Almost immediately after President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for a Supreme Court judgeship on Tuesday, I had to get in my car and make the nearly five-hour drive from my parents' house in Rochester to my house in Kingston. So I turned on the radio to hear what the right-wing noisemakers were saying (this is how I stay alert during long trips on the Thruway) and quickly found the self-important, egomaniacal, oh-so-proud-of-himself Rush Limbaugh shooting off his mouth about how terrible Sotomayor would be for the high court and the country.

Don't get me wrong. I respect Rush's convictions. He's a rock-ribbed right winger who disdains the liberal agenda, and that's his prerogative. But his attacks on the Democrats he so dislikes are largely personal, frequently unjustified and often based on supposition rather than fact. That is, if you have a D after your name, Rush hates you and shouts from the rooftops that he hates you - regardless of whether he's ever met you or done any research about you.

Bloviating about Sotomayor, Rush simply ticked off the right-wing talking points: She a "liberal," a "radical," an "activist," an "anti-constitutionalist" and, merging a couple of those, a "radical anti-constitutionalist." (Is "anti-constitutionalist" even a word?) But he offered almost no factual evidence to back up his name-calling.

And Obama, according to Rush, is "the most radical president in history." Of course he is, Rush - just like every other Democrat to occupy the Oval Office, right?

And then Rush took Obama to task for, as a senator, voting against recently appointed Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts solely on the grounds that they were nominated by a Republican (George W. Bush).

Excuse me? It's OK for Rush to blast Sotomayor simply because she was nominated by a Democrat, but it's not OK for then-Sen. Obama to have voted against two men nominated by a Republican? Yeah, that makes sense.

This is why Rush's show should be categorized as comedy (and bad comedy, at that), rather than commentary. He is, in every sense of the word, a joke.

And by the way, Rush: Sotomayor's original nomination to the federal bench, in 1992, was made by REPUBLICAN President George H.W. Bush. Funny, but I never heard you mention that on Tuesday.