It’s people like this, from the south, that make the rest of the country think the south, is like people like this.

The top-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee has greeted Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with skepticism.

Sen. Jeff Sessions on Monday cited Sotomayor’s much-publicized remarks about the notion that a “wise Latina” woman might be better suited than a white male without the same life experiences.

At the same time, the Alabama senator criticized President Barack Obama’s statement that he preferred someone for the high court who has shown empathy with people. He said that “empathy for one party is always prejudice for the other.”

“I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for” anyone who will not render justice impartially, he said.

“Call it empathy, call it prejudice or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it’s not law,” he said. “In truth, it’s more akin to politics and politics has no place in the courtroom.”

Sessions is the committee’s ranking Republican, ever since Arlen Specter switched his affiliation to Democrat.

Sessions has an interesting personal connection to this process.

He came before this committee 22 years ago, when he was nominated by President Reagan to be a U.S. district judge. The committee killed the nomination on a 9-9 vote, in part because some critics of Sessions testified that he had demonstrated “gross insensitivity” on racial issues. A U.S. attorney had testified that he had heard Sessions claim that he had once admired the Ku Klux Klan.

Only in America could a guy who was patently unqualified to hold the job Sotomayor is holding because of his views on race, be sitting in judgment and trying to block a promotion because of someone’s views on race.

It’s… amazing, really.  And pathetic, actually.

It took years for Sotomayor to work her way to the same place where Sessions failed his way up to get in the way.  I know Sotomayor can’t say what she’s truly thinking – that would be the “meltdown” so many right wingers are praying for.  But… if I were able to read minds, I think it would go something like…

SOTOMAYER:  Ah, Senator Sessions.  years ago you tried to pin me into a glass ceiling, and yet, here were are again.

In those years, I worked hard to get to where I am today.  In that time, you got to be the highest ranking Republican on the judicial committee because you’ve been here the longest.  I lived and worked, you lived and didn’t die.  And yet somehow, you get to sit in judgment of me.

For the last six weeks, you’ve been entertaining your friends back in Alabama talking about how my “Empathy” is a bad thing, although when you were empathic towards your race – and did everything you could to suppress minority votes – these are the things that got you elected.   And kept you elected.

I doubt you can count to two, but that’s a double-standard.

I was honest about how my upbringing and my heritage affect my decisions, while you quietly pretend to be impartial, but we both know you’re the same type of person that chase minority children away from pools because it might “change the complexion.”

You miss separate bathrooms, don’t you?

Of course – I can’t say this outloud, because nobody is bothering to look between the lines of your rhetoric and find the 1950s, small-town, small-minded, mint-julip sitting asshat who’s views should have been retired years ago.

Nice suit, by the way.  You almost look human.

So here we sit.

I know I scare you.  Not because of my views – anybody our current president nominated  would have been someone who you would disagree with.  I scare you because of what I represent:  An Hispanic justice nominated by an African American president that cannot be derailed by you and your fellow southern white people because the rest of the country has moved past you.

It must be tough, to be this irrelevant.  Is it empathy to pity you?  I wonder.

I am smarter than you.   I have more real world experience than you.  And despite that, Jeff Sessions from Alabama, I figure you’d be more comfortable with me fluffing your pillows or changing your sheets than doing my job.

The only thing I will change, will be any law you write that’s deemed unconstitutional.  And judging by your past, that will be often.

So understand this:  I will be allowed to do my job, and reach my goals, because of my qualifications, and you will not be able to stop me, despite the power bequeathed you because of your heritage and your longevity.

Again, I don’t want to put words in the lady’s mouth.  I’m just guessing.

But in a way, it’s probably a good thing that Jeff Sessions is the Republican Face of the opposition to this nomination.  Because it shines a light on how thin their reasoning in, how desperate they are to play to their ever shrinking base, how scared they are of the now and how much they wish it wasn’t.

The qualified, wise Latina will get her robe.  The unqualified white Senator will get his say.

And in the end, I think more people will walk away understanding the subtext.

I think it’s a win.