No doubt Sonia Sotomayor’s obscure appearance on a Duke University panel will be one of the video hits of the Internet this week and possibly for a few weeks to come. It should be. What’s interesting – and revealing – about the video is the collusive laughter between Sotomayor and the audience about legislating from the bench – something Obama assured us in his introduction of the jurist she does not do. Maybe Sonia should try stand up.
Let me hasten to say that this is not a simple matter. Sometimes judicial intervention may be merited, but it should be used with great restraint. Nevertheless, I don’t much care for this statement by Sotomayor: ‘I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male‘…
Frankly, I’ve had enough of this puerile racist crapola. A few decades back it was excusable, maybe even justifiable. Now it’s downright reactionary. Let’s hope Sotomayor can rise above it, because it’s likely she will be confirmed
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49 Comments
1. David Thomson:Hispanic Americans should not be treated like immature and overly sensitive children. Sonia Sotomayor is a poor choice regardless of her ethnic origins. I strongly believe that most Hispanics will not feel insulted by any legitimate complaints concerning her views and actions. It’s time to take a stand against political correctness. No guts, no glory. The GOP and sensible Democrats need to suck it up, and not chicken out. The rewards can be fantastic.
May 26, 2009 - 11:15 am 2. Charlie Martin:The more often we call this stuff out as “racist”, the more likely we’ll be to recover the word for its dictionary meaning.
May 26, 2009 - 11:33 am 3. hughh:The more often we call this stuff out as “racist”, the more likely we’ll be to recover the word for its dictionary meaning.
I don’t think racist means “oppression of white men,” but I could be wrong.
May 26, 2009 - 11:43 am 4. J. Oliver:Anytime merit is ascribed and attributed to one’s ancestry (Hispanic,Irish, Jewish, whatever) it’s RACISM. Pure and simple.
May 26, 2009 - 1:00 pm 5. David Thomson:“I don’t think racist means “oppression of white men,” but I could be wrong.”
And why not? Oppression of white men is undeniably racist. One gets the impression that you foolishly believe that blacks and other minorities inherently cannot be racists due to their alleged lack of power. Am I taking you out of context? Are you perhaps writing in a tongue in cheek manner? Please let me know if I’m misinterpreting your remark.
Barack Obama’s selection of the mediocre Sonia Sotomayor is a cruel reminder that identity politics continues to thrive under his administration. Weren’t we supposed to be past all that nonsense after his “historical” election?
May 26, 2009 - 1:17 pm 6. Minerva:Obama said principles set down “twenty centuries ago.” Did he mean decades? Best to stay away from that four score oratory.
May 26, 2009 - 1:24 pm 7. DarnedYankee:Here is something John Yoo wrote about Justice Thomas (http://tinyurl.com/q6yodu):
“This is a black man with a much greater range of personal experience than most of the upper-class liberals who take potshots at him. A man like this on the court is the very definition of the healthy diversity his detractors pretend to support.”
I’m waiting for the blogger and his minions to condemn this “crapola,” but I won’t hold my breath.
May 26, 2009 - 1:45 pm 8. Lightnin' Hopkins:“Obama said principles set down “twenty centuries ago.” Did he mean decades?”
Remember, there are 57 states — anything’s possible.
May 26, 2009 - 1:59 pm 9. gm1000:she’s classist and sexist — look at the New Haven fireman decision. Hope the Supremes overturn it.
May 26, 2009 - 2:02 pm 10. Matt:POTUS “The members of our highest court are granted life tenure, often serving long after the presidents who appointed them. And they are charged with the vital task of applying principles put to paper more than 20 centuries ago to some of the most difficult questions of our time.”
20 centuries ago, that’s 2000 years. Is he getting biblical on us?
May 26, 2009 - 2:18 pm 11. Roger L Simon:Okay, #7 DarnedYankee. I think that statement of Yoo’s is absolute nonsense as well. So you can stop holding your breath now.
BTW, I was actually heavily involved in the civil rights movement in the sixties. was in the South, etc. What were you doing?
May 26, 2009 - 2:26 pm 12. Larry J:Here is something John Yoo wrote about Justice Thomas (http://tinyurl.com/q6yodu):
Who is John Yoo and why should I care what he said?
May 26, 2009 - 3:03 pm 13. R Greenlee:David “Dow Jones” Thompson:
You say she’s “mediocre” based on…what exactly?
