Sorry I Was Away

What happened on the Internets while I was gone?

By the way, this is pathetic:

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a powerful member of the Democratic leadership, said Friday the Senate should not confirm another U.S. Supreme Court nominee under President Bush “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

Schumer’s assertion comes as Democrats and liberal advocacy groups are increasingly complaining that the Supreme Court with Bush’s nominees – Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito – has moved quicker than expected to overturn legal precedents.

Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents, and “too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts and the erudition of Alito,” Schumer said.

“There is no doubt that we were hoodwinked,” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Hoodwinked? HOODWINKED? The President said he wanted to nominate Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. He went on to nominate Justices PRECISELY in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. There wasn't a lot of razzle-dazzle there. You hoodwinked yourselves by doing a piss-poor job of advise and consent.

Schumer actually voted against both Roberts and Alito, but he did little or nothing to marshal support for a filibuster. Which, as we now see, Republicans have NO PROBLEM doing. So you have nobody to blame but yourself.

It's nice to say this now, but it doesn't mean a whole lot:

“Alito shouldn’t have been confirmed,” Schumer said. “I should have done a better job. My colleagues said we didn’t have the votes, but I think we should have twisted more arms and done more.” [...]

Schumer said there were four lessons to be learned from Alito and Roberts: Confirmation hearings are meaningless, a nominee’s record should be weighed more heavily than rhetoric, “ideology matters” and “take the president at his word.”

“When a president says he wants to nominate justices in the mold of [Antonin] Scalia and [Clarence] Thomas,” Schumer said, “believe him.”

Yeah, no crap. You JUST figured this out?