CSPAN Sotomayor SC Hearings Live!

We’ve Now Been Interrupted | 10:45 a.m. A man who appears to be anti-abortion shouted loudly while Senator Dianne Feinstein was speaking: “Senator, What about the unborn?” He was escorted out the room, and Chairman Leahy is now warning everyone not to interrupt the proceedings. Senator Sessions concurs.

‘Politics Has No Place in the Courtroom’ | 10:17 a.m. Senator Sessions spares no words. Shortly into his speech, he declares that this confirmation hearing and nomination by President Obama marks a fork in the road. He said he was worried by President Obama’s decision to include empathy as a qualification for the Supreme Court.

“Like the American people I have watched this process for a number of years,” he said, “and I fear this empathy standards is another step down the road to a liberal activist, results-oriented and relativistic world where – laws lose their fixed meaning, unelected judges set policy; Americans are seen as members of separate groups rather than simply Americans, and where the constitutional limits on government power are ignored when politicians want to buy out private companies. ….

“… Call it empathy, call it prejudice, but whatever it is, it is not law. In truth, it is more akin to politics. And politics has no place in the courtroom.”