Obama Supreme Court

Sonia Sotomayor!

sotomayor-262

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF SUPREME COURTS…

A rigorous intellect, a mastery of the law... a commitment to impartial justice….an inspiring woman whom I believe will make a great justice…”

“Walking in the door she would bring more experience on the bench and more varied experience on the bench” than anyone currently sitting on the court had when they walked in.

Originally nominated to the District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992 by George H.W. Bush.

Wooo-hooo! Go Sonia!

(This column over at HuffPost has some great Sonia links, including the story of how Judge Sonia Sotomayor arguably “saved baseball.”)

I’m personally fond of the story about how—in addition to her single mom—one of Judge Sotomayor’s inspirations was….Nancy Drew. (Me too, girlfriend. Me too.)

(A reread of those 1930’s and 1940’s-written novels reveals some very creepy Jim Crow moments, but despite the downsides, for thinking girls of certain generations, they provided one of the few available models.)

THE ROSEN FACTOR

The big buzz around the blogosphere right now has less to do with the choice of Sonia Sotomayor, and more to do with the very negative take on Sotomayor and her intellect by the New Republic’s Jeff Rosen, who used a string of anonymous sources to question Sotomayor’s braininess or lack thereof.

Here’s a bit of what Amy Davidson at the New Yorker said:

[Rosen’s] was an ugly little piece—it suggested that she was shrill and not so smart, never mind the summa from Princeton and the editorship on the Yale Law Journal. Its flaws, tonal and reportorial, are obvious even to the lay person, just as its conclusions are attractive to a certain political set: “So she’s dumb and obnoxious. Got it,” a National Review blog said.

Over at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates had this to say:

“…I haven’t read enough of Sotomayor’s opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor’s detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths.”

I can’t get past that line–mostly because, as Greenwald said yesterday,
it drips with unintentional irony–Rosen is attacking Sotomayor’s ability to do the necessary intellectual heavy-lifting, while explicitly neglecting to do any of his own. In this instance, His piece reads like a burglar’s brief against rampant criminality. Authored mid-robbery, no less.

Here’s what Constitutional law professor Darren Hutchenson said in rebuttal, tearing Rosen’s points limb from limb.

Here is an essay from a former law clerk, Gerard Magliocca, who worked around her for thirteen years.

And here is what Professor Rob Kar, former clerk for Sotomayer said at length—on the record (as opposed to the off-the-record gossip and smearing that Rosen quoted)—about his former boss. Below is one tiny snip:

Judge Sotomayor is much smarter than most people in the legal academy, and much smarter than most judges who are granted almost universal deference in situations like this. And while I have worked with numerous people who are thought of as some of the best minds in the nation, and about whom the question of brilliance would never even arise, most of them are—quite frankly—pedantic in comparison.

UPDATE: GLENN GREENWALD at Salon has the most thorough critique of Rosen’s piece and Rosen’s subsequent defense of his story, which at this point is looking increasingly indefensible. Greenwald’s long rundown is worth reading because it points beyond the Rosen/Sotomayor issue to much of what is maddening about many mainstream media stories. (Greenwald is, by the way, a former constitutional law and civil rights litigator.)

Here’s the link.

33 Comments

  • Oh no Woody… A Puerto Rican!

    “Now, no prejudice intended, but I always check with the Bible on these here things. I think that, I mean if God had meant for us to be together he’d a put us together. But look what he done. He put you over in Africa, and put the rest of us in all the white countries.”

    “If your spics and your spades want their rightful share of the American dream, let ’em get out there and hustle for it like I done.”
    WELL THEY HAVE WOODY.

  • If the Democrats are consistent, there’s no way that they should accept Sotomayor. (Yeah, right.)

    From Rosen today on Sotomayor: 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.

    From 2005 on John Bolton in Senate confirmation hearings: What is it about John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, that so upsets his critics? Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Democrat, seems unhappy that Bolton is not in jail: Bolton’s handling of conflicts with subordinates, Dodd said recently, “ought to be indictable.” Sen. Barbara Boxer believes Bolton needs “anger management” therapy. And Bolton’s former colleague, retired State Department official Carl Ford, calls Bolton a “bully” and a “serial abuser” who kissed up to those above him on the organization chart and kicked those below.

