The ancient one of the Senate, 91-year-old Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former ardent segregationist and currently in bad health, made it back to his beloved chamber on Thursday to vote `yes’ for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Think about that one. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan, and a senator who was so opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that he filibustered against the measure for 14 hours on the Senate floor, decides in 2009 to vote for someone named Sotomayor to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice. This is truly a great country when someone like Byrd can make such a journey from once vowing never to serve with African-Americans in the military to now voting for someone who will become the first Hispanic to ever serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Byrd and every other Democrat present for the Senate vote on Sotomayor voted `yes’ for her confirmation. Ted Kennedy could not make the vote for health reasons but would have surely voted for the nominee. That made for 59 `yes’ votes for Sotomayor on the Democratic side, and it would have been 60 if Kennedy had been able to attend.

On the Republican side of the aisle, nine senators voted for Sotomayor. Republican senators from Maine and New Hampshire, down to Florida, and back up to Indiana and Ohio in the Midwest voted `yes’ for Sotomayor. One of those GOP senators, George Voinovich of Ohio said, “There is no significant finding against her. I will support her. I’ll be proud for her, the community she represents and the American dream she shows is possible.”

All told, the vote for Sotomayor was 68-31 to the affirmative, meaning 59 Democratic senators voted `yes,’ as did nine GOP senators, with 31 Republican senators voting `no.’  All the Dems voted for Sotomayor, even those of the more conservative persuasion such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Jon Tester and Max Baucus of Montana.

Midwest GOP traditional conservatives Dick Lugar of Indiana, Kit Bond of Missouri and Voinovich of Ohio voted `aye,’ so did Maine Republican senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, did the same, as did southern GOP senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Mel Martinez of  Florida.

From Montana through the Midwest up to the far Northeast and down South, plenty of `yeas’ for Sotomayor. And yet, given the sweep of support of Sotomayor in both parties, the two senators from Texas, both Republicans, voted `no.’

 Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Supreme Court nominee with more judicial experience than any high court nominee of the last 100 years. They couldn’t bring themselves to support a nominee who received the highest rating and recommendation from the American Bar Association. They couldn’t bring themselves to vote `yes’ for a nominee who has sided 95 percent of the time with her Republican-appointed colleagues/judges on the federal panel where she currently serves.

Why?  The roughly half-million Republicans who vote in Texas primaries - and the group of Texans these two senators care about most - wanted no part of a Supreme Court nominee named Sonia Sotomayor appointed by a president named Barack Obama. Nearly half of Texas Republicans, according to one poll, believe it’s a good idea for their state to consider seceding from the Union with Obama as the president. There’s little doubt that over 50 percent of Texas Republicans believe Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia, or maybe Pakistan or Somalia. How about Haiti? Yea, maybe Obama was born in Haiti.

So, all that being the case, did anyone seriously doubt Cornyn and Hutchison would vote against Sotomayor given the core beliefs of their party’s base? Whether it’s immigration or any other hot button cultural issue, Cornyn and Hutchison do what their party’s base tells them to do, even in the face of state’s sweeping demographic changes that will propel Texas toward being a majority Hispanic state by 2050.

History was made in the U.S. Senate on Thursday. The first Hispanic - and only the third woman - to be ever confirmed to serve on the Supreme Court received the support of her nation. Hutchison and Cornyn were on the outside looking in. Meanwhile, the old former segregationist and ex-Klansman, ailing with the bad health of his 91 years, made it a point to be there to vote `yes’ for Sotomayor - and against the past sins of racial intolerance.

Meanwhile, the two Texas senators looked on, going against the fast-moving currents of a new day, and stuck in the yesterday of  fading cultural views that even Robert Byrd knows have no future in the America of the 21st Century.

Kay Bailey Hutchison chose McAllen - and a meeting of Mexican-American chambers of commerce - to officially say she will vote `no’ this week against the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, a stunning announcement to be sure.

The Republican senator’s decision on Judge Sotomayor was widely expected. If she was expecting a show of approval from the Texas Association of Mexican-American Chambers of Commerce, Hutchison didn’t get it. The Associated Press reported that Hutchison received “a tepid” response from those gathered at the Friday meeting in McAllen.

Tepid, indeed, as the Texas senator and would-be governor carefully described her opposition as one being based on the gun rights ownership issue. Our senator, you see, cannot vote for any Supreme Court nominee who is not rock-solid on guns.