May 26, 2009 - 3:47 pm 14. David Thomson:“You say she’s “mediocre” based on…what exactly?”
Thank you for the easy question. I feel like Babe Ruth swinging at a slow pitch thrown over the middle of the plate. Justice is supposed to be blind. Please take a look at this picture:
http://s3.images.com/huge.3.18536.JPG
A viable legal system cannot be a respecter of persons. A judge is obligated to be indifferent toward the race, ethnicity, gender, financial wherewithal and other aspects of those seeking justice. And if you fail to comprehend that—you obviously possess a mediocre intellect. Is that simple enough for you?
May 26, 2009 - 4:14 pm 15. Ralph Woods:Here we go again. Another person with a “compelling story” Hell, Hitler, Stalin, Che Guevera all had compelling stories but I am more concerned with what a person believes than their “compelling stories”.
May 26, 2009 - 4:17 pm 16. David Thomson:It is shocking that the very concept of justice must be blind and not a respecter of persons is no longer taken for granted. The political correct establishment, for minimally the last 40 years, has instead argued that minorities of one sort or another deserve to have the scales of justice tipped in their favor. This a surefire recipe for tyranny.
May 26, 2009 - 4:30 pm 17. Marriu:Yawn, yawn.
May 26, 2009 - 4:52 pm 18. robotech master:To 7. DarnedYankee
Whats to condemn… Thomas never said it about himself…. and Yoo only used it as a center piece in pointing out the huge hypocrisy of the left…. ppl like Thomas are the ones the Dems supposedly want to put in power… yet they are the very ppl they want to keep out of power. Yoo is pointing out racism at its finest… when someone calls the KKK racist do you demand they be condemned?
Piece isn’t a half bad read either.
May 26, 2009 - 4:57 pm 19. R Greenlee:David –
Oh I thought you might have some actual basis in fact for what you said. Like maybe you were at Princeton with her when she graduated summa. Or perhaps you, too, had won the Pyne Prize, the highest academic prize given annually to a Princeton undergraduate. Or that perhaps you’d attended a prestigious law school or served on the Yale Law Review with Judge Sotomayor. Or maybe you’d actually worked at the Manhattan DA’s office when she was there. Or argued before her during her long tenure on the Second Circuit. Or that you’d actually read one of her opinions with which you disagree.
I thought you’d actually take the time to come up with a single objective fact to buttress your opinion of Sotomayor. Silly me. Why do that when you’ve got a pretty picture of Lady Justice and some jejune rhetoric? There’s really no arguing with pretty pictures.
May 26, 2009 - 5:02 pm 20. Wenda:Help me out here.
The very public face of the next generation of liberal judiciary is strident, speaks her opinions even when she admits it is unwise, doesn’t care about consensus, interrupts lawyers arguing before her when they differ from her mindset . . .
And I am supposed to regret that for some reason?
May 26, 2009 - 5:15 pm 21. Class Clown:So being a Latina gives one more wisdom than being an anglo man? I guess that makes sense. Kinda like how Joe Klein is wiser because he’s not a cripple like Charles Krauthammer.
May 26, 2009 - 5:20 pm 22. David Thomson:“Like maybe you were at Princeton with her when she graduated summa.”
It’s mildly interesting that Sonia Sotomayor gradated from Princeton—and so what? What’s your point? The bottom line is that her legal philosophy leaves much to be desired. She does not believe that justice should be blind. And that’s really the end of it. No more evidence is required to justify rejecting her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Also, you need to learn how to follow a logical argument. It matters not a whit whether I ever received the Pyne Prize or any other honor. Judge Sotomayer’s views are the only relevant matter deserving of our attention. The last time I checked Barack Obama did not select me to sit on the highest court in the land. Do you, however, know something I don’t? Should I visit my local taylor to get fitted for a long black robe?
May 26, 2009 - 5:29 pm 23. Webutante:No Roger, it’s not whether she can rise above it…cause she won’t. She’s getting paid not to do that. It’s whether we can live through it because we may have to.
May 26, 2009 - 5:36 pm 24. Marriu:It’s too bad that BO couldn’t have picked the kind of quality person for the Court that this blog would applaud…namely Joe the Plumber. Wasn’t he better than Hillary as Secretary of State? Go Joe!! Here is an authentic representative of the real America who would use just common sense and ignorance to make his rulings. This Sotomayor has all this fancy education and useless experience on the bench. She grew up poor and disadvantaged, but boo-hoo, so did he, but he never tried to “get better” than than the rest of us. Good for him.
