Obama nominates anti-white judge to Supreme Court

[SwordoftheVistula]

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D98DVTAO3&show_article=1

President Barack Obama named federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, praising her as "an inspiring woman" with both the intellect and compassion to interpret the Constitution wisely.

Obama said Sotomayor has more experience as a judge than any current member of the high court had when nominated, adding she has earned the "respect of colleagues on the bench," the admiration of lawyers who appear in her court and "the adoration of her clerks."

"My heart today is bursting with gratitude," Sotomayor said from the White House podium moments after being introduced by Obama.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman on the current court, the third in history.

Obama and Sotomayor both noted the historic nature of the appointment. The president said a Hispanic on the court would mark another step toward the goal of "equal justice under law."

Sotomayor said she grew up in poor surroundings and never dreamed she would one day be nominated for the highest court.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/26/obama-announce-supreme-court-nominee-tuesday-morning/

She is the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants and was raised in a Bronx housing project. She has dealt with diabetes since age 8 and lost her father at age 9, growing up under the care of her mother. Sotomayor supposedly became interested in law after watching the TV show "Perry Mason."

She later graduated from Princeton University and earned her law degree from Yale University. Sotomayor was appointed a federal district court judge in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush and then elevated to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bill Clinton. At that time, Republicans held up her confirmation, but she eventually passed the Senate 68-28.

Tuesday's selection drew swift praise from the Rev. Al Sharpton, who called the choice "prudent" and "groundbreaking."

Souter generally sided with the liberal wing of the high court, so Obama's selection would not tilt the ideological balance of the body. But Sotomayor is considered one of the most liberal of Obama's potential nominees, and could set off a fight from the right during confirmation -- even though Republicans are far outnumbered on Capitol Hill.

"This is not a bipartisan, consensus pick," one senior GOP Senate leadership aide told FOX News.

As an appellate judge, she sided with the city of New Haven, Conn., in a discrimination case brought by white firefighters after the city threw out results of a promotion exam because two few minorities scored high enough. Ironically, that case is now before the Supreme Court.

A YouTube video of Sotomayor speaking at Duke University about what some interpreted as judicial activism also stirred controversy.

In the video, she said: "All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with court of appeals experience" because "the court of appeals is where policy is made."

The video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfC99LrrM2Q

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15judge.html

In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”

“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 who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor

This month, for example, a video surfaced of Judge Sotomayor asserting in 2005 that a “court of appeals is where policy is made.” She then immediately adds: “And I know — I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don’t make law. I know. O.K. I know. I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it. I’m — you know.”

Republicans have signaled that they intend to put the eventual nominee under a microscope, and they say they were put on guard by Mr. Obama’s statement that judges should have “empathy,” a word they suggest could be code for injecting liberal ideology into the law.

Judge Sotomayor has given several speeches about the importance of diversity. But her 2001 remarks at Berkeley, which were published by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, went further, asserting that judges’ identities will affect legal outcomes.

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

[No crap! That's why she shouldn't be on the Supreme Court!]

Her remarks came in the context of reflecting her own life experiences as a Hispanic female judge and on how the increasing diversity on the federal bench “will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.”

She also approvingly quoted several law professors who said that “to judge is an exercise of power” and that “there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives.”

“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see,” she said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15sotomayor.html?_r=1

In 1997, Republican senators held up her nomination by President Bill Clinton to the appeals court for more than a year, because they believed that as a Hispanic appellate judge she would be a formidable candidate for the Supreme Court.


http://wcbstv.com/topstories/obama.supreme.court.2.1019163.html

Republicans have issued conflicting signals about their intentions. While some have threatened filibusters if they deemed Obama's pick too liberal, others have said that is unlikely.

Given Sotomayor's selection, any decision to filibuster would presumably carry political risks - Hispanics are the fastest-growing segment of the population and an increasingly important one politically.

Sotomayor has spoken openly about her pride in being Latina, and that personal experiences "affect the facts that judges choose to see."

"I simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging," she said in a speech in 2002. "But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=45d56e6f-f497-4b19-9c63-04e10199a085

Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.

The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench," as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue." (During one argument, an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, "Will you please stop talking and let them talk?")

Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. It's customary, for example, for Second Circuit judges to circulate their draft opinions to invite a robust exchange of views. Sotomayor, several former clerks complained, rankled her colleagues by sending long memos that didn't distinguish between substantive and trivial points, with petty editing suggestions--fixing typos and the like--rather than focusing on the core analytical issues.