A couple of gaping holes in Hutchison’s contention come in the form of Jon Tester and Max Baucus, two conservative Democratic senators from Montana who are ardent pro-gun guys. And guess what? They’re both going to vote `yes’ on Sotomayor, with Tester saying, “She (Sotomayor) is solid on the Second Amendment, (the right to bear arms).”

And then there’s the Fraternal Order of Police, one of the nation’s largest law enforcement organizations. The fraternal order is for Sotomayor, too, with the organization’s president calling the judge “a model jurist, tough, fair-minded and mindful of the constitutional protections afforded to all citizens.”

The American Hunters and Shooters Association would differ with Hutchison as well. The hunters and shooters have endorsed Sotomayor, too. Kay Bailey, however, believes Sotomayor is soft on guns. Yes, right, that’s it. The reason the Mexican-American chamber didn’t buy Hutchison’s reasoning is because her real     reason is so transparent. Hutchison is running for governor against a politican merchant, the incumbent Rick Perry, who has kissed the butt of every tea party/anti-government/Obama hater in the state.

For Hutchison to have endorsed Sotomayor would have been fatal for her gubernatorial campaign against an opponent who is already depicting the senator as the second coming of  Nancy Pelosi. To tout guns as the reason she is opposing Sotomayor is nonsense. It’s a political calculation, pure and simple.

Meanwhile, this state’s other senator, John Cornyn, announced last week that he, too, is against Sotomayor because he doesn’t know which Sonia Sotomayor America will get once she is a Supreme Court justice. Cornyn was among the GOP white guy senators who couldn’t get over Sotomayor calling herself “a wise Latina” in speeches to law students.

Sotomayor did appear to be rather wise and learned in her confirmation hearings, but apparently once confirmed and on the Supreme Court, she may go from being wise to being a Latina activist, (hence not knowing which Judge Sotomayor we will get).

So, Sotomayor is good enough for two gun rights advocates/conservative senators from Montana, (where like 100 Hispanics live), but she’s not good enough for two senators who  represent a state, (Texas), where close to 40 percent of the population is Latino.

Hutchison and Cornyn are on the wrong side of history - and demographics. They will vote against a Supreme Court nominee with 17 years of federal judgeship experience, who received the highest rating and recommendation from the American Bar Association, and  is someone whose nomination will likely mean to Hispanics what Thurgood Marshall meant to African-Americans when he was named to the high court in the 1960s.

And for what?

Appeasing the tea baggers and the far right of the Texas Republican primary apparently means more to Texas’ two senators than latching on to a historic Supreme Court nomination - and demonstrating to their state’s fastest-growing population segment that they understand their wishes and aspirations.

One of the leading Republicans in the U.S. Senate, Lamar Alexander, has announced his support for the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. Alexander, of Tennessee, is the Senate Republican Conference chairman, the No. 3 leadership position for his party in the Senate.

In backing Sotomayor, Alexander is bucking his minority leader, Mitch McConnell, along with the minority whip, Jon Kyl, and the GOP campaign chief, John Cornyn, all of whom plan to vote `no’ next week on the Sotomayor nomination. Alexander is now the sixth GOP senator to decide to vote `yes’ on the Sotomayor selection for the Supreme Court, and his announcement may encourage a few more Republican senators to do the same.

Alexander cited Sotomayor’s experience, temperament, character and intellect as reasons to support her nomination for the high court. The Tennessee senator said he hopes his vote for Sotomayor will lead to more senators voting for such selections based on merit, qualifications and temperament, and not just partisan politics and the ideologically driven positions both parties have often taken in recent years when it comes to high court selections.

“Elections have consequences,” Alexander said Thursday on the floor of the Senate. “It would be wrong for me to vote against Judge Sotomayor solely because she is not on my side on some of the issues.”

Alexander said it would have been wrong for him to oppose Sotomayor after criticizing then-Sen. Barack Obama and other Democratic senators for opposing John Robert’s nomination for chief justice in 2005  because they disagreed with the nominee’s political philosophy. Alexander’s vote for Sotomayor is consistent with what he said four years ago in saying a president should have a wide latitude in nominating justices for the Supreme Court.

It is the same line of thinking that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., used in announcing that he would also vote `yes’ on the Sotomayor pick. Alexander and Graham were correct in 2005 in being critical of Obama and the Democrats for opposing Roberts for purely political and partisan reasons. Roberts should have received the support of every Democratic senator four years ago, and a good many Democrats did vote for the Republican nominee.

