From Public Citizen:

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act, sponsored by fair trade champions Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), was first introduced last year and eventually gained 80 House and Senate cosponsors. This landmark legislation sets forth in concrete, detailed terms a progressive vision for good trade agreements in the future and criteria to renegotiate existing failed pacts like NAFTA and the WTO.

Watch Global Trade Watch’s Director Lori Wallach discuss our strategy for building a new trade and globalization agenda in 2009.

The form to fill out is located here on their site.

Irony Alert: They faced off against each other in Gore v Bush. Now, they are teaming up to fight the hatred and the Prop 8 freaks. From the MercuryNews:

Two of the nation's top litigators who opposed each other in the Bush v. Gore election challenge in 2000 have joined forces to seek federal court intervention in California's gay marriage controversy.

Theodore B. Olson and David Boies have filed a U.S. District Court lawsuit on behalf of two gay men and two gay women, arguing that the California constitutional amendment eliminating the right of gay couples to marry violates the U.S. constitutional guarantee of equal protection and due process.

Olson said today that he hopes the case will wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction against California's Proposition 8 until the case is resolved.

It has to go all the way to SCOTUS. The haters and homophobes can't win this..

They show that she swings both ways, as in right and left of the center. Which means no one can really call her a liberal or conservative.

Justice David Souter was supposed to be right of the center, which is why Bush41 nominated him. He was as far from that description as you can get.

Same goes for Sandra Day O'Connor. She was moderate on some issues, left on others. Very seldom was she right of center.

The NY Law Journal and Law.com have articles up about her cases. Her one case that bothers me is her siding with Bush43 on the gag order regarding groups that support abortion and receive federal funding. Marc Ambinder from The Atlantic has this:

David Brody of Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) News breaks down Sonia Sotomayor's most notable abortion-related decision, in which she ruled in favor of the "Mexico City Policy," finding that the U.S. government is free to ban aid to foreign groups that support or perform abortions. (As The Hill notes, this decision won her praise from at least one Republican.) Brody's prediction: that since Sotomayor has never ruled directly on the legality of abortion, she will be pressed even harder on the issue during her confirmation process.

Of course, that doesn't really tell us much about her opinion regarding the legality of Roe v Wade.

I like Dahlia Lithwick's article on Sotomayor and the logic she presents on why the Rethugs haven't got a leg to stand on with regard to tarring and feathering her as a friggin liberal, activist, racist Judge:

Instead of wading into a bruising identity politics war they cannot possibly win, conservatives—even the angriest conservatives—should wade into Sotomayor's vast legal writings. There are hundreds of cases for them to read and parse and quote out of context. Let's have this confirmation battle on the merits, rather than in the sinkhole of unfounded character attacks. The real problem for Sotomayor's opponents is that anyone who has closely read her opinions won't find much to build a case on. As the indefatigable team at SCOTUSblog has chronicled here and here, on the appeals court, Judge Sotomayor has taken a fairly moderate, text-based approach to the cases before her, placing her much closer to retiring Justice David Souter than to the late Justice William Brennan on the judicial activism spectrum.

She has been overturned three times at the Supreme Court, and may well be again soon. But she was also a state* prosecutor, a corporate lawyer, and a Bush I appointee to the federal bench. As the White House points out in its talking points today, "In cases where Sotomayor and at least one judge appointed by a Republican president were on the three-judge panel, Sotomayor and the Republican appointee(s) agreed on the outcome 95% of the time."

Lithwick tackles all the bs the Rethugs will throw at her. It's a good read and I highly recommend it.

So, the bottom line for me, is this: She really isn't known to be left or right of the center all the time. My hope is that she turns out like David Souter and surprises the shit out of everyone, including Obama. Below is Jonathan Turley this evening on Countdown, discussing Judge Sotomayor's cases and rulings. Plus how does she feel about equal rights for the LGBT community?

What a great way to wake up this morning..to the presser that announces Sonia Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice.

As Obama stated, she will be the only Justice with trial experience. She will need it to deal with the rightwing justices.From a HuffPo article:

A Puerto Rican woman with 16 years of court experience who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Sotomayor is a graduate of Yale Law and served as an editor of the Yale Law Review. Administration officials note that Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years.

Irony alert: Bush41 nominated Souter and Sotomayor for their respective positions. How can the Rethugs argue with that? HuffPo has an article up on that angle as well.

From the NYT:

The State Department will offer equal benefits and protections to same-sex partners of American diplomats, according to an internal memorandum Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent last week to an association of gay and lesbian Foreign Service officers.

Wow wee, the federal government can recognize the rights of LGBT's but the military can not? WTF? Here is what Hillary had to say about the changes in State Department policy, from the same NYT article:

“Like all families, our Foreign Service families come in different configurations; all are part of the common fabric of our post communities abroad,” Mrs. Clinton said in the memorandum, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by a member of the gay and lesbian association.

“At bottom,” she said, “the department will provide these benefits for both opposite-sex and same-sex partners because it is the right thing to do.”

Of course it's the right thing to do..why in the blue hell can't the rest of the federal government and the military see that?

Good on ya Hillary..thanks for making the change. Now, pressure the rest of the departments and the military minds to do the same thing.

Conservative talkshow host Erich "Mancow" Muller was waterboarded Friday. He originally had said waterboarding isn't torture.

He lasted all of six-fucking-seconds. He has changed his mind regarding waterboarding being torture.