If you want to understand how a right wing smear develops and is propagated, read John Cole's summation of the excellent piece by Glenn Greenwald in Salon about the New Republic's smearing of Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor is one of a number of female judges that would be under consideration to fill Justice Souter's chair when he retires. Apparently, anonymous weasels on the right wing launched a whisper campaign to preempt Judge Sotomayor's consideration by President Obama, and they used a two-legged turd by the name of Jeffrey "Slimer" Rosen, writing in the New Republic, to do the job on the Judge. The article was full of catty, unattributed smears, something that belongs on a bathroom stall.
Bear in mind that Sotomayor, a Princeton (summa cum laude) and Yale-educated jurist, has served on the Second Court of Appeals for over 10 years, and is well regarded as a centrist by the American Bar Association. Undoubtedly, the fact that she worked her way up from a working class Puerto Rican family in the Bronx makes some right wing, silver-spoon elites nervous, as they observe her from their clubs and the cocktail circuit. Tough torts. There are a lot of great choices for the President, but this episode has made us root for Judge Sotomayor all the more.
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