It’s a shame that Cornyn of Texas couldn’t demonstrate the same sort of maturity and wisdom as Alexander and Graham, and instead decided to oppose Sotomayor for ideological along with cultural reasons, (Cornyn among the GOP senators who freaked over the judge’s `wise Latina’ comment in speeches to law school students).

Sotomayor will end up with just north of 65 votes for confirmation when the Senate votes next week. That would be short of Robert’s 70-plus votes for confirmation. Still, Alexander and Graham and the other GOP senators are to be commended for putting principle over politics in announcing their support for Sotomayor.

He didn’t know which Judge Sotomayor America would get, or so says John Cornyn.

The Texas Republican senator couldn’t bring himself to vote for federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor and her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, disregarded a lengthy list of solid qualifications in voting - as expected - against Sotomayor in a panel vote this week.

Sotomayor has 17 years of experience as a federal judge, the most such experience of any candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court in nearly 100 years. In terms of balance, she has sided with her Republican-appointed colleagues about 95 percent of the time in rulings made by the federal panel of which she is a member.

Regarding specific cases involving claims of gender and racial discrimination, Sotomayor has ruled with the majority of her colleagues in 44 of 46 such cases. It was a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, who originally appointed Sotomayor to a federal judgeship.  After that appointment (in 1992), she was promoted years later to a federal appeals court by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Sotomayor received the overwhelming support of senators of both parties after those appointments by presidents Bush and Clinton.

Her academic credentials are also outstanding, having graduated from Princeton, (undergraduate), and the Yale Law School.

So to recap: Many years of federal judgeship experience, a record of balance in often siding with her Republican-appointed colleagues, showing she follows law and precedent in deciding discrimination cases, and appointments from presidents of both parties. All of that, not to mention the historic distinction of being the first Hispanic ever to receive a Supreme Court nomination, and Cornyn of Texas votes “no.”

Why?

This was a nomination Cornyn could have embraced for all of the reasons cited above, as well as the feel-good historical vibe of the Sotomayor selection. Cornyn, after all, does represent a state that will be majority Hispanic in another generation or two. He could have connected that demographic reality to a Supreme Court nominee who happens to be Hispanic, and much more importantly, is  imminently qualified to be on the high court.

Push-comes-to-shove on a tough vote, though, and Cornyn did what he always does. He  put  ideology first, as well as being the dutiful politican in cultivating his party’s right-wing base, (like always), which is adamantly opposed to Sotomayor’s nomination. For Cornyn ,  political sensibilities and party ideology take priority over the distant needs of embracing the diversity and scope of the people and state he is elected to represent.

What bugged Cornyn about Sotomayor?

Speeches, of the sort Sotomayor made to law school students over the years in which the judge spoke with pride of her Puerto Rican heritage, even referring to herself as “a wise Latina.” Those three words were too much for Cornyn to handle, but he wasn’t the only one. Most of the other Republican senators on the judiciary committee went bonkers over the “wise Latina” comment, devoting hours of questioning to that topic during Sotomayor’s hearings.

Cornyn and his Republican colleagues essentially accused Sotomayor of being obsessed with race and ethnicity when it was they, in fact, who couldn’t get off the subject. No matter her record, Sotomayor could not be trusted due to the “wise Latina” thing. Her record of 17 years as a federal judge may say one thing, but the undercurrent of the “wise Latina” lurks, threatening to surface once Sotomayor makes it to the Supreme Court.

So, Cornyn voted “no.” And so did veteran Republican senators Charles Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Keep in mind that Grassley and Hatch had never previously voted against a Supreme Court nominee in their many years in the Senate. Every nominee that had come before them from both Democratic and Republican presidents they had supported, but not this one.

Why?

Grassley said he still wasn’t convinced Sotomayor could put aside her “prejudices and biases” as a judge, (hello `wise Latina’). Hatch grumped about Sotomayor’s record on gun rights issues, but come on, this is the same senator who voted for liberal high court nominees Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You’re going to tell us that Sotomayor’s rulings on gun rights issues are to the left of Breyer and Ginsberg? Please. What a  cop out, Sen. Hatch. Just say you can’t bring yourself to vote for a Latina for the high court and be done with it.

