Saturday, July 18, 2009
In case you’re wondering who yapped the most during Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination hearing, I have the breakdown. Of course, you might not give a hoot and may be wondering what wonk at POLITICO had the energy to count every word that escaped from each blabbermouth senator. But the findings may surprise you.
The 19 U.S. Senators of the Judiciary Committee basked in their camera time and hearing themselves talk and talk and talk. Using the transcripts provided by the Los Angeles Times’ website, POLITICO crunched the numbers and the winners are:
1.) Pat Leahy, Chairman, D-VT (9,338 words)
2.) Jon Kyl, R-AZ (8,071 words)
3.) Miss Lindsey Graham, R-SC (7,732 words)
4.) Jeff “Beauregard” Sessions, R-AL (6,626 words)
5.) Tom Coburn, R-OK (6,135 words)
6.) Ben Cardin, D-MD (5,127 words)
7.) John “my parents were proud slave owners” Cornyn, R-TX (5,045 words)
8.) Amy Klobuchar, D-MN (5,043 words)
9.) Russ Feingold, D-WI (4,716 words)
10.) Arlen Specter, D-PA (4,586 words)
11.) Chuck Grassley, R-IA (4,166 words)
12.) Orrin Hatch, R-UT (3,583 words)
13.) Dianne Feinstein, D-CA (3,503 words)
14.) Dick Durbin, D-IL (3,485 words)
15.) Al Franken, D-MN (3,413 words)
16.) Chuck Schumer, D-NY (3,364 words)
17.) Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI (3,198 words)
18.) Herbert Kohl, D-WI (2,759 words)
19.) Ted Kaufman, D-DE (2,072 words)
I understand Sen. Patrick Leahy clocking in the most words yapped because he is, after all the Chairman and had to facilitate the hearings and not simply pontificate. But, I was genuinely surprised to see Miss Lindsey Graham finish in a disappointing 3rd place. Her tedious loquacity and pointless personal attacks of Sotomayor, seemed to make her a shoo-in for first place.
14 Comments
+ at 8:25 am
Here in Arizona we are used to Kyle’s hot air. Its no surprise to us that he is at the top of the list. Our Hispanic population is pretty well organized and getting a lot more savvy about the workings of government. The attacks on Sotomayor, by Kyle, won’t digest too well with them.
+ at 8:32 am
As an American and as someone who makes an effort to stay informed, I fully admit I found the Judiciary hearings lacking and rather boring.
The Democrats gushed, as was to be expected and the Republicans attacked, and made fools of themselves. I don’t think their performance would stand up as a lesson in civics.
We need to elect better representatives. Smarter men and women.
+ at 8:40 am
7,732 words from Miss Lindsey and not one had any merit. Not one.
What do the voters of South Carolina see in this man? For that matter, how do they square Mark Sanford?
+ at 11:35 am
Kyl had to let a lot of that fart air out of his huge head.
someone should count pat buchanan’s racist comments – i bet they would tally larger than all the senators words combined
as much as an ass miss lindsey is, so is coburn
+ at 12:10 pm
Sonia Sotomayor was the model of self-control throughout the hearings. I guess she really, really wants the job because I think if it had been me. Miss Lindsey would’ve left the proceedings minus a few of her front teeth.
+ at 1:00 pm
You try getting to 8,000 words when you’ve got the vapors.
+ at 1:03 pm
I, too, thought Lindsey Graham spoke the most. Maybe that was because listening to him was so excruciatingly painful.
Judge Sotomayor proved to be a person of class. But both Sessions and Graham proved to be nothing less than an embarrassment to the nation. To beat up on a woman and an hispanic nominee for four days not on her record but from one speech made years ago was sickening. This hearing wasn’t about Sotomayor. It was about letting President Obama know how hard the Republican right-wing is going to be against any of his nominees.
+ at 2:32 pm
I get the view that some of the Republicans are still wanting to get even for Robert Bork and Harriet Miers. I see Ms. Sotomayor and see a judge with many years more experience than John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But she is Puerto Rican, a Latina, and embraces her ethnicity. This threatens many of the white conservative male senators on the committee.
+ at 11:04 pm
Still wouldn’t pay them by the word. Feingold, Feinstein, and Franken were the best. The remaining 16 senators were just so much hot air.
+ at 11:20 pm
Miss Lindsey may have produced the most words, but probably produced the least content. I think Kyl is a dildo… I hope he is committing political suicide here. Same goes for John Cornin.
I was relieved to see that my Senators from Oregon weren’t on the list of most verbose.
+ at 6:44 am
Thanks for posting this. For me, Kyl, Graham and Cornyn were the biggest and most vicious windbags in the proceedings. For these three wingtards, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor seemed to be a personal affront. They enjoyed slapping her around and trying to bloody her up. Of course, it only made them appear to be bullies and I don’t think it played well with the Hispanic population in their home states.
+ at 11:18 am
And the thing is, if Miss Lindsey (I love that name!) played a tape back of her performance, she would say without a shred of irony, “I did my duty as a United States senator.”
She’s totally delusional.
+ at 4:42 pm
Frank Rich says this about Graham today in the NYTimes and nails the hypocritical gasbag:
“Among Sotomayor’s questioners, both Coburn and Lindsey Graham are class of ’94. They — along with Jeff Sessions, a former Alabama attorney general best known for his unsuccessful prosecutions of civil rights activists — set the Republicans’ tone last week. In one of his many cringe-inducing moments, Graham suggested to Sotomayor that she had “a temperament problem” and advised that “maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection.” That’s the crux of the ’94 spirit, even more than its constant, whiny refrain of white victimization: Hold others to a standard that you would not think of enforcing on yourself or your peers. Self-reflection may be mandatory for Sotomayor, but it certainly isn’t for Graham.
In his ’94 Congressional campaign in South Carolina, Graham made a big deal of promising to enact term limits. At the Clinton impeachment, he served as a manager of the prosecution. That was then, and this is now. Graham hasn’t even term-limited himself — an action he could have taken at any time unilaterally — and his pronouncements on marital morality (unencumbered by any marital attachments of his own) are a study in relativism. On “Meet the Press,” he granted absolution to his ’94 classmate Sanford, now his state’s governor, for abusing his office with his taxpayer-financed extramarital “trade mission” to Argentina. “I think the people of South Carolina will give him a second chance,” he said, as long as “Jenny and Mark can get back together.” Maybe Graham judges the Sanfords by a more empathetic standard than the Clintons because the Republican lieutenant governor who would replace Sanford is already fending off rumors that he’s gay.
Graham has also given a pass to his ’94 classmate Ensign, now a Nevada senator. Ensign not only committed adultery with an employee but sat by as his wealthy parents gave the mistress and her cuckolded husband nearly $100,000 to ease their pain. Ensign’s lawyer deflected questions that this beneficence might be hush money by claiming it was part of the senior Ensigns’ “pattern of generosity.”
When asked about these unsavory matters, Graham said that an ethics investigation of Ensign “isn’t high” among his priorities. This moral abdication still puts him on a higher plane than Coburn, who has been a murky broker in Ensign’s sexcapades. The husband of Ensign’s mistress told The Las Vegas Sun that Coburn urged Ensign to give him and his wife more than $1 million to pay off their mortgage and “move them to a new life.” Too bad no one thought of that one for the “Contract With America.”
+ at 7:19 pm
I’m just glad the whole thing is over.