cartoon courtesy Erin Bonsteel,    Visit Erin Bonsteel's Website


Ahem, Ms, Sotomayor, that blindfold is supposed to stay in place for you to keep your oath, just sayin...

Some choice comments by folks who follow this stuff a lot more closely than I, though I suppose we are fast approaching the point where we can summarily dismiss their opinions out of hand, since they are all white males and all ...

Jonah Goldberg cuts to the quick:
Why make this complicated?

President Obama prefers Supreme Court justices who will violate their oath of office. And he hopes Sonia Sotomayor is the right Hispanic woman for the job.

George Will adds...
Democrats compounded confusion by thinking of the court as a representative institution. Such personalization of the judicial function subverts the rule of law.

Quinn Hillyer - American Prospect blogs...
"He nominates the most radical possible choice for the Supreme Court, a woman whose speeches and writings are so obscenely racialist that no white male could possible get away with saying anything like those things and live, professionally, for even a single additional day. Obama's emphasis today, in introducing Sotomayor, on biography over all else was absolutely sickening. And despicable."

And this quote has been included in literally every column or article I have seen:

“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,”
- Sonia Sotomayor

WTF?  Could you imagine the outrage if a white male juxtaposed the highlighted nouns and said the exact same thing?  Seems to me Trent Lott said something considerably less incendiary a few years back and lost his job the same week.  Not for the comment apparently, but because he was a white male.

Call me goofy but it seems to me anyone with a room temp IQ who reads that and doesn't see flat out bigotry has a very serious reading comprehension problem. 

The only possible chance of Sotomayor failing to get confirmation, which is slim to none at best, will require the relentless repetition of that fateful quote.  Well that and the off chance she comes out as pro-life.  

Rich Lowry from the National review Online comments thusly..
This stunning statement of race and gender determinism perhaps explains Sotomayor's decision in the New Haven firefighter case now before the Supreme Court. A white firefighter studied for an exam to get a promotion. He bought $1,000 worth of books and had someone read them onto audiotapes because he's dyslexic. He passed, but the city declined to promote him because no blacks had qualified for promotion.

Sotomayor thought this blatantly race-conscious action passed constitutional muster. Does her 2001 speech mean that she would have ruled differently if she were white, dyslexic, or a working-class firefighter struggling to get ahead? If so, she is manifestly unfit for the highest court in a country that puts the law above tribal loyalties.

Mr Lowry nails it, but the question is, with a filibuster proof majority, what can be done?  Well, to be honest, not much.  We can't win.  She will be confirmed, but that doesn't mean the GOP Senate should lay down.  Just because you know you can't win is no excuse to not join the battle. 

They need to avoid the personal attack methodology employed by Democrats on Clarence Thomas, keep the argument above board, strictly limited to principle, and repeat that horrendous quote again and again and again - -  to the point where for the rest of her career she will be known as the Associate Justice who discarded the rule of law for favortism but was confirmed anyway - - because of it.

The personal struggle story is also being so overplayed it is becoming nauseating.  It's as though liberals have no awareness beyond the moment.  Let me put it this way, if you happen to abide by Obama's notion that ones struggles, upbringing, and life story are more or equally qualifying attributes to serve on the Supreme Court then consider this:  there is a current Associate Justice, of color, who grew up in rural poverty considerably worse off than did Sotomayor, and who had not lost just his father but both parents and was raised by his Grandparents.

So then, according to Obama's standards Clarence Thomas is obviously the most qualified member of the Supreme Court ever!