No matter, next week all 60 Democratic senators are likely to vote for Sotomayor. Five GOP senators are likely to do the same, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said while the “wise Latina” thing bugged him, he wasn’t going to put a few speeches over her 17-year record of being an accomplished and fair jurist. Imagine that, a Republican senator showing some wisdom.

You know, it’s one thing to have senators from Iowa and Utah vote against an esteemed judge named Sotomayor. It’s quite another to have two senators from Texas - of all places - to do the same. This week Cornyn said he would vote “no.”  Next week, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is sure to do the same when the full Senate votes on the Sotomayor appointment. For Hutchison to do otherwise would all but put her aspiring gubernatorial campaign out of business given the need to appease her party’s right wing base.

The “wise Latina” will survive somehow, and so will Texas’ two GOP senators, at least for a while before the state’s changing demographics someday deliver a different vote of their own.

A high-level Harlingen city official e-mailed me this week to press the point that his city has a population of 75,000 residents - and not the 67,000 mark I cited in a recent column.

The 67,000 mark is admittedly a guess and based roughly on the average number of residents Harlingen has added this decade. The 75,000 number is also a guess, an estimate by Harlingen City Hall. It may be right. Harlingen, like cities often do, has recently annexed an adjacent area, in this case an area in-and-around Stuart Place Road, going toward La Feria.

There’s likely at least a few thousand residents in that area, which nicely pads Harlingen’s population total. There’s nothing wrong with all of that, and one can see why Harlingen would like to stay ahead of Edinburg, Pharr, and Mission in ranking as the Rio Grande Valley’s third-largest city. Ultimately, though, that’s a race Harlingen is going to lose due to the simple reality of growth patterns.

Edinburg is poised to become the region’s third-largest city - probably sooner than later. A big reason why is ample space to grow in residing next door to a hemmed-in McAllen. Edinburg is getting spill-over growth from McAllen, a land-locked city that also has higher residential and housing costs than Edinburg. 

Edinburg has also a huge school district in terms of sheer size in square miles. Residential development is filling up much of the district’s territory to the north, adding up to more population for the city. It’s just a guess, but I think the 2010 Census will show Edinburg, Harlingen, Mission and Pharr closely bunched in population, and then as the decade unfolds, the three Hidalgo County cities will each edge out Harlingen in population.

It’s a bit of an ego blow for Harlingen, but it’s hardly fatal. Harlingen remains a fine city to live and work, and there’s enough growth to make things interesting. Cities in their desperation to grow and make a bang with the public at times overreach with overly expensive projects and overly generous subsidies for new business. It would be better for Harlingen to focus on its basics - streets, good police and fire services, improve its library so it’s open more than a scant few hours every weekend, all the sorts of things that make a city more livable.

Growth isn’t everything, and sometimes it’s overrated. Brownsville’s city limits start just outside of San Benito on the expressway. That’s rather ridiculous, maybe laughable, given that Brownsville can’t provide decent services, at times, for the residents who live in the actual city, and not some far-flung area annexed to boost City Hall egos.

Harlingen will be fine whether it’s the third, fourth or fifth-largest city in the Valley. Better to be good than big for the sake of size.

Seven hundred miles down, only 1,300 miles left to go for Duncan Hunter, one of America’s great fence builders.

Hunter, a Republican congressman from California, and his clan have been on a many years quest to fence the 2.000 miles of the U.S.- Mexico border. That wish was getting no where until Sept. 11, 2001, when the anti-immigrant advocates of the crazy wing of the Republican Party exploited fears over terrorism to push for their long-sought border fence. Then-President George W. Bush had spoken against such a notion for years, but then caved to the extremists in his party on the eve of 2006 mid-term elections in a last gasp bid to look as if his administration was doing something about illegal immigration.

Nearly three years later, much of the 700 miles of border fence is up, with the last uncompleted stages being here in South Texas, where the building of the structure is universally despised. The last bits of resistance are coming from private landowners who insist the federal government has not dealt with them in good faith in confiscating their land to build fences to keep out all of  the dishwashers, construction workers, restaurant cooks, and chicken factory processing workers who want to terrorize America.

As those lawsuits wind through the federal courts, Hunter is at it again. He wants the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to build 350 miles of additional fencing on top of what has already gone up. Why only 350 miles? Why not 500 miles? How about a 1,000 more miles, congressman?

