Forcing Sotomayor down their throats

Good times.

Walking this careful line between pleasing the base and not offending Hispanics will be Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who became the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee when Arlen Specter switched parties last month. Sessions himself was once a Reagan nominee to the federal bench who was rejected by this same committee — at the time controlled by Republicans — after reports surfaced that he had called the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People "un-American" and had once told a colleague that they "forced civil rights down the throats of people."

Somewhere, Lyndon Johnson is smiling. It took more than forty years, but the majority status he gave to Republicans over civil rights -- basically ceding the South to the GOP -- has come back to be the GOP's millstone.