This morning, on the TODAY Show, NBC's David Gregory said "President Obama did open up a pretty big area of scrutiny, though, when it comes to identity politics and personal experience, talking about the need for empathy, stressing the importance of her own personal story." Gregory authoritatively said there will be questions about whether her personal story is brought into her decision-making. This little episode showed why Gregory is flailing as the host of "Meet the Press." Clearly, he didn't do enough research to know that the last Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito, cited his personal story as a factor when making decisions -- during Alito's Senate confirmation hearings. How would David Gregory be expected to know that?
Fortunately, Glenn Greenwald does his research. With an assist from one of his readers, Glenn produced the transcript of Alito's hearing. As Glenn documented, a Senate Republican, Tom Coburn, told Alito he wanted "to see a little bit of your heart." Alito showed what was in his heart and in his experience -- and how it affected his decision-making:
Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.For Republicans, the personal story mattered and was apparently an asset. But, NBC's David Gregory said it will be a problem for Sotomayor. Hmmm. Jed got the video:
And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.
But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."
When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.
And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.
