All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

CBS News senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield shared his thoughts on day two of the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings on Tuesday's "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric";

Couric: Jeff, day two. Where do you think things stand for the judge right now?

Greenfield: I think the conservatives on the panel have made the case to their base and their supporters that this is someone who brings identity politics into the law where it doesn't belong. That she puts her gender, her ethnicity front and center. We've heard that in the speeches. We saw Lindsey Graham of South Carolina very pointedly and conversationally saying to her, "If I'd said such things about the superiority of a Caucasian made, I'd have had my head handed to me." So they laid out the reasons why conservatives would not be happy with a Sotomayor confirmation.

Couric: And be comfortable not voting for her, possibly?

Greenfield: Yes.

Couric: Having said that, as the aforementioned Sen. Graham said yesterday, unless she has a complete meltdown, she'll be confirmed. Do you still think that's the case?

Greenfield: I think so. I think key here is they were not able to find – except for the Ricci case – a smoking gun in her decisions. An appeals court in California once said "under God" had to be stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance. If she had written that, which she didn't, that would be a smoking gun. So is she going to get the kind of votes Justice Roberts did when half the democrats voted for him? Is it going to be more like Samuel Alito when 42 of the 46 democrats voted against him? I don't think we know yet. I think the hands of Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham lies whether or not all of republicans are going to be moving against her or not. We don't know where they stand yet.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the key Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, says that he could support a gay Supreme Court justice, The Hill reports.

“I’m not inclined to think that’s an automatic disqualification,” Session said of the prospect of a gay justice. Gay rights groups have called on President Obama to install an openly gay justice.

“I may disagree with some legal opinion on those issues, but I think fundamentally it will be up to the president to submit somebody who would unite the country and would be a clear statement of a mainstream judge who commits himself to the law,” he added.

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As you likely know by now, Supreme Court Justice David Souter reportedly plans to retire at the end of the court's term this June.

Our Chief Legal Analyst and Legal Editor Andrew Cohen weighs in within two columns on CBSNews.com today -- one that looks at Souter's record and the reasons he is leaving the bench, and another that floats the names of possible replacements.

Souter Will Leave A City He Never Liked

The soon-to-be-retired David Hackett Souter is proof that you can always take the boy out of the country but you can’t always take the country out of the boy. ...

Instead, like fellow Republican appointees Kennedy and O’Connor (who also have been pilloried and offended by the right), he straddled the Court’s middle rung of ideology. Liberals loved that because Justice Souter gave them victories they had no right to expect when he was appointed. Conservatives hated it because they couldn’t count on his vote.

Guessing Game: Who Will Replace Souter?

It’s been 15 years since a Democratic president got to appoint a justice. Back then, in 1994, President Bill Clinton selected a moderate liberal from the lower federal courts, Stephen Breyer, to replace the moderate conservative (and Republican appointee) Harry A Blackmun. Now, in the coming weeks, President Obama will have to decide who he wants to replace David H. Souter, another practical, left-moderate jurist, who evidently has plans to ride off in the New England sunset.

Fifteen years of frustrated Democratic nominees has caused quite a back-up of candidates. But the Obama Administration already has offered some serious clues about the sort of person they’d like to try to put onto the court. Six weeks ago, when asked about a potential Supreme Court nomination, a senior Administration official told reporters that the White House is looking for people with experience in law and in life, people with character and commitments to a community, people who can make hard decisions but still have empathy for the litigants before them.

If these job qualifications are accurate - if they aren’t just spin - they suggest strongly that the President will look beyond the lower federal courts for his first selection.

You can read more of Cohen's posts in Hotsheet here.

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The sky will not fall upon the pharmaceutical industry in the wake of the Supreme Court’s important preemption ruling this morning. In a 6-3 vote, the Justices declared that drug giant Wyeth could not hide behind the Food and Drug Administration to protect itself from a jury’s finding that its negligent labeling caused horrible injury to a Vermont woman named Diana Levine.

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