According to major news sources, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, has announced the date for Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for July 13.
Leahy said in a statement,”In selecting this date I am trying to be fair to all concerned. I want to be fair to the nominee and allow her the earliest possible opportunity to respond to the attacks made about her character.”
He also said, “This is a schedule that tracks the process the Senate followed by bipartisan agreement in considering President Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court in 2005.”
“It is not fair for her critics to be calling her racist without allowing her the opportunity to respond,” he continued in an apparent reference to widely covered — and later retracted — remarks by former House speaker Newt Gingrich calling Sotomayor a racist on Twitter. “I do not want to see this historic nomination of Sonia Sotomayor treated unfairly or less fairly than the Senate treated the nomination of John Roberts.”
A quick hearing is something Republicans did not want. Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee had said he did not want this to be rushed.
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