May 26, 2009 - 6:07 pm 25. Anita Hope:J Oliver, Ancestry is not one’s religion as you stated by placing religion ” jewish ” with countries. You like so many seem to link the two and in most cases
May 26, 2009 - 6:18 pm 26. Fen:it leads to racism. I believe we are all guilty of some form of racism, even those of our own religious background, however the quicker we start educating ourselves to separate country of origion and ones religious beliefs, we may began to become more tolerant of what has made America what it was and can be again. It is surprising how we all like other countries food, music and art work, yet we cannot seem to like each other. This is sad.
Have a good week
Marriu: It’s too bad that BO couldn’t have picked the kind of quality person for the Court that this blog would applaud…namely Joe the Plumber.
What an idiot statement. Hey Marriu, is it cool if I rule against you because the prosecuter has a compelling life story? Beat Cancer back twice he did. And now you’re going to jail.
Idiot.
May 26, 2009 - 7:51 pm 27. Class Clown:Actually Marriu, I think that Sinbad should have been appointed to State. After all, he accompanined Hillary on her trip to Sarajevo, and according to her, that trip gave her important international experience.
I would have thought that they wouldn’t include a stand-up comedian on such an important diplomatic mission, but maybe they also considered his experience in playing a secret service agent in a movie once.
May 26, 2009 - 8:59 pm 28. Gary Rosen:“I think that Sinbad should have been appointed to State”
Considering the way the US is now being tooled by the tinhorn dictator running North Korea, we probably would have been better off.
May 26, 2009 - 11:54 pm 29. Scott:She will be confirmed…Count Dracula Schumer has assured that…
May 27, 2009 - 6:51 am 30. Scott:Well,unlike Princess Sonia,I didn’t attend Princeton…this privileged white man graduated from the University of New Mexico,1980
May 27, 2009 - 7:12 am 31. David Thomson:“She will be confirmed…Count Dracula Schumer has assured that…”
Sonia Sotomayor will probably have to drop out of the process. She is too hot to handle. Sotomayor does not believe that justice should be blind. Her opponents can easily make this charge stick—and persuade the majority of Americans to see things their way. We should never forget that even in the very liberal state of Michigan most voters gave the thumb down to the affirmative action proposal. Sotomayor has the odds against her. She only has a 20% of ever being confirmed.
May 27, 2009 - 8:50 am 32. Bogitar:Darned Yankee – you quote John Yoo – “This is a black man with a much greater range of personal experience than most of the upper-class liberals who take potshots at him. A man like this on the court is the very definition of the healthy diversity his detractors pretend to support.”
This is more of a comparison of lower-class experience with upper-class experience than an expression of the superiority of any race. This is not racism.
Compare that with the “Latina woman” and the “white male.” That is racism.
May 27, 2009 - 10:07 am 33. hermie:All the GOP has to do is bring up her decisions and judicial reasoning as well as her own statements.
The truth is that Sotomayor has shown herself to be a mediocre jurist (when you produce her output of work, plus note the number of times her decisions have been reversed by the SCOTUS; a biased if not overt racist, when you produce her verbal and written statements; and someone whose lack of judicial temperment is well known and documented.
Bad and frequently reversed decisions, overt bias and lack of impartiality, plus lack of judicial temperment, is evidence that Obama wants a haevily politicized and activist SCOTUS so he cam implement his radical policies by judical fiat if the Congress balks, or is taken over by the GOP.
May 27, 2009 - 1:49 pm 34. David Thomson:The only ones making a big deal about Sonia Sotomayor’s gender and ethnicity are Democrats and some “moderate” Republicans. Center-right thinkers could care less. Her views are the issue. The American public will not be conned by the left-wing propaganda—if we hold firm. I’m convinced that the majority of the citizenry is on our side! We are foolish to think otherwise. And since when did Democrats fear angering minorities when they crapped on minority supreme court candidates? Have we already forgotten how they treated Clarence Thomas?
May 27, 2009 - 3:13 pm 35. George:Harriet Miers, where are you when we need you?
May 27, 2009 - 5:25 pm 36. glenn:What Sonia (And Barry) really mean is “Give it up, Whitey, we need the money.”
