you remember when sam alito was going to his hearing and we got all crazy about whether he belonged to this or that. we tend to concentrate on trivialities. i think it has to do with the fact that this is both sides talking to their base. when you have senator kyl or senator sessions say sonia sotomayor is far out of the mainstream, and you are looking at a 5-4 decision, it has nothing to do with the facts on the ground. it has to do with the way we are conducting this conversation. we are talking to people who we want to send us checks. this is how we talk about abortion in this country. this is how we talk about gay marriage. this is how we talk about judges. it is happening in code. it is certainly true that it looks like there's a huge double standard. john roberts called out liberals for this a couple years ago in his affirmative action decision that had to do with schools and voluntarily integration programs. he said the only way to get past two races to get past race and liberals have to start favoring one race over another. that is an open question. there really depends on whet

now, i mention chief justice roberts and justice sam alito who did not give us anywhere near as clear a record or complete a record but i don't recall a single republican saying we did not have a complete record before we considered their nominations. of course, their nominations were by a republican president, for those two men, their nomination was by a republican president. for those two men, for the supreme court. this woman is nominated by a democratic president even though she has given a more complete record, somehow that's not enough. it was more than enough for the two men nominated by a republican president; not enough for this woman nominated by democratic president. but we have judge sonia sotomayor's record for the federal bench. it's a public record. we had it even before she was designated by the president. as i said, we have her record. from when she was first nominated to the federal bench by federal george h.w. bush and we have her record after she became a member of the federal court of appeals nominated by president bill clinton. and what is that record? it's a mai

enough that was the time it went to very young lawyers joined the team named john roberts and sam neill alito. they began to cut their teeth in washington affairs at that time. you had, of course, the first george bush, to nominations to the court, one of whom will step down this summer. and then, of course, bill clinton put to moderate liberals on the court, but turnover during that time then there was the longtime remember 11 years went by in which there were no vacancies on the court. quite historic. during that time if you were to sort of a some of the red wings scored you have to say that there were some extraordinary movements. i have mentioned several of them, but there wasn't a solid phalanx of conservative votes. this was a time during which in effect to the center held justice o'connor's a load mattered a great deal so roe vs. wade was not overturned, affirmative action survives from body to do cruder for example substantively process i've mentioned. and then in 2005 the extraordinary sequence of events within a few weeks in time where president bush nominated john roberts to phil o