It’s only cost taxpayers $2.1 billion to put up about the current 600 miles of fencing that are currently protecting America. At about $2 billion a pop for every 600 miles of fencing, it would only cost a tad over $4 billion to have 1,200 miles of fencing, and think of all of the Mexicans that would have to be hired to build it. After all, as comedian Paul Rodriguez has said, the only white guys left in construction are the dudes in the 1970s-era pop group, the Village People.

There’s not only the up-front construction costs. The U.S. Corp of Engineers predicts that it could cost upward of $70 billion over 25 years just to maintain and upkeep 700 miles of fencing. Wow. So, for only $4 billion, we can have 1,200 miles of fencing, and for another additional $140 billion to maintain the whole thing, that’s a total cost of $180 billion for over 1,000 miles of fencing. That isn’t exactly a Wal-Mart bargain, but keeping Mexicans out don’t come cheap.

As opposed to Duncan the immigration expert, we have in our Congress one U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso. Reyes spent 26 years in the U.S. Border Patrol, rising in the ranks to be the sector chief in McAllen and El Paso. For some reason, Reyes, who merely spent over two decades in actual border law enforcement, believes border fencing is largely a waste of money. 

Reyes has his own bill, which he calls the Putting Our Resources Toward Security Act. It would add 5,000 Customs agents and Border Patrol officers to fully staff all of our U.S. port of entries. The Reyes bill would also invest $5 billion over five years to modernize border security infrastructure, international bridges, and inspection facilities.

Let’s see. So, for under $10 billion, give or take a few hundred thousand either way, we can fully staff and upgrade our international bridges and ports of entry, thereby ensuring better flow of border traffic and amping up security all the while. Or this country can spend well north of $25 billion to build and maintain 350 more miles of border fencing. Tough call to make.

The congressman proposing the first measure spent nearly three decades in border law enforcement and rose to the top levels of Border Patrol leadership. The politician proposing the second measure is just that - a politician who wants this country to spend millions more to suit his ideology and cultural sentiments.

Reyes knows what so many of us in the border region know. We need more Customs agents, Border Patrol agents, better technology to improve security, and improved ports of entry to facility commerce, traffic flow, and put more trained law enforcement eyes where they really  belong - and can make a difference.

For Duncan Hunter and his Republican chums, though, you just can’t put up enough fencing. So much border to fence, so little time, but so many billions to spend on such a foolish notion.

If you grew up in the Rio Grande Valley before 1990, there were the big three - Brownsville, McAllen and Harlingen - but the 2010 Census will confirm the region has gone way beyond its signature cities to include an array of communities that have topped the 50,000-population mark.

Edinburg, Mission and Pharr have long since passed the 50,000-mark. One, if not all three cities may eclipse Harlingen in total population when 2010 Cenus numbers are released. By 2000, the three Hidalgo County cities had generally gotten within 10,000 residents of Harlingen’s population. By 2005, the margin in population totals between Harlingen and the three cities to the west had narrowed further.

Harlingen’s population in 2010 will likely be somewhere around 67,000 residents if trend lines through the decade continue. Going into 2009, at population trends seen throughout the decade, Edinburg, Mission and Pharr were each up around the 65,000 mark, making it easy to see how one, if not all three of these cities may pass Harlingen by in the 2010 Census.

As someone who grew up in Edinburg in the 1970s, it would have been impossible to imagine the day when Harlingen was not one of the Valley’s three big cities. But we have arrived - just about - at that point. Edinburg, if you can believe it, will soon have four high schools, and is emerging as this area’s second-largest school district, (behind the behemoth, the Brownsville Independent School District).   

Mission, which has blossomed with all of the retail and housing growth in the adjoining Sharyland area, has been a hot spot this decade. So has Pharr and the entire PSJA area, which includes San Juan and Alamo. Once tiny San Juan is now as big as Weslaco in population, a further sign of how population centers in our region have spread far-and-wide over the last 20 years.

In all, the Texas State Data Center estimated in 2007 that the Valley’s population had grown to 1,139,581 residents. In 2000, the region’s population was nearing the 900,000 mark, meaning the Valley as a whole was growing at a rate of at least 30,000 residents per year from 2000-2007. At that rate of growth, the region’s 2010 population should easily go over the 1.2 million population mark. If these numbers prove to be true, it will mean that the Rio Grande Valley will have added roughly 300,000 resident in the first decade of this new century.

Think about that figure: 300,000 more people living here in 2010 than was the case in 2000.

Some other headlines and highlights from this first decade of the 21st Century in the Rio Grande Valley:

- Brownsville’s population in 2010 will surely be about 200,000 residents, a gain of roughly 60,000 residents from 2000.

