The GOP's seven stages of Soto-grief

Funny stuff from the New York Daily News:

THE UPWARD TURN

Conservative critics predicted Sonia Sotomayor would face a grilling over a one-paragraph ruling she and two other judges on the Second Circuit issued last year.

I doubt much will come of that, as the United States Supreme Court will have decided that case's appeal by the time Judge Sotomayor sits down with the GOP "grillers" on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She should have little or no problem explaining why she and her colleagues affirmed the decision of the district court below based on controlling precedent within the Second Circuit (and above).

If she's extra good at explaining, she may even educate John Cornyn and Tom Coburn that the Circuit Courts of Appeal aren't in the business of rewriting or overturning decisions of the Supreme Court, which is what the Supreme Court itself is likely to have done by then.

In the meantime, we can all be entertained by the comic spectacle of Faux News "expert" Charles Krauthammer* at once decrying the application of judicial empathy generally while publicly pleading for judicial empathy on behalf of the Ricci v. DeStefano plaintiffs.

And, naturally, Dr. Krauthammer's focusing unwaveringly on the result of the case rather than on the process of reasoning employed in reaching it, like all good judicial conservatives invariably do.

Next up: Stage 8 — Original intent and the right to bear nunchaku.

* See Axis IV Obama Derangement Syndrome.