Lindsay Graham v. Sonia Sotomayor

See our previous post on this issue here.

Uh, oh. When Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina), a Senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee who will interrogate Sonia Sotomayor in connection with her Supreme Court nomination, started on Chris Wallace of Fox News this Sunday, he sounded pretty good. Without noticeable mushiness, he stated that her 2001 speech extolling the virtues of being a Latina Woman (a redundancy) over being a white male, was unacceptable for a Supreme Court nominee.

But as the show wore on, his actual position gained clarity. What he wants is for her to apologize for her remarks. Apologize, as in, "I'm sorry. I won't say something like that again. I feel awful."

It should be noted that when faced with a choice of apologizing or losing a life-long job with 8 other people who are able to exercise ultimate power in one of only 3 branches of government of the biggest most powerful country in the history of the world, apologizing would be the smart thing to do. So, Ms. Sotomayor will apologize. The question then is: what will that give us?

An apology and nothing else. That and $4.00 will get you a grande latte at Starbucks. It will not get you a person who doesn't believe in the ideology that has formed and informed her life to date.

How could a person apologize for a lifelong ideology? They can't. Evidence of concrete repentance is called for, proof that the inner person has changed and not just the shifting public face of a Supreme Court wannabee. They must offer something else that indicates they no longer adhere to such an ideology.

Our U.S. Senators need to insist on real words, real commitments, that indicate that she understands the error of her thinking in 2001 (which was opposed explicitly and vehemently at the time by at least one Hispanic Democrat appointed by President Clinton in the same Symposium she gave her speech) and also real evidence that she has changed her mind on this issue since 2001, i.e. evidence that has not arisen since she found out she might be nominated for the Supreme Court.