She's liberal. She supports abortion rights. Against the death penalty. And may want to remove "God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Look out, say Republicans in their "talking points" about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

The GOP inadvertantly sent reporters a list of talking points — many of which showed up Tuesday in the statements of top Republican lawmakers. The list:

"President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is an important decision that will have an impact on the United States long after his administration.

Republicans are committed to a fair confirmation process and will reserve judgment until more is known about Judge Sotomayor's legal views, judicial record and qualifications.

Until we have a full view of the facts and comprehensive understanding of Judge Sotomayor's record, Republicans will avoid partisanship and knee-jerk judgments — which is in stark contrast to how the Democrats responded to the Judge Roberts and Alito nominations.

To be clear, Republicans do not view this nomination without concern. Judge Sotomayor has received praise and high ratings from liberal special interest groups. Judge Sotomayor has also said that policy is made on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Republicans believe that the confirmation process is the most responsible way to learn more about her views on a number of important issues.

The confirmation process will help Republicans, and all Americans, understand more about judge Sotomayor's thoughts on the importance of the Supreme Court's fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law.

Republicans are the minority party, but our belief that judges should interpret rather than make law is shared by a majority of Americans.

Republicans look forward to learning more about Judge Sotomayor's legal views and to determining whether her views reflect the values of mainstream America.

Justice Souter's retirement could move the Court to the left and provide a critical fifth vote for:

Further eroding the rights of the unborn and property owners;

Imposing a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage;

Stripping "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance and completely secularizing the public square;

Abolishing the death penalty;

Judicial micromanagement of the government's war powers."

Obama's selection of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is filled with land mines for Republicans.

That at least is what political writer Beth Reinhard of The Miami Herald is suggesting in her most recent blog post.

Florida, of course, remains a key state. Republicans lost ground last year to the Democrats among Hispanics. Now the question is will opposition to Sotomayor, who's Puerto Rican, hurt Republicans further among the growing Puerto Rican population of Central Florida?

Is the White House cutting out the middleman, namely the news media? It might be taking another step in that direction.

The White House produced its own 2-minute video report when President Obama met recently with the NCAA champion women’s basketball team from the University of Connecticut.

The TV pool covering the events for the networks complained in a pool report that it wasn’t allowed to follow Obama and the team to the White House basketball court.

This was a feature, not hard news. But when Obama did a do-over swearing in last January, because Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed the oath at the public inauguration, the White House didn’t allow news photographers in, instead sending out official White House photos only of the historic moment.

There’s bad news for the Republican Party in a new poll released today – but not necessarily good news for the Democratic Party either.

“Both political parties have lost adherents since the election, and Republican affiliation is at its lowest level in at least a quarter century,” says the exhaustive new survey of American political values from the Pew Research Center.

For Republicans, the findings were particularly cutting, confirming other public polls recently showing a drop across the demographic tables in the ranks of Americans who call themselves Republican.

“On nearly every dimension, the Republican Party is at low ebb – from image, to morale, to demographic vitality. “

The survey found that the Republican Party thus is smaller and older. The average age of a Republican rose from 45.5 at the start of the Bush era to 48.3. “On average, Democrats are now younger than Republicans for the first time in at least two decades.”

But as some voters have pulled away from calling themselves Republican, they have turned independent, not Democratic. The ranks of independents are at the highest level in 70 years, Pew said.
And they’ve taken their conservative values with them.

“There has been no movement away from conservatism, nor a shift toward liberalism, among the public at large,” Pew concluded.

.In fact, the survey found fewer Americans supporting a government safety net for the poor if it means more debt than the survey found two years ago.

“More broadly, the public remains conflicted about government’s role and views of the private sector,” Pew reported. “Fully 86% say government needs to do more to make health care affordable and accessible. But nearly half (46%) say they are concerned about “the government becoming too involved in health care.”

Still, Republicans can’t assume that means they’ll win back the independents. “Independents continue to more closely parallel the views of Democrats rather than Republicans on the most divisive core beliefs on social values, religion and national security,” the Pew analysis said.

The 2009 American Political Values survey was conducted nationwide among 3,013 adults between March 31 and April 21, on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish.
For the full report, http://people-press.org/report/517/political-values-and-core-attitudes
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Ask most senators what they want in a new Supreme Court justice and the answers are similar: Fair, judicial temperament, etc.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, added a new criteria Thursday: A deliberate process.

