Posted on 06/03/2009 7:03:03 PM PDT by neverdem
Will Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, be for Republicans and for conservatives in general what many have dubbed Vice President Joe Biden? Biden has been called “the gift that keeps on giving” because of his tendency to stick one and Sotomayor may have some of the same rhetorical tendencies.
Indeed, the federal appeals court judge and the vice president appear to have much in common: a keen intellect, an apparently gregarious disposition, and a lively interest in the law and its possibilities for development in and by “interpretation.” Biden, let us not forget, was for many years chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and presided over the hearings 22 years ago this summer in which President Reagan’s nominee, Judge Robert Bork, was skewered, virtually flayed alive, and lynched for holding fast to the view that the Constitution says what it says and does not decree as “constitutional law” what it does not say.
But Sotomayor and Biden also share a penchant for wading in where angels fear to tread. The comparison is somewhat limited, to be sure. Sotomayor has not, so far as we know, claimed portions of Neil Kinnock’s biography as her own, as Biden did when running for president in 1988. But she says things she knows she shouldn’t, acknowledges that she “should never say that,” and then expands rather generously on what she never should have said in the first place.
A classic, and alarming, example was her statement at Duke University Law School in 2005 that “the court of appeals is where policy is made.” Oh, she said, catching herself almost, but not quite, before the end of the sentence reached the back row of spectators. “I know this is on tape and I should never say that.” Oh, my! Silly me. (Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle.) “I know, I know, we don’t make law. I know. I know.” Then she went on to explain how the appeals court judge weighs his or her decision less on the facts than the district court judge and more on what effect the ruling will have on “a whole class of cases” and on “the next step in the development of the law.”
But it was not this admission against interest that caused the White House to try to rescue her from her own words. The damage control was made necessary by a statement the judge made in 2001, perhaps not thinking that she might one day be elevated by a president to sit before a panel of U.S. senators to justify the selection of her to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was something she said in a speech she had prepared and delivered at the University of California at Berkeley, where faculty and students have been careful to avoid making an idol of judicial or any other kind of restraint. The statement, which is and will be so troubling, is this:
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.
Remember that this, unlike the off the cuff comments at Duke Law School referenced above, was in a prepared speech. It was no a “slip of the tongue,” or a hastily improvised answer to a “gotcha” question. It has clearly left the Obama White House with egg on its portico. It has given pundits on the right, like Pat Buchanan, plenty of ammunition in the “culture war” that has defined much of American politics in the post-Reagan years.
“Imagine,” wrote Buchanan, “if Sam Alito had said at Bob Jones University, ‘I would hope that a wise white male with the richness of his life experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Hispanic woman, who hasn't lived that life.’”
Buchanan continued: “Alito would have been toast. No explanation, no apology would have spared him. He would have been branded for life a white bigot.” Alito, of course, made no such comment and is now on the Supreme Court, having been appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2006. Among those voting against his confirmation was the junior senator from Illinois, one Barack Obama, who also voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. Perhaps those old (or middle aged) white guys lacked both the “richness of life experiences” and the kind of judicial restraint Obama seeks.
But Buchanan’s point has resonated and the White House has felt the vibrations. The judge is now in the position of Lucy before Ricky Ricardo in the old I Love Lucy show. The lady has some ‘splainin’ to do. But when it comes to explaining controversial statements by Judge Sotomayor, the last person the White House might want doing the ‘splainin’ is Judge Sotomayor. That’s what a White House spokesman is for. Enter Robert Gibbs.
"I think if she had the speech to do all over again, I think she’d change that word," Gibbs said, in an apparent reference to the word, “better,” as in the Latina woman would make a “better” conclusion than a white man. Perhaps she should have said “different.”
"She was simply making the point that personal experiences are relevant to the process of judging," Gibbs said. It’s a shame Ralph Branca didn’t have a spokesman to tell the world, after the Dodger hurler had thrown the pitch that Bobby Thomson of the Giants hit for the pennant-winning home run, that if he had to do it all over again he would have thrown a different pitch.
Perhaps Barack Obama will have to say at some point that if he had to do it over again, he would make a different pick for his first Supreme Court nominee. That’s not likely, at least not yet. But when Judge Sotomayor has to do the ‘splainin’ herself, the senators on the Judiciary Committee won’t wait for an answer from Robert Gibbs. Then we will see if the judge has learned to restrain her errant tongue or if she will, indeed, be Obama’s second “gift that keeps on giving” to a needy Republican Party.
Photo: AP Images
Biden and keen intellect-- great example of an oxymoron....
Uhh, remember when we were saying that Obama was the Democrats’ gift to the GOP?
I take nothing for granted any more.
Well except for the "keen intellect", I might agree that they do have allot in common.
Biden has never been one to display much if any intellect as far as I'm concerned.
Yes... I can see it now, The two of them having late night readings of Oscar Wilde, and a good knees up!
