Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) “pressed for more information Thursday about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s ties to a Puerto Rican civil rights group he said took extreme positions on race, as the White House argued that the material was irrelevant to the judge’s nomination,” the AP reports.
White House Counsel Greg Craig told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., in a letter that board meeting minutes and other papers detailing the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund’s activities while Sotomayor was an outside adviser shouldn’t impact her nomination because she had no role in writing or approving them. But Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate committee that will consider her nomination, said the papers could shed light on Sotomayor’s judicial approach, particularly her view of racial preferences in hiring.
"During her time there, the organization took extreme positions on legal issues ranging from the death penalty to abortion to racial quotas," Sessions said in a statement. He said it was "absurd" for the White House to call the documents irrelevant.
The document fight “isn’t likely to damage Sotomayor’s chances of confirmation, since Democrats have more than enough votes in favor of President Barack Obama’s first high court nominee, and Republicans have shown little appetite for trying to block her.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will begin confirmation hearings July 13, shrugged off the GOP concerns being raised about Sotomayor, saying some in the GOP were going to oppose any Obama pick — "even if the president had nominated Moses."
Republicans "were going to object no matter who it was. And several of them have told me that privately," Leahy told The Associated Press in an interview at his Vermont farmhouse.
Most Republicans acknowledge that Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed, barring some major mishap during her confirmation hearings. But they were quite frustrated at Democratic leaders for setting an early July date which they said was a “unilateral” decision.
They are also being pressured from outside conservative groups to delay any final vote until after the August recess so there is ample time to thoroughly review past records and highlight any key issues that may emerge, regardless of their impact on the outcome. Democrats obviously resist any delays.
The White House is strongly resisting Republicans’ suggestions that the hearings should be delayed to give them more time to review the group’s documents so they can draw conclusions about Sotomayor.
The best evidence "of how she’d be as a judge are the 17 years of legal opinions that she has written and that she herself has worked on — not a box or boxes of documents that she didn’t write, review or approve," said Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman. "I think there has been plenty of time to review the record."