- McAllen is not the only game in town anymore when it comes to retailing in the Valley. Brownsville saw much-needed retail growth this decade, curbing the need for local residents to head west for shopping needs. The outlet mall in Mercedes has been a huge success and continues to add stores.

- McAllen’s population growth in general is slowing. The city’s population in the 2010 Census will likely be around 130,000, (up from about 106,000 in 2000), in percentage terms that represents a significantly lower rate of growth than Edinburg, Mission and Pharr. The school-age population of McAllen is growing very slowly, and has long since been passed by the  burgeoning school district growth of Edinburg.

- Like elsewhere in the United States, the housing boom went bust in the Valley in recent years, but not before wide swaths of farmland belts of property became endless rows of subdivisions. Spaces between cities were filled by the homes of national builders with their glitzy marketing campaigns, and then they almost mostly fled and/or collapsed when the credit crunch hit.

So where will the hot zones of growth be between 2010 and 2020? Here’s a guess: The spaces of land in-and-around Los Fresnos and between Brownsville and San Benito. The Los Fresnos school district will add another high school or two, and Brownsville will become a city of about 300,000 residents in a future that’s not too far off.

- To read more from this columnist, go to brownsvilleherald.com and click blogs and find `The Daily Chisme.’

There was so much eloquence spoken this week during the confirmation hearings of U.S Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that’s it hard to pick just a line or two of excellence.

But here goes. I’ll go with the “it bugs the hell out of me” line from the folksy Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican senator. What so annoyed the senator were Sotomayor speeches over the years to mostly law student groups where the federal judge spoke fondly of her ethnic heritage, and how she saw it as a plus in her work on the bench.

Such empathy is not allowed for the high court nominee of a Democratic president, but is permissible for a Republican appointee such as current Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who only three years ago testified how his Italian-American heritage influences his work as a judge. Alito’s comment didn’t “bug the hell” out of Graham at the time, and he was right there, too, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee when then-appeals court Judge Alito got touchy-feely on the empathy front.

While Alito was properly demonstrating the good kind of empathy, Sotomayor was delving into “identity politics” when she told groups of law students that being a “wise Latina” boosted her judging abilities. Republican politicians roll out the “identity politics” tag when a Hispanic or African-American politician or public figure demonstrates too much pride in their respective ethnic heritage. Doing so, you see, means you’re veering away from being properly American and freelancing over to being divisive.

Sotomayor surely knew the following question was coming from conservative GOP senators during her confirmation hearing, and sure enough, here it came.

“Do you understand identity politics?” Graham asked Sotomayor. “What is identity politics?”

Sotomayor took one of her many slight pauses of the week before answering, knowing the dogs were laying low in the high weeds.

“Politics based simply on a person’s characteristics, generally referred to either race or ethnicity, or gender, or religion,” Sotomayor replied. “It’s usually denigrated because it suggests that individuals are not considering what’s best for America.”

“Do you embrace identity politics personally?” the senator asked the judge.

As a judge, no, said Sotomayor, then adding, “As a person, I do believe that certain groups have and should express their views on whatever social issues may be out there.”

Good answer, fair and balanced, as they would say on cable TV, but not good enough for Graham in assessing whether Sotomayor was too Latina, too ethnic, to be on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Do you believe that your speeches properly read embrace identity politics?” Graham asked.

This time there was not much of a pause before Sotomayor dove into her answer.

“I think my speeches embrace the concept that I just described, which is, groups, you have interests that you should seek to promote, what you’re doing is important in helping the community develop, participate, participate in the process of your community, participate in the process of helping to change the conditions you live in,” the judge said.

For good measure, Sotomayor added that she did not believe what she described was “identity politics” since she was not advocating groups do anything illegal, but quite the contrary, to essentially participate in their communities and organizations.

The judge’s answers somewhat assured the Southern senator, but not to a full extent, and Graham said he and other conservative still wondered: “Will you take that line of thinking,(i.e. too much ethnic affiliation), to the Supreme Court?”

At least Graham was being honest. Most Southern-based politicians talk in code words and hidden meanings when it comes to discussing race. The South Carolina senator just put it out there: Judge Sotomayor, we don’t think you should be on the court if you’re going to go too Mexican, Puerto Rican, etc., on us.