    – – –

    Archie Bunker: “If your spics and your spades want their rightful share of the American dream, let ‘em get out there and hustle for it like I done.”
    WELL THEY HAVE WOODY.

    Oh, really?

    Judge Sonia Sotomayor: U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor…voted to deny a racial discrimination claim in a 2008 decision. She dismissed the case in a one-paragraph statement that, in the opinion of one dissenting judge, ignored the evidence and did not even address the constitutional issues raised by the case.

    The case, Ricci v. DeStefano, involved a group of 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter who filed suit in 2003 claiming that the city of New Haven, Conn., engaged in racial discrimination when it threw out the results of two promotion tests because none of the city’s black applicants had passed the tests.

    Maybe Sen. Jeff Sessions, leading Republican on the Judiciary Committee, might remind the Democrats of their hypocrisy in the confirmation hearings.

  • The (Liberal) ABA Journal: The Four Likely Lines of Attack Against Sonia SotomayorIdeologues are likely to advance four lines of attack against federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor when confirmation hearings are held….

    From commenters on that article: I guess the Founders would be considered “ideologues” because of their support of the Constitution and a non-law-making judiciary. and So your response to these “lines of attack” (or, if you weren’t biased against them, “concerns”) is to say “nah uh” and plug your ears? ABA once again shows where its bread is buttered. This is why I don’t pay my dues.

    Don’t worry. She’ll win confirmation. No Democrats would dare oppose her.

    Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if a justice was nominated based upon qualifications rather than discriminatory factors like gender and ethnic background? But, not in the world of Obama and Sotomayor.

    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….

    BTW, the most underrepresented group on the Supreme Court is Protestants.

    White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, straight, conservative, tax-paying, males from the South are the most discriminated against group in the country. Still, we do a better job than those who get ahead with government backed reverse-discrimination. With this woman as a new justice, we’ll just work harder.

  • “From Rosen today on Sotomayor: 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.”

    Woody, that was not from today but rather from Monday, May 04, 2009

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

    Woody, you also left this out from the same article, why?

    Sotomayor’s former clerks sing her praises as a demanding but thoughtful boss whose personal experiences have given her a commitment to legal fairness. “She is a rule-bound pragmatist–very geared toward determining what the right answer is and what the law dictates, but her general approach is, unsurprisingly, influenced by her unique background,” says one former clerk. “She grew up in a situation of disadvantage, and was able, by virtue of the system operating in such a fair way, to accomplish what she did. I think she sees the law as an instrument that can accomplish the same thing for other people, a system that, if administered fairly, can give everyone the fair break they deserve, regardless of who they are.”

  • “White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, straight, conservative, tax-paying, males from the South are the most discriminated against group in the country.”

    Bwaaaahhhh!!!

    (They’re also the most self-pitying – have been ever since they lost those “special” privileges back in the day. And the notion that a mediocre couch-potato whose competing professionally with TurboTax and spends hours each day annoying people on the internet works harder than Judge Sotomayer has to be the funniest of his uniquely creepy and disingenuous bits of self-delusion we’ve seen to date. What a silly little man.)

  • FROM WIKI:
    In spite of his numerous flaws, Archie Bunker was simultaneously portrayed as basically decent and, rather than being motivated by genuine malice, was merely a product of the era in which he had been raised. In the episode “Archie and the KKK,” for example, Archie is invited to join a secret club – the Kweens Kouncil of Krusaders – which turns out to be a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. In spite of his inherent discomfort around people of color, Archie responds with genuine revulsion at the group’s violent methods, and attempts to thwart a cross burning. It should also be noted that as the years went on, Archie grew more accepting of people different from himself, albeit partially out of necessity.

    WOODY, CAN YOU BECOME ACCEPTING OF PEOPLE DIFFERENT FROM YOU?

  • From About.com:

    “In 1981, President Ronald Reagan, fulfilling a campaign promise to nominate a qualified woman to the Supreme Court, nominated Sandra Day O’Connor.”

