He never mentions the explicitly racist comments. To take but one example of his failure to address the question.

Come on Salon, we readers write in about this shit, but really, what bugs me is not the responses, but that you might actually be PAYING this moron. He is totally evasive, and seems to think that we are stupid, that we would take at face value what any political strategists -- be they GOP or Dem -- present as reasons these days. Under the guise of anonymity, this guy could be telling us secrets of the crypt. Instead, we get bullshit boilerplate. Please, stop paying him.

I didn't know Wingnut was only speaking for the Senate Republicans. Since they haven't, by and large, voiced strong opposition to the nominee as yet, it is unclear how exactly Wingnut has answered the question that was posed. Nobody is fooled. It isn't less hypocritical to pretend that much of the republican base is racist while the 'leaders' of the party called the nominee racist.

Dear Wingnut, you are either deluding yourself or are a bald-faced liar, because you're completely ignoring at least ONE pertinent and well-reported FACT.

Once a Supreme Court vacancy was announced, and BEFORE anyone had been nominated by Obama, it was well-known and widely reported that Republicans in the Senate were getting their opposition ready. Did it matter who the nominee in fact was?

Nope. At least some in the Senate were quite obviously ready to oppose any Obama nominee, regardless of his or her name, record, or qualifications.

If that doesn't indicate GOP opposition "...simply because Obama nominated her...", NOTHING ever could. My opinion about the two options I'd raised at the beginning of my post? You're simply a bald-faced liar. You are obviously intelligent enough to read newspapers and political websites, including Salon, where the facts about GOP opposition were certainly published. Yet you have so little concern for the facts and Salon's readers that you continue pumping out pure B.S.

Joan Walsh, WHEN will this farce end? When will you pull the plug on this fraudulent and useless column?

Wingnut you really didn't say anything that hasn't been razed over the coals continuously.

Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated that she is a liberal, activist judge

Huh?

“a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a white make who hasn’t lived that life.”

This isn't evidence supporting your thesis. It doesn't do anything to make your claim more or less likely. If there is no way you can show that it is a) liberal or b) "activist", then there is no reason for you to be talking about it. So, you've got some work to do on this point.

Or is it to evaluate each case alone, on its own merits but in a interpretive way, one that is shaped by her personal feelings, her background and her politics more than by the language of the nation’s highest laws and a desire to achieve outcomes that are “fair” rather than constitutional?

There is Ricci v. DeStefano, a racial discrimination care in which she joined

The problem is that the 2nd circuit panel which she sat on was correct on the precedent and statute involved. Following existing law, the court she sat on decided the case correctly. The fact that the Supreme Court has decided to review it doesn't change that in the least, and if they choose to overrule it will because they have decided to go beyond existing law. Does that make them "activist"? May be.

And there is the case of Maloney v. Cuomo, in which she was part of a three-judge panel that ruled the Second Amendment affects only federal law, not state or local law.

That's because it does. As a matter of pure fact, the 2nd amendment constrains only the federal government. It has NEVER been incorporated against the states through the 14th amendment. So, again, she is correct on this point, and if the USSC chooses to incorporate the 2nd amendment, they will be activists, but in service of a conservative cause.

So, the two cases you present do nothing to support your claim. I get it that you all think that any time Obama loses, you win, but you could have just said that was what was really behind your opposition and left it at that.

Back here in the real world Sotomayor is not a liberal -- she is a centrist judge, who will fit right in with the other centrist judges on the Supremes right now, namely Ginsberg, Breyer, and Stevens. There has not been a true liberal on the court since Marshall retired. What you have are the centrists, whom I have named, one mainstream conservative, Kennedy, one closet right wing activist, Roberts, and three out of the closet extreme right wing activists, Scalia, Thomas and Alito.

It drives me crazy how the media has bought into the right wing mythmaking about the so-called "liberal wing" of the Court. I repeat, there ARE no liberals on the Supremes. After Sotomayor is confirmed there will STILL be no liberals on the Supremes.

Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated that she is a liberal, activist judge and, as such, conservatives are reflexively opposed to her appointment -- just as liberals automatically come out against the nomination of a strict constructionist anytime a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court.

If that's the whole premise of your argument, it would help if it weren't patently false.

Any intelligent and informed person, knowledgeable about issues of the courts, can tell you, based on Sotomayor's voting record, that she is neither markedly liberal nor "activist" in any wingnut-pants-wetting sense. When Sotomayor is judged on her record from the bench, rather than a select few cherry-picked speech quotes, she is actually disappointingly moderate as far as any true progressive is concerned.

You'll have to work a lot harder than that, Wingnut, to convince anyone but the easily misled (ie yourself and your cohorts) that your opposition to Sotomayor is anything but racist, misogynist fear-mongering.