Judge Sonia Sotomayor was approved as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The final Senate vote tally was 68 votes for her nomination, 31 votes against. 

The one Senator not voting was Sen. Kennedy, who expressed support for her nomination but was not present today in DC for the vote due to his illness.

In what may be a perfect distillation of Senate behavior, rules constrictions and impotence, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid finished his support speech a couple of minutes early, around 2:58 pm ET.   But the Senate couldn’t begin the vote on the Sotomayor nomination until exactly 3 pm ET because there was no one from the GOP leadership who would agree with Reid  to a time change for the vote.

In the end, the NRA push wasn’t nearly enough to shove GOP opposition. Frankly, I think having to resort to them as a last-ditch effort made McConnell look awfully weak. And I have to wonder if there will be a leadership challenge in the GOP Senate caucus in the next election cycle if this weakness continues.

The Senate finally got to some debate on the Sotomayor SCOTUS nomination late yesterday, after an interminable wrangle on the agriculture bill. The Senate is expected to gavel back into session at 9:30 am ET this morning.

After morning business concludes, the SCOTUS debate should resume with a vote likely sometime later today or early tomorrow.

C-Span has been keeping a handy, alphabetized tally of Senator’s public statements on voting intentions which shows, as of this morning, 57 votes for confirmation and 15 votes still pending some public statement.

CQ has an article this morning on the glories of bi-partisanship according to Lindsey Graham, and the loss of those halcyon days of yore with the increasingly partisan judicial battles now and to come. The article makes it sound as though we are governed by immature 7-year-olds who don’t care about the good of the country, only positioning for the next election cycle and settling grudges:

The Sotomayor nomination is the latest in the increasingly partisan battle over judicial nominations, including lower-court nominations. And the way Republicans have largely united against Sotomayor signals trouble for President Obama’s future Supreme Court nominations should Democrats lose seats in the midterm elections….

The opposition from Hatch and another senior Judiciary Committee Republican, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, is particularly notable. Neither Hatch nor Grassley has ever voted against a Supreme Court nominee before. They both supported Clinton’s two nominees, Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer .

Hatch, like other members of his party, indicated that he is still bitter about the way Democrats treated GOP nominees to the lower federal courts when they were in the minority.

Of course, Hatch was responsible for bottling up the Clinton judicial appointments during a stretch of GOP Senate control, so his peevish tantrum on that score always makes me laugh.

What isn’t a laughing matter? The Beltway press is pushing the GOP framing of "this signals trouble" for future judicial nominations. How about, instead, a "grow up, you people are Senators, so stop gaming the rule of law for your electoral needs?"

But that would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it?

Like I said yesterday, instead of signaling a problem, this ought to be a freeing moment for Democrats — since the petty political peevishness will outweigh the decent in far too many cases, why bother trying to make them happy? If it isn’t going to happen, why not select judges passionate about the rule of law and let the petty crowd pout in the corner.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Sotomayor SCOTUS nomination this morning, in a vote of  13 to 6.

This from Sen. Leahy’s speech covers the Democratic perspective for the most part:

In her 17 years on the bench there is not one example, let alone a pattern, of her ruling based on bias or prejudice or sympathy. She has been true to her oath and faithfully and impartially performed her duties as set forth by the Constitution. As a prosecutor and as a judge, she has administered justice without favoring one group of persons over any other. She testified directly to this point, saying, "I have now served as an appellate judge for over a decade, deciding a wide range of constitutional, statutory and other legal questions. Throughout my 17 years on the bench, I have witnessed the human consequences of my decisions. Those decisions have not been made to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interests of impartial justice."

And this sums up the GOP perspective:

Last week, the NRA said it would consider senators’ votes on Sotomayor when it grades political candidates for its voter guides. That move, Democratic aides said, was likely to deter some Republican senators who were considered possible Sotomayor votes.

Coverage of the various vote speeches from committee senators can be found here.

The nomination now heads to the full Senate for debate and a vote. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee is voting on the Sotomayor nomination this morning. It’s a full committee vote which will then send the nomination out to the Senate as a whole for a floor vote. Senators are giving a little colloquy on the reasons for their vote along with their actual vote.

Last January, Sens. Dorgan and Casey and the Democratic Policy Committee pushed the Department of Defense to investigate multiple issues with electrocution deaths in Iraq. The IG delivered its report yesterday. As Sen. Byron Dorgan says: U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said Monday a new Defense Department Inspector General investigation confirms findings of a hearing he chaired a year ago…

According to the official WH schedule, President Obama is having Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Max Baucus over to the WH for a meeting this morning. You think health care might come up? My favorite touch on this is that Reid and Baucus will be meeting in the Oval Office. Talk about your home court advantage.

11:36 am ET: LEAHY gavelling back into session after the break. Yields to Coburn. COBURN SECOND ROUND: Read your speech on foreign law and want to ask you the same question I asked Alito and Roberts. Asks her to agree not to use foreign law. Sotomayor says that she will use American law, except in situation where American law directs courts to look at foreign law.

It sucks when reality is caught on tape, doesn’t it?