The Supreme Court high hurdles contest
Not all “compelling personal stories” are equal
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/05/27...rdles-contest/
Since when did securing a Supreme Court seat become a high hurdles contest? The White House and Democrats have turned Second Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination into a personal Olympics event. Pay no attention to her jurisprudence.
She grew up in a Bronx public housing project.
She was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at 8.
Her father died a year later.
And oh, by the way, did you hear that she was poor?
It’s a “compelling personal story,” as we heard 20,956 times on Tuesday. Sotomayor’s a “real” person. Why, she even read Nancy Drew as a young girl, President Obama told us. She’s “faced down barriers, overcome the odds and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago,” Obama said.
If Sotomayor were auditioning to be Oprah Winfrey’s fill-in host, I’d understand the over-the-top hyping of her life narrative. But isn’t anybody on Sotomayor’s side the least bit embarrassed by all this liberal condescension?
Republicans are not allowed to mention Sotomayor’s ethnicity lest they be branded bigots, but every Democrat on cable television harped on her multicultural “diversity” and “obstacle”-climbing. President Obama made sure to roll his r’s when noting that her parents came from Puerrrrto Rrrrico. New York Sen. Schumer stated outright: “It’s long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court.” Color-coded tokenism dominated the headlines, with blaring references to Sotomayor as the high court’s potential “first Hispanic.” (Not true.)
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill – one of the leading Democrats tasked with guiding Sotomayor through the nomination process — carried the “compelling personal story” talking points to the tokenist extreme in an interview on Fox News:
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“If you look at what this woman has been through, and the obstacles that she has had to overcome, I think she does have a richly, uniquely American experience that makes her incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country,” McCaskill asserted. “Overcoming incredible odds and I think that is new to the courts. There have been a lot of privileged people that have landed on the Supreme Court. The fact that she has lived the life of the common American, trying to grow up in public housing, reaching for scholarships, reaching for the courtroom as a courtroom prosecutor, all of those things will make her a better and wiser judge. And I don’t think that is identity politics. I think that is the American experience.”
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Clever. Challenging Sotomayor’s credentials and extreme views on race and the law is not merely anti-Hispanic. It’s anti-American!
More significantly, Sen. McCaskill waved the high-hurdle card after being asked to defend Sotomayor’s infamous statement at a 2001 University of California at Berkeley speech asserting brown-skin moral authority: “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.” McCaskill actually denied that Sotomayor had make the remarks, then argued the words were taken out of context.
You want context? It’s even worse than that soundbite. As National Journal legal analyst Stuart Taylor reported, “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.’” The full speech was reprinted in something called the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. “La Raza” is Spanish for “The Race.” Imagine if a white male Republican court nominee had published in a law review called “The Race.”
The selective elevation of hardship-as-primary qualification demeans the entire judiciary. If personal turmoil makes one “incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country,” let’s put reality-show couple Jon and Kate Gosselin on the bench. Millions of viewers tune in to watch their “compelling personal story” of life with eight children on television. It’s a “richly, uniquely American experience” of facing obstacles and overcoming the odds. Get them robes and gavels, stat.
McCaskill’s assertion that “overcoming incredible odds” is “new to the courts” is ridiculous. Is she arguing that Thurgood Marshall, Felix Frankfurter, and Sandra Day O’Connor faced lower hurdles than Sotomayor? And how about Clarence Thomas, a descendant of slaves, grew up in abject poverty in the South without a father. The object lesson, of course, is that not all compelling personal stories are equal. Thomas’s crime, of course, was embracing the wrong ideology. So his incredible set of odds and obstacles don’t count in left-wing eyes.
Democrats are eager to celebrate diversity, you see, as long as the diversely-pigmented pledge allegiance to the Left for life.
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Slublog in the Green Room spotlights the NYTimes editorial on Sotomayor today, which illustrates my point precisely.
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives...e-the-results/
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Wow, I have had those kind of “qualifications” err.. I mean, “life challenges” too.. I should be nominated! 
Schumer had his chance to put a Hispanic on the Supreme Court with Eric Estrada. He had a “personal compelling story” and had an idea what being a judge meant - adjudicating based on law and not empathy
This reminded me of something Joe Biden said when Clarence Thomas was appointed. “He would never have gotten this if he were not black” Oh Lord, I can’t take much more of this insanity and hypocrisy. These people are truly nuts, and they think they are this intelligent elite bunch who can save the world.
Besides sotomayor being a racist, she also believes the duty of a judge is to make policy, not just interpret it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfC99LrrM2Q She has proven her merit…and her racist and sexist views, along with her contempt for the rule of law and the Constitution.
By her own words, she has fully disqualified herself for the nation’s highest court, much less the one on which she sits at the moment.
But, have no fear. She will be confirmed, I can’t wait. 
Sotomayor: Her race to the top
http://www.punditandpundette.com/200...ce-to-top.html
Robert Gibbs warns the GOP to “be careful” of the way they talk about Sotomayor http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...out-sotomayer/
Sen. Orrin Hatch Questions Racist Sotomayor's Nutty Statements (Video) http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...ns-racist.html
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Hey Senator Hatch, what's the complaint? You voted for her confirmation when she was nominated to an appeals court position by Clintoon.... )
So much for the 2nd Amendment.
http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2009...ership-is.html
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President Obama has made a bold choice to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter with Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Ms. Sotomayor, if confirmed, would be the first Hispanic Justice and would be only the third woman on the Court.
Sotomayor is a graduate from Princeton University, where her legal theses included Race in the American Classroom, and Undying Injustice: American "Exceptionalism" and Permanent Bigotry, and Deadly Obsession: American Gun Culture. In this text, the student Sotomayor explained that the Second Amendment to the Constitution did not actually afford individual citizens the right to bear arms, but only duly conferred organizations, like the military. Instead of making guns illegal, she argues that they have been illegal for individuals to own since the passing of the Bill of Rights.
Even with her meteoric rise, the nominee still believes there is work to do. In a 1999 interview with a local author, Sotomayor stated that she believed that the United States, "...may never truly be fixed. Racism and economic warfare still crush the dreams of countless second-class citizens. The unfair dimensions of our culture are staggering. You cannot succeed if you are born poor; you simply cannot."
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This from someone born poor that has succeeded. Typically, the post begins with identity politics (is anything else more important?). But to argue that the owning of a gun has been illegal/unconstitutional since the Bill of Rights is absurd.
Here's the end of the post:
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The nomination is expected to go before the United States Senate where Republicans may give a strong fight against what may be considered "judicial activism."
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"May be considered?" How about simply "IS!" Remember, Sotomayor thinks the courts are where policy is made....
At what point will it occur to the public that the judiciary is being used to get through the most unpopular policies that liberals want? They can pay lip service to the right to bear arms, but appoint justices who they know will (ironically) shoot down the 2nd Amendment. They pay lip service to not discriminating by race, by appooint justices that will hand out benefits and burdens by races, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. They say that marriage should be between a man and a woman, but appoint justices who they know will foist gay marriage on We The People. Playing both sides of the fence, given cover by the sycophantic suck-ups in the MSM, and using the judiciary to push an agenda that has zero chance at the ballot box...