    “Reagan…fulfilling a campaign promise to nominate a woman…” apparently invented ObamaWorld as Woody perceives it.

  • “mediocre couch-potato whose competing professionally with TurboTax and spends hours each day annoying people on the internet…”

    Wearing nothing but undearwear!

  • On “Reagan…fulfilling a campaign promise to nominate a woman…”

    Archie Bunker,
    “Well, let me tell you one thing about Richard E. Nixon. He knows how to keep his wife, Pat, home. Roosevelt could never do that with Eleanor. She was always out on the loose. Running around with the coloreds. Tellin’ ’em they was gettin’ the short end of the stick. She was the one who discovered the coloreds in this country; we never knew they was there!”

    Sadly, bigotry is hard to remove, it wasn’t reasoned in & can’t be reasoned out.

  • So, you people really aren’t against discrimination, as long as it’s not against you. Do you folks realize how bigoted you are in reverse?

    Everyone talks about diversifying the Supreme Court. Maybe the time has come for a WASP.

    There hasn’t been a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant put forward in the five nominations since Justice David H. Souter came to the court in 1990. With Souter’s impending departure, the demographic will be seriously underrepresented on a court that features five Catholics and two Jews.

    The only reason that you don’t want the best man for the job is because a man would get the job.

    At least Obama didn’t nominate a queer…this time. Sorry, reg.

  • “So, you people really aren’t against discrimination, as long as it’s not against you.”

    Oh Woody, just take your damn ball and go home, we can play without you and your ball.

  • SanFer, from your article:

    Here you have a racist,” said Limbaugh. “You might want to soften that and say a reverse racist. And liberals say, of course, say that minorities cannot be racists because they don’t have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone. Reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the great living example of a reverse racist and now he’s appointed one. You getting this AP, Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

    Limbaugh has to check my comments before he says something.

    The article in the Huffpost says that the GOP is in a bind with a Hispanic justice being nominated. Why? Is it because you expect her to be confirmed because of her hue rather than her qualifications? I guess so.

    It’s too bad that the Democrats won’t let people be more than hyphenated Americans. It’s all about identity politics with them rather than telling people that they have the freedom to be whatever they want to be and can be. “Keep ’em on the plantation,” they say.

    Okay, I have to get back to watching “Driving Miss Daisy,” which is on right now. Hoke just got a raise to $75 a week. He didn’t need welfare, affirmative action, or identity politics.

  • I just checked Celeste’s update on the attacks against Rosen for his article. The only thing that makes a liberal madder than showing them a picture of Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin is having one of their own betray them, and Rosen is paying the price now. It’s too bad that liberal arguments ultimately get reduced to personal attacks.

  • Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Cheney said that the President’s choice to replace Justice Souter “should send a strong message to bitter psychos across the country that they will have a voice” on the nation’s highest court.

    “I have no designs on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Cheney said. “There are many other embittered psychotics out there who could do an excellent job.”

    Mr. Cheney said that his own time was better spent “driving down the Republican Party’s approval rating to zero.”

  • NO WOODY,
    The only thing that makes a liberal madder than showing them a picture of Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin – IS A PICTURE OF GEORGE W. BUSH ON THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN FRONT OF THE BANNER STATING “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” (2003). And we’re still there Do’h!

  • Woody- I just checked Celeste’s update on the attacks against Rosen for his article.

    Hey Woody, we just checked the JAMA’s update on you, and they say your so stupid, anything you bought at the lobotomy store would be a blessing.

  • “A wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Hispanic woman who hasn’t lived that life.”

    David Duke once said something like this or was it Sonia Sotomayor?

  • DO’H!, THAT mission was accomplished. Our forces took over Iraq and drove out its dictator. You people just didn’t want Bush to use that picture in the next election, and couldn’t stand to see our military men and women praised for winning something.

    – – –

    MARTA, the mass transit authority in Atlanta, once appointed an unemployed welfare queen as the Chairman of the authority, because she would know what the riders wanted. That worked out great.

    I’ll take anyone who worked his way up over someone who got her positions because of affirmative action.

