Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) sounded a new GOP alarm Wednesday about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, arguing that if installed she could put Second Amendment rights at risk.
The nominee’s track record on the issue “is fairly scant, but we do know that Judge Sotomayor has twice said that the Second Amendment does not give you and me a fundamental right,” Sessions warned.
Sessions’ comments on the Senate floor were part of a nearly all-day back-and-forth between critics and supporters of Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s first nominee to the nation’s highest court. Republicans earlier this week decided to take on a more aggressive strategy against Sotomayor’s nomination.
Sessions criticized Sotomayor’s brief legal opinions, which he said “suggest a troubling tendency to avoid or casually dismiss difficult constitutional issues of exceptional importance.”
Sotomayor, a federal appeals court judge, has been meeting with Senators for several weeks in advance of her confirmation hearings, set to begin on July 13.
Republicans have taken issue with her record and raised concerns about her approach to the judiciary. Also, GOP Senators charge that Democrats aren’t giving them enough time to fully vet the nomination, and they want to slow down the process.
Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations for the IRS, arrives for a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the investigation of the IRS' targeting of political groups. Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not testify and caused a protest from some committee members when she offered an opening statement and engaged in dialogue with members before invoking the right.
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