Free Republic

I would like to thank my family for giving me such support and strength through this most despicable (Indiana District 22 Representative) campaign. They have had to endure the barrage of spiteful and hateful letters to the editor. My family members wanted to respond. It was my mother who objected. She may have been a migrant worker, but she set very high standards for the Espinoza family. The Espinozas take the high road. I could not be more proud of how the Espinoza family has shown such dignity and grace.

Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, an Alameda County judge since 2008, was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday for the U.S. District Court in Oakland, where she will become the first Latina federal judge in the Bay Area. The Senate voted 89-6 to approve President Obama's nomination of Gonzalez Rogers to fill the vacancy created by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's retirement in February. There was no debate, and the opponents, all Republicans, did not say why they voted against the nominee, who had not drawn any opposition in her committee hearing. Gonzalez Rogers, 46, a Texas native and Princeton honors graduate,...

Does Barack Obama have a thing for Latina chicks or what? First there was the famous salsa at Fiesta Latina at the White House with Mexican singer/actress Thalia. The usually cool Obama got so heated up you could almost see the steam rising as he danced his way back to his seat. The president cooled off instantly once he sat down, because that little spin around the room with a sexy diva didn’t exactly impress Michelle, who gave “Mr. Macho” her familiar cold, hard stare.

The Republican wave produced groundbreaking results for minority candidates, from Latina and Indian-American governors to a pair of black congressmen from the Deep South. In New Mexico, Susana Martinez was elected as the nation's first female Hispanic governor. Nikki Haley, whose parents were born in India, will be the first woman governor in South Carolina, and Brian Sandoval became Nevada's first Hispanic governor. Insurance company owner Tim Scott will be the first black Republican congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction, after easily winning in his conservative district. Scott, a 45-year-old state representative, earned a primary victory over the son of...

Sonia Sotomayor heeded White House advice to paint her fingernails a neutral shade during her Supreme Court confirmation process — up to a point. At a White House reception after her confirmation, Sotomayor showed her freshly painted red nails to President Barack Obama, along with her red-and-black semi-hoop earrings, according to an article in the new issue of Latina magazine to be released Nov. 17. Obama joked that Sotomayor had been briefed on proper nail color and earring size. "Mr. President, you have no idea what you've unleashed," Sotomayor replied, according to the article by her close friend Sandra Guzman,...

A political ad that lucky New Yorkers get to see on television begins with "A million lawyers in America" and goes on to wonder about certain no-bid contracts in nearby New Jersey that will not concern us today. But every time the ad runs, I cannot help thinking about Sonia Sotomayor: A million lawyers in America, and Barack Obama chooses her for the Supreme Court.

Here is what Judge Sotomayor said in her opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. She said, “my judicial philosophy... is simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make the law -- it is to apply the law.” On seven occasions, one by example in an opinion, she made clear an opposite opinion, that the outcome of a case decided by a judge of her style of decision-making, can and should be varied according to the “experience” of the judge. She wrote and published, “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her...

Some fun facts:• President's Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security has already fingered people who dislike the federal government and/or the President and military veterans as potential terrorists 1. I am a veteran, I dislike the federal government, and I oppose the president's policies. • The recent cyber-bullying bill passed by the House (HR 1966) makes it a crime to "[transmit] in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior"; violators "shall be fined under this title or...

As more information becomes available, we are able to form a clearer impression of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. She is an intelligent, well-educated individual with broad experience in both corporate and judicial law. According to the White House and to her own statements, she is a person whose "compelling life story" would make her a "better" or "wiser" justice than a white male. She is also a Federal Appeals Court judge with a 17-year history of rulings which, taken as a whole, place her on the left of judicial opinion spectrum in modern America. These matters have been thoroughly discussed and...

