Thread: Schumer: Sotomayor nearly 'filibuster-proof'

Schumer: Sotomayor nearly 'filibuster-proof'
By Tom Brune
9:33 PM EDT, May 31, 2009


WASHINGTON - Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is "virtually filibuster-proof," but some key Senate Republicans said they are not prepared to say they won't block a floor vote on her just yet.

Just days after President Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor, a veteran Manhattan federal appellate judge, both parties sought Sunday to position themselves for a potentially contentious confirmation process over the summer.

"I think she's virtually filibuster-proof when people learn her record and her story," Schumer, who will help guide Sotomayor through the confirmation process, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

Republicans will decide not to block her because "she's legally excellent. . . . She is not a far left-wing judge. . . . And then her compelling history," said Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on the nomination.

But Sen. John Cornyn (R- Texas), who also serves on the committee, demurred. "I think it's really premature to say that or to speculate," he said.

Issues at the core of the debate, Cornyn and other Republican said Sunday, will include her controversial remarks about ethnicity and gender, a comment that appellate judges make policy, and her rejection of a reverse discrimination case, Ricci v. DeStefano, filed by New Haven, Conn., white firefighters that is now before the Supreme Court.

Cornyn and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the committee, rejected again Sunday comments by former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich and radio host Rush Limbaugh labeling Sotomayor a "racist."

But Cornyn said he was concerned about Sotomayor's statement that a "wise Latina" would make a better decision than a white male, saying "equal treatment under law" is more important than gender or ethnicity for a judge.

Schumer said she would stand by her remarks, explaining that they meant that while rule of law comes first, a judge's background does come into play in the decision-making process.

Hanging over the process is the fact that Democrats are one vote shy of the 60 needed to end a filibuster, and that Republicans appear to be hard-pressed to reject Sotomayor, short of a stunning revelation or a poor hearing performance.

While Schumer and Cornyn proclaimed they wanted to focus on her record and judicial philosophy, both made clear hard feelings remain over the judicial wars of the past three decades.

Cornyn, for example, quickly brought up the Democratic filibuster that ended a path to the Supreme Court for Honduran immigrant Miguel Estrada just six years ago. Schumer said Estrada, a Bush nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals who had never been a judge, had refused to answer questions about judicial philosophy.

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Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is "virtually filibuster-proof,"

It is time to fire the liars.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" .
--Edmund Burke