However, there will still be one section of the building where partisan divides are apparent. Six of the nine Supreme Court justices are set to attend tonight’s speech, with all three absentees hailing from the conservative wing of the court.

Bloomberg reports:

Kathy Arberg, the Supreme Court’s spokeswoman, said that six justices are planning to attend tonight, though she wouldn’t specify which ones. Justice Samuel Alito is in Hawaii, and two other Republican-appointed justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have strongly suggested in public comments that they won’t go.

Only two Republican appointed justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy, will be in attendance whereas all justices nominated by a Democratic president will be at the speech.

The division between Obama and the conservative justices was readily apparent during last year’s State of the Union. In one segment of his speech, President Obama criticized the court’s ruling in Citizens United, to which Alito visibly responded by shaking his head and mouthing the phrase “not true.” After that interaction, some questioned whether it was proper for the supposedly impartial Supreme Court justices to attend the State of the Union speech. Nevertheless, the absence of the court’s three most conservative members at Obama’s speech will only increase the already-clear divide of the court.

Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said today that Justice Department officials “will not participate in an attempt to drag people’s names through the mud for political purposes.”

Miller said that one of the hallmarks of “our nation’s legal system is that attorneys provide faithful representation to all sorts of clients. As John Roberts said at his confirmation hearings, it is wrong to identify lawyers with the client or the views the lawyer advances for the client, and our history is replete with such examples, from John Adams representing British soldiers to Department of Defense JAG lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees.”

Notice Miller daring Cheney and Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to slander the JAG lawyers who defend Guantanamo detainees. Glenn Greenwald has perspective on all this.

And Justin Elliott notices a lawyer working for Rudy “Noun-Verb-9/11″ Giuliani’s firm. Good for Giuliani for hiring someone who’d offer legal counsel to the most vilified of defendants, which is the American way.

“To some extent, it’s unsettling,” says Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “You quickly get to view the court as . . . composed of these members, and it becomes kind of hard to think of it as involving anyone else. I suspect it’s like people look at their families.”

“It’s stressful for us because we so admire our colleagues,” adds Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. “We wonder, oh, will it ever be the same?”

“It changes the whole family,” agrees Justice Clarence Thomas. “It’s different. … I have to admit you grow very fond of the court that you spend a long time on. … You get comfortable with that, and then it changes. And now it’s changing again. So the institution, the Nine, is different, the reaction is different. You get to learn each other and you have to start all over, the chemistry is different.”

Although Justice Sotomayor has already participated in some decisions, including a dissent from the court’s refusal to consider a death penalty case involving a potentially innocent man, on Tuesday the new court will hear its first oral arguments, beginning with the much-anticipated campaign finance case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

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By that standard, what else do the American people have no confidence in? Well, Chief Justice John Roberts only got 78 votes for confirmation, so it’s not clear whether or not President George W. Bush should have nominated him. The 2003 ban on “partial-birth abortion” only got 64 votes. The 2001 Bush tax cut only got 58 votes, and the 2003 Bush tax cut only got 50 votes, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the tiebreaker; surely, Enzi or Grassley will work on repealing all of this, because such partisan legislation has no right being passed by the Senate.

Although there’s no question that Sotomayor will be confirmed, she’s expected to receive only about ten Republican votes, at best, dashing President Obama’s initial hopes of winning strong bipartisan support for his first high court nominee. Concerns about guns, property rights and her alleged bias in favor of Latinas have dominated the Republicans’ explanations for why they won’t support her — though payback for Obama’s frequently mentioned votes as a senator against Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and the Democrats’ refusal to allow a vote on appeals court nominee Miguel Estrada, also seemed to motivate Sotomayor’s GOP opponents.

Given that Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, the strong Republican opposition could have costs for the party.

As Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said at a rally yesterday: “To say you cannot vote for this qualified Latina sends a message to us, as a community, that we will not forget.”

Except for the support of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has said he believes President Obama is entitled to deference for his Supreme Court picks, the rest of the Republicans on the committee are expected to vote against Sotomayor’s nomination.

Whether the full Senate vote will be as partisan remains to be seen. As NPR noted this morning, when it came to President George W. Bush’s nominations to the Supreme Court, many Democrats voted in favor of both Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Then-Senator Barack Obama, however, voted against both of them. Judging from some of the comments at the Sotomayor hearing, the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, at least, have not forgotten.

Here’s Whitehouse, in one of his characteristically articulate speeches:

The “umpire” analogy is belied by Chief Justice Roberts, though he cast himself as an “umpire” during his confirmation hearings. Jeffrey Toobin, a well-respected legal commentator, has recently reported that “[i]n every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.” Some umpire. And is it a coincidence that this pattern, to continue Toobin’s quote, “has served the interests, and reflected the values of the contemporary Republican party”? Some coincidence.

For all the talk of “modesty” and “restraint,” the right wing Justices of the Court have a striking record of ignoring precedent, overturning congressional statutes, limiting constitutional protections, and discovering new constitutional rights: the infamous Ledbetter decision, for instance; the Louisville and Seattle integration cases, for example; the first limitation on Roe v. Wade that outright disregards the woman’s health and safety; and the DC Heller decision, discovering a constitutional right to own guns that the Court had not previously noticed in 220 years. Over and over, news reporting discusses “fundamental changes in the law” wrought by the Roberts Court’s right wing flank. The Roberts Court has not lived up to the promises of modesty or humility made when President Bush nominated Justices Roberts and Alito.

Some “balls and strikes.”

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In today’s Post there were already reports that some youngsters were turning away from Mr. Jackson in favor of a newcomer who goes by the name “Prince,” and is apparently planning a Washington concert. Will he receive a Presidential letter? How will we decide which performers do and which do not?

This was 1984, when that “newcomer” was releasing his sixth album, “Purple Rain.” It’s safe to say John Roberts never partied like it was 1999.

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Brownback joins Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) in an anti-Sotomayor Dust Bowl trio.

“Judge Sotomayor has indicated through past rulings and in her writings that she believes the judiciary should take an activist role and make laws, instead of upholding the law,” Brownback said on the Senate floor yesterday, echoing the concerns of several of his Republican colleagues. “As Chief Justice [John] Roberts said, a justice should be an impartial umpire, not a player in the game. I am afraid Judge Sotomayor wants to be more of a player than an umpire.”

Brownback is not seeking a third term in the Senate, but has filed paperwork that lays the groundwork for a run to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as governor of Kansas. A vote against a perceived liberal nominee will probably only help him in his solidly red state.