Punks jump up to get beat down

Rosen having accomplished his mission of providing the anti-Sotomayor script to the Right attempts to twist the knife with yet another attack disgused as a clarification here.

Of course, Judge Sotomayor should be confirmed to the Supreme Court. She obviously wasn't my first choice, for reasons I reported three weeks ago, having mostly to do with concerns about her temperament reported to me by former clerks and New York prosecutors.

Tempermental concerns fueled by annoymous gossip and sexist double-standards. There is not a single on the record source in his three peices on the subject. Thankfully, Greenwald jumps him again here

If they had even a small amount of intellectual integrity, TNR Editors would be deeply ashamed of the central role they played in enabling this baseless, plainly false attack on Sotomayor as an intellectually deficient mediocrity. But for The New Republic, there is no greater source of pride than being approvingly cited by the Right with the "Even The New Republic . . . . " head-pat. That's their role in life, even if accomplished with patently reckless gossip masquerading as "journalism." That's one aspect of Obama's decision that is so commendable -- discarding the sleazy tactics from our corrupted establishment Beltway sources.

After the Rosen peice, the cookie-cutter comments by Chris Mattews, and the Affirmative Action jabs our President is essentially staring down the opposition down and begging them for a fight. and then this which I hope develops more fully. There should be consequences for this type of slander:

Relatedly, Brian Williams, on his blog, has a somewhat cryptic post that cites Rosen's original hit piece on Sotomayor along with my response to Rosen, and implies that he's revealing some new information about that episode based on his "reporting," though it's unclear what exactly is being revealed. Williams says that Rosen's piece "got the attention of White House staffers" but "now the original piece is under great scrutiny, as is the author's possible motives." If anyone knows what any of that means, please let me know. What I think Williams' note does reflect, as I speculated at the time, is that Rosen's gossipy smear attack will likely do far more damage to his own reputation than to Sotomayor's -- and justifiably so.