More substantively, I would suggest that "protecting and defending the Constitution" is the only true way of protecting the country. Protecting the individuals and property of the US while undermining our Constitution is the opposite of protecting the country in any true sense of those words. That is why I will always consider GW Bush to be the worst US president of my lifetime (so far).

It's worth pointing out that Douthat is the NYT's second attempt in the past two years to hire a second conservative columnist, in addition to David Brooks. Brooks has pretty much worked out; I rarely agree with his articles, but they are at least readable and make coherent arguments. William Kristol (NYT columnist, 7 Jan. 2008 - 26 Jan. 2009) imploded as a columnist after just one year because of his inability to assemble sentences into a good argument based on actual facts. (Arguments based on stuff you make up don't count, even for columnists.) Douthat is following in Kristol's dubious footsteps. His rambling, fact-free, poorly written column today was particularly egregious, but none of his ten earlier efforts were significantly better. I give his column until April 2010.

So I'm reading along, parsing the semi-fluent Spanish of a text that has clearly been translated by some office flunky from an English original, and I get to the key word: jueza -- a made-up feminine form of "juez" ("judge"). ¡Válgame! Is that really necessary?

Just to check, I look at some Latin American and Spanish newspapers to see what they're calling Sotomayor. True enough, based on a Google News search (limiting results to articles published today), a majority of the articles on the appointment (22) refer to her as "jueza," but 5 articles (from, imho, the better-written newspapers -- El Pais in Spain and Excelsior in Mexico) call her "la juez," which strikes my ears as the better form. And a couple straddle the issue by calling her "la magistrada" (the magistrate), avoiding the need to create a new word especially for her gender. A linguistic technicality that we neatly ignore in English.

Coulter said, "It does a disservice to minorities -- to women and minorities -- that we are supposed to be empathizing for….Saying that someone would decide a case differently... because she's a Latina, not a white male, that statement by definition is racist."

The sentiments behind the comments being made by the likes of Coulter and other far-right warriors are indistinguishable in almost all respects from those taken by segregationists in the South and their ideological allies at the National Review in 1956-1957, with one notable exception: rather than flaunt the label of racist for themselves, they now try to pin it on their opponents.

Since Americans tend to have little historical memory, it is worth reading some texts from that time to see what I mean. In particular, an unsigned 1957 National Review editorial (penned by William F. Buckley) titled "Why the South Must Prevail" must be read in its entirety to be believed, so far is its rhetoric from the bounds of accepted speech today:

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/movable_type/2005-3_archives/001467.html

Here are a few key passages from the 1957 editorial that echo Coulter's sentiments today:

The South does not want to deprive the Negro of a vote for the sake of depriving him of the vote. Political scientists assert that minorities do not vote as a unit. Women do not vote as a bloc, they contend; nor do Jews, or Catholics, or laborers, or nudists--nor do Negroes; nor will the enfranchised Negroes of the South. If that is true, the South will not hinder the Negro from voting--why should it, if the Negro vote, like the women's, merely swells the volume, but does not affect the ratio, of the vote? In some parts of the South, the White community merely intends to prevail on any issue on which there is corporate disagreement between Negro and White. The White community will take whatever measures are necessary to make certain that it has its way.

What are the issues? Is school integration one?... What if... the matter comes to a vote in a community in which Negroes predominate? The Negroes would, according to democratic processes, win the election; but that is the kind of situation the White community will not permit. The White community will not count the marginal Negro vote.

The central question... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace.

National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.

And so on and so forth. Translation: if the "Negro majority" (1957) or Sotomayor (2009) does what any conservative white male would do in the same situation, then all is fine; if not, they must be stopped.