Some former clerks and prosecutors expressed concerns about her command of technical legal details: In 2001, for example, a conservative colleague, Ralph Winter, included an unusual footnote in a case suggesting that an earlier opinion by Sotomayor might have inadvertently misstated the law in a way that misled litigants. The most controversial case in which Sotomayor participated is Ricci v. DeStefano, the explosive case involving affirmative action in the New Haven fire department, which is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court. A panel including Sotomayor ruled against the firefighters in a perfunctory unpublished opinion. This provoked Judge Cabranes, a fellow Clinton appointee, to object to the panel's opinion that contained "no reference whatsoever to the constitutional issues at the core of this case."

[Æmeric]

It will be interesting to see how the Democratic senators from some of the more conservative states vote on the Sotomayor nomination.

[Vulpix]

Care to explain how she is anti-white more in detail?

[anonymaus]

Care to explain how she is anti-white more in detail?

Sure, it's a simple two-part equation:

1) She believes that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male"

and 2) She believes in the ridiculous theory that the constitution is "living", meaning it changes to mean whatever liberals think it should mean.

That is why her seemingly small anti-white statement makes such an impact: she is expressing a desire to legislate from her bench, rather than apply the law.


Yet when two black attorneys appeared before the Supreme Court (http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326500719232971), Holmes wrote in another letter to a friend that he had to "write a decision against a very thorough and really well-expressed argument by two colored men" — an argument "that even in intonation was better than, I should say, the majority of white discourses that we hear."

Holmes understood that a Supreme Court justice was not there to favor some people or even to prescribe what was best for society. He had a very clear sense of what the role of a judge was — and wasn't.

Justice Holmes saw his job to be "to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not."

That was because the law existed for the citizens, not for lawyers or judges, and the citizen had to know what the rules were, in order to obey them.

He said: "Men should know the rules by which the game is played. Doubt as to the value of some of those rules is no sufficient reason why they should not be followed by the courts."

Legislators existed to change the law.

After a lunch with Judge Learned Hand, as Holmes was departing in a carriage to return to work, Judge Hand said to him: "Do justice, sir. Do justice."

Holmes had the carriage stopped. "That is not my job," he said. "My job is to apply the law."

[SwordoftheVistula]

She also thinks the 2nd Amendment should be different from the other ones, in that it should not be incorporated into state law via the 14th Amendment

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/05/26/blackwell_ken_obama_sotomayor/

Last year the Supreme Court handed down the landmark decision in D.C. v. Heller, holding that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to individual citizens in their private lives. The ruling marked a turning point in gun rights in this country.

In the past year, the biggest question courts now face is whether the Second Amendment applies to the states. That may sound crazy, but the reality is that the Bill of Rights only controls the federal government, it doesn’t apply directly to states or cities. Only the parts of the Bill of Rights that are “incorporated” through the Fourteenth Amendment apply to the states.

Since the Heller decision, only two federal appeals courts have written on the Second Amendment. That’s six judges out of about 170. Of those six, three said the Second Amendment does apply to the states. And those judges were out of the liberal Ninth Circuit in California, and included a judge appointed by Bill Clinton and another appointed by Jimmy Carter. — Even leftist judges can get this.

But not Judge Sonia Sotomayor. She is one of only three federal appellate judges in America to issue a court opinion saying that the Second Amendment does not apply to states. The case was Maloney v. Cuomo, and it came down this past January.

[Psychonaut]

Identity Politics and Sotomayor
Stuart Taylor, National Journal, May 23, 2009

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." -- Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001

The above assertion and the rest of a remarkable speech to a Hispanic group by Sotomayor -- widely touted as a possible Obama nominee to the Supreme Court -- has drawn very little attention in the mainstream media since it was quoted deep inside The New York Times on May 15.

It deserves more scrutiny, because apart from Sotomayor's Supreme Court prospects, her thinking is representative of the Democratic Party's powerful identity-politics wing.

Sotomayor also referred to the cardinal duty of judges to be impartial as a mere "aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others." And she suggested that "inherent physiological or cultural differences" may help explain why "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."

So accustomed have we become to identity politics that it barely causes a ripple when a highly touted Supreme Court candidate, who sits on the federal Appeals Court in New York, has seriously suggested that Latina women like her make better judges than white males.

