Yesterday’s quote of the day

Comedian Bill Maher, speaking on the MSNBC Hardball show on the “outrage” expressed by some Republican senators at some of Judge Sotomayor’s comments about her heritage:

The problem Chris is that for too long, Puerto Rican women have had their boot on the neck of white men in America.”

Meanwhile, as many other observers have noted – including Glenn Greenwald the other day on Salon,

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Sam Alito used his opening statement to emphasize how his experience as an Italian-American influences his judicial decision-making (video is here):

‘But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, ‘You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country’. . . .When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.’”

Got that? Conservative Alito gets to brag about his ethnic heritage and how it has influenced his work as a judge. Moderate Sotomayor is demonized for merely acknowledging her heritage.