May 282009
 

Fox news headline: “Sotomayor’s Gun Control Positions Could Prompt Conservative Backlash.”

Backlash? Backlash?? I think the word the writer is groping for is “opposition.”

In the same article:

Such a line of attack could prove more effective than efforts to define Sotomayor as pro-abortion, efforts that essentially grasp at straws. Sotomayor’s record on that hot-button issue reveals instances in which she has ruled against an abortion rights group and in favor of anti-abortion protesters, making her hard to pigeonhole.

Grasp at straws?

Fox seems to have hired an idiom-challenged reporter to write these things.

But that last sentence is a fascinating one. It suggests that perhaps Soutomayor wasn’t basing her ruling on the identify of the group before her, but was basing it on the law, let the chips fall where they will.

Will the Obama administration be willing to overlook an indiscretion like that?