Yesterday’s Power Line has notes by Paul Mirengoff on a discussion between John Hinderaker (one of the authors of Power Line) and Andy McCarthy concerning the upcoming hearings in Congress on Sonia Sotomayer.  The conclusion they draw is very simple.  Paul states:

“I’ve argued many times that Republicans must apply whatever standard the Democrats use when a Republican president makes a Supreme Court nomination. For if the two political parties don’t employ the same standard, one of them will have an unearned advantage when it comes to what is arguably our most important institution.”

Because this makes perfect sense, it probably won’t happen.  Paul points out that the Constituion sets no standard for confirmation.  Up until recently, the President’s choice for judges was approved almost automatically in deference to the President.  That changed when Democrats came to rely so heavily on the Supreme Court to bring about changes they could not enact through the normal political process.  At that point, the Democrats wanted more input into judges even when they did not control the executive branch.  That’s how we got where we are today.

The article concludes:

“A system of deference will yield a Judge Bork or a Justice Scalia. A system where Congress denies deference will yield a Justice Kennedy. And one can only imagine who (if anyone) such a system would have produced if the vacancies President Bush filled had come open in 2007.

But the days of deference are over and Republicans would be fools to even think about reinstating them during the presdency of Barack Obama.”

I have no idea what the correct response to this nomination is.  I do know that the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayer will put the white male on the endangered species list as far as finding employment or getting a fair hearing in her court.