Indeed, unless Sotomayor believes that Latina women also make better judges than Latino men, and also better than African-American men and women, her basic proposition seems to be that white males (with some exceptions, she noted) are inferior to all other groups in the qualities that make for a good jurist.

Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.

Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: "I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life" -- and had proceeded to speak of "inherent physiological or cultural differences."

I have been hoping that despite our deep divisions, President Obama would coax his party, and the country, to think of Americans more as united by allegiance to democratic ideals and the rule of law and less as competing ethnic and racial groups driven by grievances that are rooted more in our troubled history than in today's reality.

I also hope that Obama will use this Supreme Court appointment to re-inforce the message of his 2004 Democratic convention speech: "There's not a black America, and white America, and Latino America, and Asian America; there's the United States of America."

But in this regard, the president's emphasis on selective "empathy" for preferred racial and other groups as "the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges" is not encouraging, as I explained in a May 15 post on National Journal's The Ninth Justice blog.

As for Sotomayor's speech, fragmentary quotations admittedly cannot capture every qualification and nuance. She also stressed that although "men lawyers... need to work on" their "attitudes," many have already reached "great moments of enlightenment." She noted that she tries to be impartial. And she did not overtly suggest that judges should play identity politics.

I place the earlier quotations in more-detailed context here so that readers can assess Sotomayor's meaning for themselves.

"Judge [Miriam] Cedarbaum [of the federal District Court in New York]... believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons... we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning....

"Our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others....

"Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.... I am... not so sure that I agree with the statement. First... there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, 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 who hasn't lived that life."

The full text of the speech, as published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, is available on The New York Times website. (It says that the speech was in 2002; I've read elsewhere that it was October 2001.)

To some extent, Sotomayor's point was an unexceptionable description of the fact that no matter how judges try to be impartial, their decisions are shaped in part by their personal backgrounds and values, especially when the law is unclear. As she detailed, for example, some studies suggest that female judges tend to have different voting patterns than males on issues including sex discrimination.

I also share Sotomayor's view that presidents should seek more ethnic and gender diversity on the bench, so that members of historically excluded groups can see people like themselves in important positions and because collegial bodies tend to act more wisely when informed by a diversity of experiences.

It follows that the Supreme Court might well be a wiser body -- other things being equal -- if the next justice is a Hispanic woman of outstanding judgment and capability. But do we want a new justice who comes close to stereotyping white males as (on average) inferior beings? And who seems to speak with more passion about her ethnicity and gender than about the ideal of impartiality?

Compare Sotomayor's celebration of "how wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul" and reflections "on being a Latina voice on the bench" with Judge Learned Hand's eulogy for Justice Benjamin Cardozo in 1938.

"The wise man is the detached man," Hand wrote. "Our convictions, our outlook, the whole makeup of our thinking, which we cannot help bringing to the decision of every question, is the creature of our past; and into our past have been woven all sorts of frustrated ambitions with their envies, and of hopes of preferment with their corruptions, which, long since forgotten, determine our conclusions. A wise man is one exempt from the handicap of such a past; he is a runner stripped for the race; he can weigh the conflicting factors of his problem without always finding himself in one scale or the other."

Some see such talk as tiresome dead-white-male stuff, from a time when almost all judges were white males -- although, in Cardozo's case, descended from Portuguese Jews. I see it as the essence of what judges should strive to be.

I do not claim that the very different worldview displayed in Sotomayor's speech infuses her hundreds of judicial opinions and votes rendered over more than a decade on the Appeals Court. But only a few of her cases have involved the kind of politically incendiary issues that make the Supreme Court a storm center.

In one of her few explosive cases, Sotomayor voted (without writing an opinion) to join two colleagues in upholding what I see as raw racial discrimination by New Haven, Conn. The city denied promotions to the firefighters who did best on a test of job-related skills because none was black. (See my column, "New Haven's Injustice Shouldn't Disappear.")

The Supreme Court is widely expected to reverse that decision in June. And even if a devotee of identity politics fills retiring Justice David Souter's seat, she will not have enough votes to encourage greater use of such racial preferences. Not yet.


Source (http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090523_2724.php)

[Óttar]

Our Supreme Court is now 6 Catholics, 2 Jews and 1 Protestant.