One would have to think that Sotomayor had to know there was a stunning double standard at work here. Alito can be as Italian as he likes, but the Latina woman has to fall into place. If it all “bugged the hell” out of her, Sotomayor didn’t show it. She demonstrated great focus, composure, and command of the facts about the law in her answers.  

Sotomayor never got rattled or outwardly annoyed, and that’s saying something given the fact that mealy-mouth Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama was right in her face, with his sorghum drawl asking the judge how in the world she could be affiliated with a Puerto Rican-American civil rights group in her early years as a lawyer.

When it was all done, Sotomayor did a hell of a good job in assuring white conservative Republican senators that she wasn’t an out-there crazy Latina, and gosh darn it, some of them were even impressed. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, one of his chamber’s most conservative senators, said he was “mighty impressed” with Sotomayor after questioning her.

On Friday, the day after the hearings ended, one of the Senate’s most senior and respected members, Richard Lugar, a Republican of Indiana, announced his strong support for Sotomayor, praising her intellect and performance before the judiciary committee. Indications are that veteran Republican senators Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley are likely to follow Lugar’s lead in supporting Sotomayor.

How about our two Texas Republican senators - John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison?

Can’t tell yet. Cornyn just got re-elected last year, but still, he knows that 99 percent of the active Republican base in his state opposes Sotomayor, (too ethnic and Obama appointed her). Kay Bailey? Goodness, it she votes for Sotomayor, Billie Jo in Plano and Ray Bob in Midland will never forgive her, and that ain’t good as she prepares to run for governor against the secessionist, Rick Perry, who has kissed the butt of every tea party participant he can find.

It’s a bit of a tough call for the Texas senators. Vote for Sotomayor and catch holy hell from Billie Jo and Ray Bob, or vote against the judge, and watch the “no” vote bug the hell out of Hispanic voters, the state’s fastest-growing population segment.

Good luck with that, senators, and remember no matter how y’all vote, someone is fixing to get bugged.

Hey, Lindsey, if this Senate career thing doesn’t work out for you, don’t go into lawyering.

You’re not very good at cross-examining witnesses, Sen. Graham.

That’ s the viewpoint here after watching Graham’s clumsy and patronizing questioning of Sonia Sotomayor in day two of the judge’s confirmation hearings for her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Like his fellow Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham is astounded that a Hispanic woman steeped deep in years of federal  judicial experience can have the audacity to believe she is as capable of making as good, if not better decisions than a white man.

The gall of the judge to think such a thing.

For nearly the entire day of hearings, the Republican senators could not get off the “wise Latina” comment that Sotomayor has made in various speeches to law students in which she said her life experiences contribute to make her a better judge.  Graham, of South Carolina, did his best  Andy Griffith imitation without the great wisdom displayed by make-believe sheriff in the popular 1960s shows.

Graham said he was “blown away” by Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comment in her speeches, and patronizingly lectured the judge that she should have a moment of “self-reflection” in reassessing her comments. Continuing on that front, Graham said it was great that Sotomayor would get “a second chance” to continue her judicial career despite believing that as a woman and a Latina she can make as sound decisions as a white man.

Arizona Republican John Kyl continued on that line of questioning with Sotomayor, saying that he believes the judge supports the notion that “gender, race, and national origin” should have a role in “development of the law.”

“You seem to be celebrating it,” Kyl said to Sotomayor, referring to her ethnic heritage.

Just wondering, but where was Jon Kyl in 2006 when a Supreme Court nominee said the following: “When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic heritage, or because of their religion, or because of their gender. And I do take that into account.”

Those were the words of then-federal appeals court judge Samuel Alito, an appointee of a Republican president, who received the unflinching support of Graham, Kyl and every other Republican senator. It would appear clear by reading Alito’s 2006 comments that the current Supreme Court justice believes that his ethnic, religious, and family background does have a role in how he decides cases, i.e. in “the development of the law.”

Perhaps Justice Alito needs a moment of  “self-reflection” in reassessing whether his Italian-American background should have a role in his judging.

Alieto said what Sotomayor has essentially stated over-and-over. A judge’s life experiences, Sotomayor has said, help a jurist to listen and understand the range of cases that come before her, and to apply some humanity along the mechanics and legalities of case law and precedent. At the end of the day, it is not feelings and humanity that determine a ruling, but law, precedent and case history that command a court’s final outcome, the judge has said repeatedly.

“We apply law to facts,” Sotomayor told Kyl. “We don’t apply feelings to facts.”