    As Pokey alluded, you lefties who put one person over others because of race are more like David Duke than you think.

  • I have to say that I would be proud that I am included in Woody’s catalog of bigotry – if I thought anything he said mattered beyond the annoyance of his “look at me!” desperation in a couple of blogs he has parasitically colonized as Troll-In-Chief.

  • I predict that the Sotomayor hearings will provide the GOP with another ripe opportunity to further diminish their status with the American people. Can’t wait for it…the arguments and insinuations against her are so weak, she’ll blow critics out of the water and her opponents will look like the fools, liars and knaves they are.

    The fact that Woody is all over this is some sort of predictor of how far out of the mainstream of decent Americans the ranting and raving against Judge Sonia actually is.

  • “DO’H!, THAT mission was accomplished. Our forces took over Iraq and drove out its dictator”

    WIKI
    Bush stated at the time that this was the end to major combat operations in Iraq. While this statement did coincide with an end to the conventional phase of the war, Bush’s assertion — and the sign itself — became controversial after guerilla warfare in Iraq increased during the Iraqi insurgency. The vast majority of casualties, among both coalition (approximately 98% as of October 2008) and Iraqi combatants, and among Iraqi civilians, has occurred since the speech.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished

  • Well, DO’H!, if liberal Wikipedia says it, then it must be true, and your connection with the intention of the sign at that time with unknown future action must be absolutely correct. Certainly, whoever put up the sign should have used a crystal ball.

    But I have a question. Is it okay if we celebrate the end of WWII, even though we still have troops in Germany and Japan?

    – – –

    reg: I predict that the Sotomayor hearings will provide the GOP with another ripe opportunity to further diminish their status with the American people.

    Like when the Democrats attacked Bush’s nomination of Estrada to an appeals court because he was Hispanic? Of course, Democrats are two-faced.

    In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Estrada to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Yet Estrada’s nomination unleashed a furious Democratic opposition. A staffer to Sen. Dick Durban, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted that liberal interest groups saw Estrada as “dangerous”, because he was “Latino and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.” The memo stressed that these groups wanted to “hold Estrada off as long as possible.” Democrats, many of whom now praise the nomination of Sotomayor, mobilized to deny Estrada even the courtesy of a Senate vote.

    reg, you’re a bigot. Also, patent leather shoes aren’t supposed to be shined, but you can kiss her rear.

  • Again – Estrada was the most cynical of affirmative action picks with no judicial experience. He was picked by Bush SOLELY because he was a rightwing Hispanic being groomed for the Supreme Court as political window dressing for the GOP and no one in their right mind could claim he was chosen primarily on merit. End of story. This line of argument from a blatantly racist little piece of shit such as yourself is beyond ironic.

  • “But I have a question. Is it okay if we celebrate the end of WWII, even though we still have troops in Germany and Japan?”

    Dumbest analogy conceivable. Beyond dumb, really – trivializing over half a decade of combat that was fought hard and made much harder by the incompetence, overarching hubris and unforgivable carelessness of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld “leadership.” The troll exposes himself as desperately dishonest and deeply disrespectful to those who have fought and sacrificed in Iraq over the last six years – but Woody is more concerned with defending Bush than respecting the military or acknowledging the disastrous failures and incompetence Bush visited upon us as “Commander in Chief.” I’ll remember this twisted bit of flagrant, partisan nonsense whenever Woody drops the word “pervert” – which, given his phobias and overt bigotry, has become an obsessive feature of his crank lexicon. Actually, “pervert” is too kind for this rank brand of compulsive dishonesty – especially when far better men and women than Woody are subjected to his inane insults.

  • Woody – you made dismissal of your “arguments” entirely too easy with your overtly racist posts during the election and the persistence and virulence of your homophobic bigotry. Thanks for “outing” yourself. No one with a grain of honesty, morals or intelligence here takes you seriously. This was your own doing and I appreciate it. Made the business of exposing you as a soulless little reactionary bastard a routine that doesn’t waste much of my time.

  • Any negativity coming from a lowlife such as yourself, I take as an affirmation that I’m doing something right. You are scum.

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