THE diversity crowd doesn't really believe in diversity. In fact, what it's really aiming for is conformity of opinion. This crowd expects that members of racial and ethnic groups will adhere to liberal orthodoxy, and woe to those who don't fall into line. If Judge Sonia Sotomayor were a conservative or the nominee of a Republican president, we'd be hearing that she wasn't an "authentic" Latina at all. I recall similar arguments used by my critics when I was the first Latina nominated to a US Cabinet back in 2001. You're only celebrated as the "first" by the diversity crowd...

(2009-06-05) — Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said today that “if President Obama were a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, he would have picked a less controversial court nominee.” Judge Sotomayor said she doesn’t blame the president for his unwise choice, “after all, as a black male, he can’t be expected to demonstrate much more wisdom than he has so far. He’s certainly sharper than a white male, but the fact remains that he’s male, and has no discernible Latino heritage.” Although the president and his spokesman have both indicated that the judge misspoke on an...

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s controversial remark about wise Latina judges has appeared in more than one speech. Sotomayor frequently remarked on her ethnicity and gender in 84 speeches released by the White House yesterday, according to reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The speeches by Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, show the Supreme Court nominee “is driven by a powerful ethnic pride and a belief that she has an obligation to lift up fellow people of color,” the Post says. Earlier reports of the controversial remark identified a 2001 law speech at the University of...

Greg Sargent reports she made an almost identical remark in 1994: “Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that “a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion in dueling cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes the line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, if Prof. Martha Minnow is correct, there can never be a universal definition of ‘wise.’ Second, I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her...

I’ve just obtained a speech that Sonia Sotomayor gave in 1994, in which she made a comment virtually identical to the “wise Latina” one from 2001 that has generated so much controversy. And though the 1994 speech was disclosed to Republican Senators as part of her confirmation for Court of Appeals in 1998, there’s no sign that anyone objected to it in any way. The revelation raises fresh questions as to why the 2001 comments generated the controversy they did, and suggests that the comments are not as controversial as her critics claim. A copy of the 1994 speech was...

Sonia Sotomayor: ‘A Latina Judge’s Voice’/b> Judge Sonia Sotomayor's 2001 address to the 'Raising the Bar' symposium at the UC Berkeley School of Law Note: Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by President Obama on May 26, 2009, to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, delivered this talk on Oct. 26, 2001, as the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture. She spoke at a UC Berkeley School of Law symposium titled "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation." The symposium was co-hosted by the La Raza Law Journal, the Berkeley...

Jim Manzi on the argument from the left that Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment is being taken out of context: I’m not so sure it looks better in context. ~~~ ...Sotomayor makes the indisputable point that decisions made by judges are at least partially impacted by their biological characteristics and life experiences. Human judgment clearly plays a role in such decisions; hence the need for human judges, as opposed to “law interpreting algorithms” in the first place. A key point, of course, is that in the passage under consideration, she goes beyond this and asserts not just that her decisions would...

Imagine Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sitting in a jury pool for a gender and racial discrimination case involving a minority woman who is suing her employer. During jury selection, plaintiff and defense attorneys closely question each prospective juror concerning their background and views on racial and gender issues. In response to an attorney's question as to whether she can reach a fair and unbiased decision based only on the facts, Sotomayor responds: "I would hope that a wise Latina, such as I, with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a...

As Republicans continue to hammer Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for a 2001 assertion that’s become known as the “wise Latina” remark, her backers are struggling to come up with a single coherent line of defense. In the past few days, supporters confronted with the remark have offered a range of divergent tactics and tones, offering explanations that span from apologetic to defiant to suggesting Sotomayor may have been joking. President Obama himself addressed the bubbling controversy, which is emerging as among the leading GOP lines of attack against Sotomayor, asserting on Friday Sotomayor “would have restated” the comment if...

Sotomayor can keep playing the poor, underprivileged Boricua, but let's be real, she's spent her childhood in private school environments, early adulthood amongst the Ivy League elite, and most of her adulthood as a corporate attorney and judge living in Greenwich Village, where the average household income tops that of the entire NY metro area and 98% of the residents are White. I guess that's what she means by her rich experience.

She was incredible, amazing and remarkable three of the many adjectives used in news coverage to describe the Supreme Court nominee.