Remember that this, unlike the off the cuff comments at Duke Law School referenced above, was in a prepared speech
Being a La Raza member ought to be enough to disqualify her.
Has anyone asked her if a latina woman is able to make wiser decisons than a black male?
1. Obama probably didn't even get a dossier with these pieces of information in it. His staff probably dropped the ball.
2. And if they didn't? Well, that's rich too, because Barry probably thought nothing of the statements. In fact, he probably heard it three times a day first from his “progressive” mother, when she bothered to be around. Next from his angry grandmother who had been kept down by men at the bank and supported that ersatz insurance salesman who was basically a drunken couch potato hiding out in a marginal flat on the back side of Honolulu (the edge of the universe in those days). And finally by angry and shrill Michelle the carbon copy of her mother (now the nanny). To Obama, these words aren't anathema, they are lullabies.
3. Lindsey Graham said on Sunday that “these things take time” even as Arlen Specter opined that the whole process could be wrapped up in a few weeks. Graham let the cat out of the bag. The Republican strategy will be to let the good judicial candidate twist in the summer wind as everyone adjourns to Nantucket and Mackinac. By the time they get around to grilling her in September, she'll look like sun dried tomatoes.
4. In the end, what will happen? Either she will die under the weight of her own words or in the spirit of that great line from the movie, “Rob Roy”...they'll deliver her to the White House “bruised and bloodied, but not dead”.
5. Let this all be a lesson to the Republic about totalitarian message shaping. You can discipline one narcissist who has played make believe his whole life to the point that he is always smooth and on message (teleprompter notwithstanding), but getting a whole class of first graders to act out Shakespeare on parents night is a much tougher job. Mr. Obama,your administration's slip is showing on this one.
Her 2001 speech repeated what she said in 1994, minus the word "Latina":
The 1994 statement shows textbook sexist bigotry. She added racist bigotry in 2001.
Very well said! LoL!
I particularly liked the way you painted young Barry’s home life. LoL
As to #5 I have often wondered why the Dems think herding cats will be a snap.
“Latina” was added in 2001, not removed. Sorry for the error.
Intellect is simply the ability of some people to B.S. other people into thinking they are intelligent.
Biden, in that respect, is a true intellectual.
You have to wonder about the IQ levels of people who think that Al Gore and Joe Biden are geniuses.
CBS Evening News pointed that up ...as well as her Achilles heel.......her obsession with latinoism.
REFERENCE CBS Evening News caught her offguard---visiting with Senators. She had clearly been coached------ CBS (bless 'em) explicitly pointed out that she and the Senators were mouthing the same language. Someone off-camera asked her if she was racist. Her visage quickly changed from a smiling senorita to that of a raging bull. CBS kept the camera trained on her. She was furious that gringos were not "respecting" her. Her lips actually moved but no sound came out.... Katie Couric's voice-over clearly noted that, as well.
She is not an objective jurist. She is an "advocate" obsessed with redressing latino grievances from the bench.
Americans will lose our freedoms as payback for all those Frito Bandito commercials.
We need to see her emails and phone records to determine who controls her and whether she has contacts with foreign governments.
We are in danger of losing our rule of law, our distinctive American culture, and our very identities as Americans.
ITEM Nelson Castellanos was arrested in NYC outside his Harlem apartment, charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He was holding his keys and a white shopping bag containing about $10,000, mostly in $1 and $20 bills. That evening, pursuant to a warrant, DEA personnel searched his apartment and found over 1,200 grams of cocaine, six live rounds of ammunition, a .44 caliber revolver and incriminating notebooks. All this evidence was thrown out by District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds that the DEA agents had not provided the magistrate with probable cause to search Castellanos's apartment.
ITEM--SOTOMAYOR'S ACTUAL WORDS FROM THE BENCH, SENTENCING ADMITTED DRUG DEALER Louis Gomez (a noncitizen), who pleaded guilty to dealing cocaine: “[I]t is in some respects a great tragedy for our country that instead of permitting you to serve a lesser sentence and rejoin your family at an earlier time I am required by law to give you the statutory minimum. ... [W]e all understand that you were in part a victim of the economic necessities of our society, unfortunately there are laws that I must impose. “Louis Gomez, yours is the tragedy of our laws and the greatest one that I know. ... the one our congressmen never thought about and don’t think about. ... “It is no comfort to you for me to say that I am deeply, personally sorry about the sentence that I must impose, because the law requires me to do so. The only statement I can make is this is one more example of an abomination being committed before our sight. You do not deserve this, sir.”
If enough comes out on this bigot, Sotromayor, maybe the Republicans will block her release from committee ... they can refuse to hold the vote to move from Judiciary Committee to the Senate floor for an up or down vote, so don’t believe the crap about not having enough Republicans to prevent her nomination. But this woman needs to be exposed for the bigot she is and the weakness she has toward the Constitution and the law, and every minute of it tied to Obowma and the democrats because they believe this bigot is a very ‘qualified’ nominee!
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