"Really, the only thing he (President Barack Obama) can do to guarantee a big fight is try to jam the nominee," said Cornyn, speaking at a breakfast with reporters.

Cornyn noted that President George W. Bush nominated Chief Justice John Roberts in July 2005, and he was confirmed in late September, in time for the court session that began in October. Roberts had first been nominated as an associate justice, but then chosen for chief justice after incumbent William Rehnquist died.

Obama has offered no timetable, but if he offers a name in the next few weeks, Senate leaders would probably hold hearings in July and vote either before their August recess, which begins August 7, or when they return Sept. 8.

Cornyn, a Senate Judiciary Committee member, has spoken to Obama about the nomination, and expressed his concern about rushing it. "My sense is if we take this at a reasonable pace," Cornyn said, "it'll go pretty smoothly."

Five years after he was arrested, Ahmed Ghailani, thought to be one of the organizers of the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, will be headed to trial, reports the Associated Press.

That's something the widow of one of the victims of the bombings has been seeking since last year. Susan Hirsch first made the call in an interview with McClatchy's Carol Rosenberg, noting that Ghailani had been indicted in New York 10 years ago.

The decision to send Ghailani from Guantanamo, where he's been held since 2006, makes him the first Guantanamo detainee to face civilian charges.

The war of words between the Democratic House leadership and the CIA escalated Tuesday with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer giving his unequivocal support to embattled House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said the spy agency misled her on torture tactics used on terrorism suspects.

"There's been a lot of debate about the speaker and the CIA over the past week," Hoyer told reporters Tuesday. "I'm going to be very clear ... I believe the speaker. I believe the speaker when says that she was not specifically briefed on types of ... interrogation techniques that were being employed."

Hoyer called Republican outrage over the Pelosi-CIA briefing controversy a diversionary tactic to "distract the public from focusing what was done, what the justification for doing it was, and for President Bush's comments that we don't torture, we're not using torture ..."

CIA Director Leon Panetta has disputed Pelosi's claim last week. In a message to agency employees, Panetta wrote: "It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress ... Our contemporaneaous records from September 2002 indicate CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of (terrorism suspect) Abu Zubaida, describing the 'enhanced techniques that had been employed.'"

President Barack Obama will travel to Russia, Italy and Ghana this July, the White House announced Saturday.

From the White House release:

The President is scheduled to travel to Moscow, Russia, July 6 to 8 at the invitation of President Medvedev. The summit meeting will provide an opportunity for the United States and the Russian Federation to deepen engagement on reducing nuclear weapons, cooperating on non-proliferation, exploring ways to cooperate on missile defense, addressing mutual threats and security challenges, and expanding the ties between American and Russian society and business.

The President will then attend the G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, from July 8 to 10. The Summit and related meetings with world leaders from emerging and African economies will provide an opportunity for the United States to engage with its partners on a broad range of issues. The President will also chair a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate while at L’Aquila.

The President and Mrs. Obama will visit Accra, Ghana, from July 10 to 11. While in Ghana, the President will discuss a range of bilateral and regional issues with Ghanaian President Mills. The President and Mrs. Obama look forward to strengthening the U.S. relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and to highlighting the critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development.

President Obama on Saturday named Republican Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as the U.S. ambassador to China.

Huntsman has a long resume, including stints as U.S. Ambassador to Singapore, Deputy U.S. Trade Ambassador, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Trade Development Bureau and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for East Asia and the Pacific.

He has a bachelor’s degree in international politics from the University of Pennsylvania.

On a personal note, the fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese and his wife have seven children, including a daughter adopted from China.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican, would not rule out supporting an abortion rights backer for the U.S. Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice David Souter.

“Could I support a pro-abortion nominee? The answer is yes," the Alabama senator said in an interview taped Friday for C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program, which will air Sunday. Sessions was interviewed by reporters from McClatchy and the National Law Journal.

"I don’t expect nominees to come to the bench who do not have views on issues, and I don’t expect them to not have been engaged in the great issues of the day," Sessions, whose views are regarded as conservative, explained. "But when they put on that robe, and two people come before them, and they’re a pro-life and pro-choice ... party, that judge should give them a fair shake. They shouldn’t allow their personal view on abortion to shape how they define the law."

Nominees are almost never filibustered, and Sessions said he does not favor one.

But he recalled how Democrats in recent years have said filibusters were justified in extraordinary circumstances.

"Maybe that’s the new standard. It’s not in concrete, but that may be the standard that would be used in the future," Sessions said.