You Say (tow-MAY-tow), I Say (tow-MAW-tow)...

Tim Burton at his finest. I can hardly wait.



This Monday marked the beginning of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. True to form, opening day was reserved for opening statements, in which each judiciary committee member sums up in (hopefully) thirty minutes or less why they will or will not vote to confirm the nominee regardless of the answers (or non-answers) the nominee provides to their questions. This is a practice commonly referred to as “wasting time.” On Tuesday, senators will proceed to stage two, the question and answer period commonly referred to as “grandstanding.”

In an interview with NPR on Monday afternoon, host Robert Siegel asked Republican Senator Charles Grassley what he (Grassley) felt the roll of a Supreme Court Justice should be. Grassley recited the usual talking points regarding how a judge must be an impartial arbiter of the law, “an umpire calling balls and strikes,” and should not “legislate from the bench,” etcetera. He then added that a judge’s upbringing or experience must have absolutely no influence upon their interpretation of the law. Siegel then quoted a portion of Justice Samuel Alito’s confirmation testimony in which he stated that, “When I get a case about discrimination I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background, or because of religion, or because of gender, and I do take that into account.” Siegel noted that by Grassley’s standard, Alito should have been disqualified as a Supreme Court nominee. Grassley conceded that Siegel was absolutely right, that Alito’s willingness to take his experiences into account – his empathy for those in his family that had suffered discrimination would indeed disqualify him from the bench under Grassley’s definition of what a judge should be. When Siegel deftly pointed out that in spite of that, Grassley had indeed voted to confirm Alito (an unqualified nominee by his own standard), Grassley responded by… seamlessly changing the subject.

There are two things everyone needs to understand about the United States Senate. Politics is everything, and everything is political. A “judicial activist” is a judge who decides a case differently than you think it should have been decided. Minorities’ experiences make them “biased” because throughout the history of this country, the white male experience has been considered the “norm.” Chuck Grassley wasn’t bothered by Alito’s statements regarding the roll of empathy in his decisions because he believed the statement was either some bogus feel-good mumbo jumbo Alito spewed in an attempt to score points with Democratic senators, or that Alito’s empathy extended to the same type or class of people to which Grassley’s empathy extends. He is disturbed by Sotomayor’s extra-contextual statements regarding “empathy” because he believes she may honestly feel that way and that she may not be sympathetic to the same people as he is. This debate is no more complicated than that.

Every time I start to get comfortable with the idea that this country has truly and definitively turned a corner in race relations, a story comes along that jams a wrench in the gears of progress. This week’s episode of “That Crap Still Happens In America?” comes to us courtesy of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. City of brotherly love. Unless you happen to be a brotha. A Philadelphia-area day care center signed a contract with the Valley Swim Club in Huntington Valley, PA to allow the children at the day care center to use the club’s swimming pool one day a week. For this privilege the day care paid $1,950. However, when they arrived for their first visit, some of the kids reported hearing other club members asking why “African-American” children were there. A couple days later the club cancelled their membership and returned their membership fee without explanation. When asked for comment, club president John Duesler told two Philadelphia television stations that the presence of the children had changed “the complexion” and “atmosphere” of the club. Sigh. I suppose the possibility exists that in the face of allegations of racial discrimination, the club president is simply guilty of a terrible choice of words to explain his actions. Perhaps there is a logical explanation for all this. On its website the club posted the following statement: “We had originally agreed to invite the camps to use our facility, knowing full well that the children from the camps were from multi-ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that we underestimated the capacity of our facilities and realized that we could not accommodate the number of children from these camps.” Okay. Sounds somewhat reasonable. I might have accepted that explanation – until I came across something else. One of the members who made the complaint against the children told reporters, “As general members, we were not told that they were coming. If we knew, we could decide to not come when the pool was crowded, or come anyway. We could have had an option.” He then added that two other day-care centers, neither of which included minority children, had previously been disinvited. Two things came to mind. First, I don’t know of any club in which management is required to inform certain paying members of the impending presence of other paying members. Second, if it is true that two previous day-care centers had been disinvited due to over-crowding of the pool or club, then the explanation the club posted on its website about quickly realizing their inability to accommodate the number of children rings a little hollow. Shouldn’t they have learned from those two instances that their capacity was insufficient – if capacity was indeed the problem? It’s just a little depressing that this kind of thing STILL happens in this country.

In more amusing news, following a four-year absence from professional cycling, 37-year-old, 7-time Tour de France Champion Lance Armstrong is currently in third place on this year’s tour, trailing his teammate, and race favorite, by less than one second. Is there a more hated man in all of France than Lance Armstrong?

In relation to a slightly different kind of racing, the head of Formula One Racing, Bernie Ecclestone gave an interview to The Times of London in which he expressed his preference for “strong leaders,” like Margaret Thatcher. He then followed that statement, with this one:

“In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.”

Um. Yeah. I suppose that’s one way to look at it. You really can’t fix stupid, can you?

A homeless man in Boston was convicted of stealing two flower planters from the downtown condominium of New England Patriots superstar quarterback and Mr. Giselle Bundchen himself, Tom Brady. The man was ordered to pay Brady restitution in the amount of $8,000. That’s right. Eight thousand dollars. For two flower pots. Four grand a piece. First, where does one find a $4,000 dollar flowerpot? Second, why does one purchase a $4,000 flowerpot? What are you growing in there Tom, golden apples?

A funny thing happened on the way to the bullfight. A man was gored to death by a bull during the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain last week. I guess it’s true. Sometimes you get the bull, and sometimes the bull gets you. Here’s to the bull.

Finally, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and pop tart Jessica Simpson have reported split up again. I pick the Cowboys to win the NFC.