May 27, 2009 - 5:35 pm 37. hermie:Obama joined in the filibuster attempt of Alito, citing ‘concerns’ about the nominee’s views on minorities. He never stated flat out that Alito was a racist, but like most Dems in the Senate, he didn’t have to. Alito had to prove that he wasn’t. The filibuster was doomed to fail as a number of Democrats did not join in. But it was his way of voting ‘Present’ (he risked nothing by his opposition, so he could ‘waste’ his vote) to show the far Left base that he supported their beliefs.
May 27, 2009 - 5:43 pm 38. TexasDude:“I don’t think racist means “oppression of white men,” but I could be wrong.”
I can mean oppression of white men, yellow men, or whatever men.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racist
rac·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈrā-ˌsi-zəm also -ˌshi-\
Function: noun
Date: 1933
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
Regarding the “life story” meme on Sotomayor …
The Democrats didn’t give a flip about the life stories of either Estrada or Gonzales. Matter of fact, they downplayed them.
But, hey, all’s fair in politics right?
May 27, 2009 - 6:27 pm 39. Roy Lofquist:Anyone Obama nominates to SCOTUS is going to be a reliably “liberal” vote. Sotomayor for Souter is a wash in the box score. If, a big if, she is a mediocre legal talent as her critics contend then it is a complete wash as Souter apparently had very little impact on the court. I, for one, am thankful that Obama did not nominate someone who could sway opinions.
May 27, 2009 - 6:43 pm 40. oMan:These credential-collecting resume hounds with their “life stories.” Right away this cuts the wrong way for me. The issue is whether she’s got the character to do the job. And character is about self-honesty. About humility. About not congratulating oneself about being suffused with some kind of “soul” derived from adjectives like Latina or White or whatever. So forgive me, her remark is completely revealing of her nature, and utterly disqualifying. What a shriveled, angry soul.
May 27, 2009 - 7:54 pm 41. john m e:puerile racist crapola?, you’re being far to gracious mr. simon….I agree with the idea that there’s been far too much latitude granted,
May 27, 2009 - 8:36 pm 42. john m e:and in my mind “the victimized” have become the bigots.
d thompson….with and/or without rancor you’re making great sense and rational argument…thx
May 27, 2009 - 8:44 pm 43. njcommuter:It will be worth scrutinizing the reasons and analysis in those reversals. There may be some scathing criticisms in there. And if there are, and if they are undersigned by the “center” justices, so much the better.
And the louder this gets, the better. Now is the time for every voter to learn what is really at stake, and how their vote is shaping the outcome.
And if we can embarass that smug, elitist, ruling-class helot Schumer, so much the better. He’s the third ranking Democrat; having him put his foot in his mouth is almost as good as Biden shooting off his mouth. And he is not immune from challenge, even in New York. If he shows enough contempt for the working stiff, a Colin Powell style RINO could beat him in the general election. I’m not in favor of RINOs, but I’ll take a Colin Powell over a Schumer any day.
May 27, 2009 - 11:29 pm 44. David Thomson:Rassmussen has released a poll which reinforces my optimism concerning keeping Sonia Sotomayor off the U.S. Supreme Court. 87% of the respondents believe that she will ultimately be approved. However, only 45% believes that she should be! Our attention should be focussed on that second number. Our goal is very achievable. The odds are slim that she will gain more support. Sotomayor numbers should continue to drop. Fortunately, the more people know about her views—the less they will approve of her.
May 28, 2009 - 10:42 am 45. George:As news (and videos) regarding Justice Alito’s empathy and Justice Scalia’s “state-court judges possess the power to ‘make’ common law” quote become more public, that 45% will likely drop. Next.
May 28, 2009 - 1:36 pm 46. Andrew:Life stories: Everybody’s got one.
May 28, 2009 - 8:44 pm 47. California Dreamer:This is rich, from the AP tonight no less!
Wow, her message was “on target”. And who exactly is the target here?
May 30, 2009 - 12:13 am 48. R Greenlee:” Also, you need to learn how to follow a logical argument.:
As soon as you make a logical argument, David, I’m sure I’ll be able to follow it.
May 31, 2009 - 8:36 pm 49. TBogg » McMegan’s got a nonce cap:[...] [...]
Oct 14, 2009 - 11:58 pm