How is that possible? :confused:

[Treffie]

Don't worry America, here's our Attorney General - Lady Scotland.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2008/04/30a_08_Baroness_415x275.jpg

[Óttar]

She's going to be (at least nominally) called to account for some of her statements. She still has to get approved by congress.

[Birka]

She's going to be (at least nominally) called to account for some of her statements. She still has to get approved by congress.

Just the Senate, where there are 59 zombie Democrats that will do whatever Benito Hussein the usurper tells them to do. I now call the Ombongo Benito, because he has turned this country into a Fascist dictatorship faster than Benito Mussolini did to Italy.

[Beorn]

Sonia Sotomayor 'La Raza member' (http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99420)

As President Obama's Supreme Court nominee comes under heavy fire for allegedly being a "racist," (http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99256) Judge Sonia Sotomayor is listed as a member of the National Council of La Raza (http://www.nclr.org/section/about/feedback/), a group that's promoted driver's licenses for illegal aliens, amnesty programs, and no immigration law enforcement by local and state police.

According the American Bar Association, Sotomayor is a member of the NCLR (http://www.abanet.org/publiced/hispanic_s.html), which bills itself as the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S.

Meaning "the Race," La Raza also has connections to groups that advocate the separation of several southwestern states from the rest of America.

Over the past two days, Sotomayor has been heavily criticized for her racially charged statement: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

The remark was actually made during a 2001 speech at the University of California's Berkeley School of Law. The lecture was published the following year in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal.
Could Mexico retake the southwestern United States? Get the DVD that says the invasion is already happening! (http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=1836)

The comment is being zeroed in on by voices from the political right.

"I'm not saying she's a racist, but the statement sure is," columnist Ann Coulter said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman,'" blogged former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga (http://newt.org/Blogs/tabid/59/Default.aspx). "Wouldn't they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism. A white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw."

Radio's Rush Limbaugh noted (http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99256), "And the libs of course say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he's appointed one. ..."

But others are suggesting Sotomayor's racial views will have little impact on her confirmation to the bench.

"She's gonna get confirmed. Get out of the way of the truck," political analyst Dick Morris said tonight on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor."

Host Bill O'Reilly responded, "The core conservative person ... does not understand that the GOP is shrinking and needs to expand."

The NCLR is applauding the Obama for his selection of Sotomayor.

"Today is a monumental day for Latinos. Finally, we see ourselves represented on the highest court in the land," said Janet Murguia, NCLR's president and CEO (http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/57500/).

La Raza also praised former President George W. Bush for nominating Alberto Gonzales (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=27723) to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general.

As WND previously reported (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=41681), La Raza was condemned in 2007 by former U.S. Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., as a radical "pro-illegal immigration lobbying organization that supports racist groups calling for the secession of the western United States as a Hispanic-only homeland."

Norwood urged La Raza to renounce its support of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan – which sees "the Race" as part of an ethnic group that one day will reclaim Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. In Chicano folklore, Aztlan includes California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas.

[Beorn]

Right-Wing Hate Machine Launches Vicious Campaign of Racist and Sexist Attacks on Sotomayor (http://www.alternet.org/media/140348/right-wing_hate_machine_launches_vicious_campaign_of_rac ist_and_sexist_attacks_on_sotomayor/)

This piece was written by by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Brad Johnson.

The radical right wing has launched a vicious campaign of racist and sexist attacks against Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's selection to replace the retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor's "compelling life story (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/us/politics/28select.html)" involves a brilliant legal career after being raised in a South Bronx public housing project by parents who moved from Puerto Rico. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude, edited the Yale Law Journal, then served as a "fearless and effective (http://www.oliverwillis.com/2009/05/26/sotomayor-is-obamas-supreme-court-pick/)" New York City prosecutor (http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/05/portrait_of_sot.php) and corporate lawyer before being appointed to the bench by President George H. W. Bush in 1992. "Since joining the Second Circuit in 1998, Sotomayor has authored over 150 opinions (http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/judge-sotomayors-appellate-opinions-in-civil-cases/)," only three (http://www.newsweek.com/id/199955) of which have been overturned by the Supreme Court's conservative majority. During her time as an appeals judge, "her influence has grown significantly (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/28/us/politics/0529-judge-graphic.html)." Public reaction to the nomination of the first Latina and third woman to the nation's highest court is "decidedly more positive than negative (http://www.gallup.com/poll/118886/Positive-Initial-Reaction-Sotomayor-Nomination.aspx?CSTS=alert)." Former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon remarked, "If Republicans make a big deal of opposing Sotomayor, we will be hurling ourselves off a cliff (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/republicans-weigh-risks-of-a-supreme-court-battle/)." However, "the same right-wing extremists (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/28/sotomayor/) who drove the country into the ground," Salon's Glenn Greenwald writes, "continue to attack Sonia Sotomayor with blatant and ugly stereotypes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Jce236HZ8)." Right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan called Sotomayor an "affirmative action candidate (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/27/buchanan-sotomayor/)," and Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes claimed she "has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/28/barnes-sotomayor-affirmative-action/)." As hate-radio extremist Glenn Beck described the nomination: "Hey, Hispanic chick lady (http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200905260041)! You're empathetic ... you're in!"