And so, you have a judge in Sotomayor who studies have shown has agreed with Republican-appointed judges over 95 percent of the time in all sorts of cases decided in tandem with her court colleagues. You have a judge with 17 years of experience as a federal judge, and who has received the American Bar Association’s highest rating in recommending her for the nation’s highest court.  You have a judge who has received the heartiest of endorsements from one of this nation’s largest law enforcement associations - the Fraternal Order of Police - who describe her as being “a model jurist, tough, and fair-minded.”

And yet, the best that dopey Lindsey Graham can do in his questioning of Sotomayor is ask, “Judge, do you have a temperament problem?”

What would one expect from Southern Republican senators? They accuse Sotomayor of being too focused on ethinicity when it is they who are hung up on race. Then they challenge a woman jurist on her supposed temperament problems when they would never do such a thing when questioning an Alieto or John Roberts.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd took a long view of the questioning of Graham, Kyl, et al, and called it the “white man’s last stand.” If it was such a thing, it was rather lame, for try as they might to goad Sotmayor into some sort of emotional outburst to prove their crazy Latina theory, it all fell flat.

This may be a time, as it turns out, for a moment of “self-reflection” after all, but not for the judge. Poor Lindsey. Maybe he’ll get a second chance, too, someday to show he can ask some decent questions of a Supreme Court nominee.

At times, when David Letterman’s jokes or comedy schemes fall flat, he will shrug and simply say, “That’s all I got.”

This description would apply to Republican senators Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham and their GOP colleagues in their thus far fruitless search to derail the nomination of  Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus far, the best Sessions & Co., can come up with is that the apppeals court where Sotomayor currently serves declined to overturn a reverse discrimination lawsuit filed by some Connecticut firefighters.

Sessions, the ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has lately trotted out Sotomayor’s time as a board member and legal counsel to a Puerto Rican-American civil rights and advocacy group. Such groups are quite alien and radical to the mind of an Alabama Republican like Sessions, who probably finds eating a burrito from Taco Bell to be an exotic experience.

Sessions and his GOP colleagues will have to do better than that - and fast since Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings start next week. While Sessions & Co., search for reasons to oppose Sotomayor, the American Bar Association this week gave the federal judge its highest rating and ranking in strongly recommending her confirmation to the high court. It is the same rating that the bar gave to John Roberts and Sam Alieto - the most recent appointees to the high court - and of which Sessions & Co., were avid in their support, (both white males and appointed by a Republican president).

Another development this week on the Sotomayor front is that the judge received the endorsement of  the American Hunters and Shooters Association. This is significant since it will help sway Democratic senators from the West to support Sotomayor. A senator like Jon Tester, a moderate Democrat from Montana, is apparently basing his whole vote on whether this Puerto Rican-American woman raised in Brooklyn is OK with Americans toting and owning guns.

“She’s solid on the Second Amendment,” Tester told Politco.

Thank goodness, bear and moose hunting in Montana is safe. Whatever turns your clock, I guess.

Beyond the all-important gun issue, a new study released Thursday states that Sotomayor was tougher on convicted criminals than her colleagues during her years as a federal district judge. Sotomayor began her career as a prosecutor in the office of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. With that background, U.S. District Judge Sotomayor sent more convicts to prison and handed out longer sentences than her colleagues.

This was the finding of a non-partisan institute at Syracuse University, which analyzed over 7,000 criminal prosecutions in Sotomayor’s district during her seven years as a federal district judge. So much for being soft on crime.

There’s more. Also this week comes a wealth of data on Sotomayor’s rulings over the last 10 years of her work as a federal appeals judge. An extensive analysis by a study center at the New York University law school found that Judge Sotomayor voted with her court’s majority 98 percent of the time on constitutional cases. In 46 civil rights cases, Judge Sotomayor was with the majority in all but two of the cases. So much for being an activist judge.

So, if Sotomayor is tough on criminals, right on guns, and Republican-appointed judges have nearly always agreed with her in civil rights cases, what’s left for Republicans like Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn as reasons to oppose her? Her education? Sotomayor has degrees from Yale and Harvard. Her judicial experience? Sotomayor comes to this nomination with more federal judicial experience than any high court nominee since the early 1900s.

If  Texas senators Hutchison and Cornyn vote against Sotomayor, Hispanics in this state would have right to ask: If not this nominee, then what Hispanic for the high court would you ever vote for, senators?