathies into account as a judge.

Sessions demands preferential treatment for white men. He clearly applies a stricter standard to persons who are not white men. Given his history, this is hardly surprising. But it is also the perfect embodiment of the Republican philosophy.

h/t to Media Matters.

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Rachel Maddow reminds of us of why the likes of Jeff Sessions is the last person who should be taken seriously when asking someone else about racial prejudices.

MADDOW: That was Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois speaking at today‘s confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama‘s pick for the Supreme Court. It is widely assumed that Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed. She will be sworn in as the first ever Latino to serve on the Supreme Court, not to mention only the court‘s third woman.

Which means Republicans in the Senate are using the Sotomayor hearings, not so much as an opportunity to block the president‘s nominee, because they know that pretty much they can‘t, but rather to demonstrate the character of themselves in opposition which, it turns out, looks a little something like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many of Judge Sotomayor‘s public statements suggest that she may indeed allow or even embrace decision-making based on her biases and prejudices.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Already prejudiced against one of the parties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Allow biases and personal preferences - the wise Latina woman quote.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your wise Latina -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your wise comment -

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R-AL): Justice Sotomayor has said that she accepts that her opinions, sympathies and prejudices will affect her rulings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: If your irony-sensing ulcer is spitting bile right now, let me confirm that that last guy there was Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, accusing Sonia Sotomayor of having a prejudice problem.

That would be the same Jeff Sessions whose own nomination for a federal judgeship could not make it out of the Republican-run Judiciary Committee in 1986 after testimony that he had called the NAACP un-American and communist-inspired, had joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out members of the Klan smoked pot, and that he agreed with another lawyer who said a Department of Justice attorney, who was white, was a disgrace to his race because he represented African-Americans.

And those are the things that he admitted to saying and tried to defend. The charges he denied included the allegation that he told a black attorney he should, quote, “Be careful about how he talked to white folks,” and that he called a black attorney “boy.”

Now Jeff Sessions is leading the charge against Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds that she has a prejudice problem. And Sen. Sessions is doing it as part of the hearing process that is basically certain to result in Judge Sotomayor‘s confirmation, which means that Sen. Sessions, specifically, and his party generally, are using this opportunity to stand on the giant media platform that is a Supreme Court nomination to proclaim themselves to the nation as opposed to the first ever nomination of a Latino to the Supreme Court, mostly on the basis of questions about race.

Kagro at daily kos is sick of the umpire talk in the Sotomayor hearings. In fact, it was always a ridiculous argument, first forwarded by the disingenuous now Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. During his 2005 confirmation hearings, I wrote about how disingenuous Roberts was to use the analogy:

It is an interesting analogy Judge Roberts draws. And it seems to me to be an excellent argument for why Judge Roberts must answer the questions put to him by the Senate. As any baseball fan knows, umpires are not uniform in the delineation of the strike zone. Some are "hitters" umpires. Some are "pitchers" umpires. Some call the high strike. Some call the outside pitch.

And when it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States, it is important that we know what Judge Roberts' "strike zone" is. His record, the part that was not concealed by the Bush Administration, gives many of us pause regarding Judge Roberts' "strike zone." His stated antipathy for the right to privacy, for voting rights measures, for discrimination remedies, etc., demands followup. What does your "rulebook" say about these things Judge Roberts?

Senators Feinstein, Whitehouse, Schumer and Durbin all pointed out today that Chief justice Roberts was less than honest about what his judicial strike zone would be. In that sense, the umpire analogy still has its uses.