What if they gave a culture war and no one came?
The surest sign the White House isn’t worried at all about whether Sonia Sotomayor will win confirmation to the Supreme Court came on Thursday afternoon, a few hours after Sotomayor had finished enduring three days of mind-numbingly repetitive questions from the 19 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. All week, the major Republican line of attack against her has been a simple one: She’s racially biased, and she won’t judge fairly and impartially. To prove that, the GOP has relied on a handful of speeches and her ruling in one controversial case out of New Haven, Conn., which found the city had acted properly by throwing out the results of a promotion exam for firefighters over concern that minority candidates were disproportionately likely to fail it; the Supreme Court overturned Sotomayor’s ruling earlier this summer. And to make sure the point was driven home without any danger of subtlety, Republicans arranged for two of the firefighters to testify, calling them as witnesses i