'Wise Latina Woman'
"[L]ess than 24 hours after President Obama's nomination of Sotomayor," right-wing hate merchants seized on a 2001 speech about her Latina heritage and the courts, calling her "a racist (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/28/MNGF17SNET.DTL&type=politics)" and a "bigot (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/27/conservative-pundits-soto_n_208215.html)." In a 2001 speech before the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal's annual symposium, Sotomayor argued that judges' gender and race can influence their decisions (http://www.law.berkeley.edu/4982.htm) on gender and race discrimination cases, saying she "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 who hasn't lived that life."

However, she cautioned she owes the parties who appear before her "constant and complete vigilance in checking [her] assumptions, presumptions and perspectives (http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/05/28/sotomayors-record-on-race/)." Pulling out the "wise Latina woman" phrase, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacked Sotomayor (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/27/gingrich-sotomayor-withdraw/) on his Twitter feed as a "Latina woman racist (https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/1937323138)." "Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/05/27/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5043597.shtml)," hate-radio host Rush Limbaugh complained, "and now he's appointed one...to the U.S. Supreme Court." Former Republican House member and anti-immigration extremist Tom Tancredo agreed that Sotomayor "appears to be a racist (http://coloradoindependent.com/29745/tancredo-calls-scotus-nominee-sotomayor-a-racist)" and called La Raza the "Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/28/tancredo-latino-kkk/)."

Curt Levey, executive director of Committee for Justice, "a conservative legal group active in judicial nominations," said that "I wonder whether she knows the difference (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29puerto.html)" between being a Puerto Rican advocate -- Sotomayor served on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in the 1980s -- and being a judge. Some of the racist attacks on Sotomayor are simply absurd. Mark Krikorian of the right-wing Center for Immigration Studies (http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/KrikorianAttacks/) blogged on the National Review's Corner about his outrage over people "[d]eferring" to Sotomayor (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzkwYzY3ZTc4NTkwZjRiMjM3OGVlMzlmNTZjYmY2ZDI=) over the "unnatural pronunciation (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/27/krikorian-sotomayor/)" of her own name.

'Sort of a Schoolmarm'
Right-wing extremists have also launched vicious attacks on her intelligence, temperament, and demeanor. Karl Rove, President Bush's "political brain," has led the sexist slurs, claiming that Sotomayor is "not necessarily (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/27/rove-ivy-league-smart/)" smart and has acted "like sort of a schoolmarm (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/27/rove-sotomayor-grammar/)" on the Second Circuit. "I'm not really certain how intellectually strong (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/26/sotomayor-lightweight/) she would be," he opined on Fox News. In the Wall Street Journal, Rove argued she is one of those judges selected "for their readiness to discard the rule of law whenever emotion moves them (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124347199490860831.html)."

Citing anonymous attacks (http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=45d56e6f-f497-4b19-9c63-04e10199a085) promoted by the New Republic, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes said that Sotomayor was "not the smartest (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/26/sotomayor-lightweight/)." The New York Times writes that "to detractors, Judge Sotomayor's sharp-tongued and occasionally combative manner (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29judge.html) -- some lawyers have described her as 'difficult' and 'nasty' -- raises questions about her judicial temperament and willingness to listen." But a fellow Second Circuit judge, Guido Calabresi, "kept track of the questions posed by Judge Sotomayor and other members of the 12-member court" and found that her "behavior was identical." "Some lawyers just don't like to be questioned by a woman," Judge Calabresi added. "It was sexist (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29judge.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp), plain and simple."

