Here’s a statement just issued by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who wants to use the review process to ensure that Sotomayor “has the right intellect” to take the bench.

The American judicial system is a towering example of freedom and liberty to the world.  Throughout the confirmation process, I will work with my colleagues and thoroughly review Judge Sotomayor’s record to make sure she has the right intellect and understands the proper role of a judge — to interpret and apply the written law, not to decide cases based on personal feelings, politics or preferences.  The confirmation process is just that — a process.  We should not prejudge this nominee, but we should be diligent as we examine the nominee’s record, background and experience.

After eight years of George W. Bush — the most famous C-student ever to emerge from the Ivy League — it’s unclear why Republicans would be chasing this idea that the smarts of a self-made judge and summa-cum-laude graduate of Princeton University would somehow make her a bad fit for the position.

Does Barack Obama understand the seriousness of the economic crisis? Yesterday, he laid out his economic agenda, and it was filled with all sorts of important exhortations and proscriptions. He appropriately condemned the “anything goes” policies of the last administration. He declared that government is now the solution to our woes, not the problem. Still, I worry that the president elect is underestimating the problem he and the country faces.

We may not simply be facing a steep recession like that of the early 1980s, from which we can extricate ourselves in a year or two, but something resembling the Great Depression of the 1930s. For starters, the current crisis is global, which means that one part of the world can’t lift the other out of its misery; everyone will go down together, which is what happened in the 1930s. Secondly, the downturn has combined an unusual decline in the real economy–employment in durable-goods manufacturing fell by 21.9 percent from 2000 to 2008–with a financial crash precipitated by the bursting of the housing bubble. The bubble resulted from an attempt to sustain growth and employment in the face of an underlying decline, which, too, is what happened in the late 1920s.

Over the past six decades, policymakers have used some tactics from the Great Depression to quell recessions–such as spending on roads and bridges to create jobs, transferring payments to raise consumer demand, and infusing money into the credit system. But these stopgap measures, which are at the heart of Obama’s recovery program, may prove inadequate.

For one thing, Judis says infrastructure spending won’t be enough. The United States, he says, could do things like invest in high-speed rail transportation. Yes, it would be expensive, but it also would create good-paying jobs, revive American industry and improve the country’s trade imbalance.

Judis and others are thinking big, and they want Obama to do the same. The fight over the stimulus package, at its heart, isn’t a typical Washington back-and-forth over tax cuts or power plays. The stakes are much, much higher. It’s become increasingly clear that putting together the most effective stimulus package – right here, right now – is all about the economy’s survival, not political posturing. To Judis and others, Obama needs to transcend politics on this one, and take the kind of immediate, dramatic steps that this crisis requires. Falling short means the kind of economic failure none of us will want to live with, no matter what side of the aisle we’re on.