Republican Senators Step Back

Although Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that Sotomayor may be subject to the "undue influence (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/inhofe-wants-to-make-sure-sotomayor-is-without-undue-influence-from-her-race-and-gender.php)" of her race and gender, Republican senators have attempted to distance themselves from the hatred. Even Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), who announced he would vote against Sotomayor's nomination, said, "I think that we should be judging people not on race and gender (http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/18626), or background or ethnicity or a very compelling story."

Some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct hearings on Sotomayor's nomination this summer, have directly denounced the worst invective. Responding to the attacks on Sotomayor calling her "racist," Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told NPR's "All Things Considered," "I think it's terrible (http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0509/Cornyn_Leave_Sotomayor_alone.html). This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advice and consent."

"I don't agree (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/27/hatch-gingrich-sotomayor/) with" the "racist" smear, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said recently. "If there are no otherwise disqualifying matters here it appears to me she will probably be confirmed (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/28/scotus.hatch.sotomayor/)," Hatch told CNN Radio yesterday.

[SwordoftheVistula]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/10/MNVK184GQF.DTL

Judge Sonia Sotomayor once described herself as "a product of affirmative action" who was admitted to two Ivy League schools despite scoring lower on standardized tests than many classmates, which she attributed to "cultural biases" that are "built into testing."

On another occasion, she aligned with conservatives who take a limited view of when international law can be enforced in U.S. courts. But she criticized conservative objections to recent Supreme Court rulings that mention foreign law as being based on a "misunderstanding."

Those comments were among a trove of videos dating back nearly 25 years that shed new light on Sotomayor's views. She provided the videos to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week as it prepares for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing next month.

The clips include lengthy remarks about her experiences as an "affirmative action baby" whose lower test scores were overlooked by admissions committees at Princeton University and Yale Law School because, she said, she is Latino and had grown up in poor circumstances.

"If we had gone through the traditional numbers route of those institutions, it would have been highly questionable if I would have been accepted," she said on a panel of three female judges from New York who were discussing women in the judiciary. The video is dated "early 1990s" in Senate records.

Her comments came in the context of explaining why she thought it was "critical that we promote diversity" by appointing more women and minority judges, and they provoked objections among other panelists who pointed out that she graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and had been an editor on Yale's law journal.

But Sotomayor insisted that her test scores were subpar - "though not so far off the mark that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions." Her scores have not been made public.

"With my academic achievement in high school I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates," she said. "And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that - there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects."

Sotomayor's approach to affirmative action has been the subject of intense scrutiny. Conservatives have criticized her remarks in speeches that her personal experiences will influence her judging.

If she is confirmed, Sotomayor would fill the seat being vacated by Justice David Souter, who has voted to uphold affirmative-action programs.

But in April, Sotomayor delivered a speech on how federal judges look at foreign and international law that suggested she may take a more conservative position on that topic than Souter.

She said individuals have no right to file a lawsuit to enforce a treaty and ratified treaties are not legally binding unless Congress separately passes a statute to do so. Treaties usually have effect, she said, only if the president and Congress choose to respect such obligations as a matter of politics, not law.

"Even though Article IV of the Constitution says that treaties are the 'supreme law of the land,' in most instances they're not even law," she said.

That principle, she said, explained the outcome of a high-profile 2008 Supreme Court ruling, Medellin vs. Texas, which involved a ruling by the International Court of Justice that some Mexican inmates on death row in Texas should get new sentencing hearings because authorities failed to help them get assistance from the Mexican consulate, contrary to a treaty the United States had ratified.

But the Supreme Court ruled that the international court's decision had no legal force and that the treaty was not binding, because Congress never passed a statute explicitly making it domestic law.

The ruling, Sotomayor said, "surprised many human rights groups and civil liberties groups" but was "premised on very traditional American law principles." Her remarks aligned her with the Supreme Court's majority; among the three dissenting votes in that case was Souter.

[Turkey]

elections are always rigged:thumb001:

[CelticTemplar]

Umm... Guys, have we forgotten that this is ZOG here? The entire bloody system is anti-white. So stop complaining, get off your keyboard and DO something.

[Turkey]

Umm... Guys, have we forgotten that this is ZOG here? The entire bloody system is anti-white. So stop complaining, get off your keyboard and DO something.
I don't think it's that kind of forum. I think you are confusing it with SF.:)