Political Humor - The Sotomayor Season of Silly Statements
Political Humor - The Sotomayor Season of Silly Statements
A nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States is a rare and storied political spectacle punctuated by partisan bickering. At least it is entertaining.
President Obama’s nomination Tuesday of Judge Sonya Sotomayor was released amid great fanfare from the left and reserved resistance from conservatives. A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor’s record is cause for concern among conservatives. Faced with giving a lifetime appointment to an unabashed liberal judicial activist, conservatives are measuring their prospects in the Senate to filibuster the nominee. If the Maine ladies can be persuaded join the conservative cause, there would be a chance. Perhaps Snowe and Collins may be looking for a chance to come back over to the Republican Party following their support of Obama’s Stimulus package.
Replacing Justice Souter with another lefty won’t change the Supreme Court, but it will extend the life of the current left-leaning portion of it. In her mid-fifties, a Justice Sotomayor would be inflicting major damage upon the United States for the better part of 30 years. Republicans will at least be doing their research while Democrats celebrate her nomination.
As Obama heads for Vegas to raise money for Lighthouse Harry Reid, Washington is left to analyze the Sotomayor nomination. In doing so, the Washington establishment has already emitted some interesting descriptions of the nominee and the confirmation process. The following are the top ten silly statements, as of day one of her nomination process.
10. (Sotomayor would not be) “reflexively liberal” – Matt Lauer, NBC Today Show Host and Hair Implant Guru. The terms ‘reflexive’ and ‘liberal’ are in fact redundant. Liberalism is by nature reflexive, requiring no forethought or analysis prior to reaching a conclusion. Liberalism only requires one to ‘feel’ and not to dispassionately research. A liberal therefore just reacts to stimuli and is therefore ‘reflexive.’ In his attempt to appear intellectual, Lauer just embarrassed himself.
9. “Appellate Courts are where policy is made” (Sotomayor Herself). Acknowledging with a wink and a nod at a Duke University discussion, Sotomayor admitted that court-made policy in fact occurs at the Appellate level and above. By defining legal parameters and meaning, Courts are then able to make laws where none were intended. She has to be positively drooling at the prospect of having no one above her to reverse any lunatic liberal ideal that she might promote. Joking that she was being recorded while making this statement indicates that she was unconcerned others knowing her activist vision.
8. “You don’t want to be perceived as a bully” (GOP Chairman Michael Steele) referring to investigating the nominee’s history and temperament. Respectfully, this is akin to a guppy bullying a shark. Given the shortage of conservative Senators, the GOP has only one long shot to block this nominee – or to block any damaging legislation. Unless completely united, Republicans can’t bully anyone. Still, Democrats will position Republicans as the big mean kid on the playground.
7. “(Any delay in confirmation would) inhibit the Senate’s ability to focus on other important priorities like the economy, energy and health care” (Senator Diane Feinstein, D-CA). Ruining the economy, auto manufacturing, dismantling US defense capabilities are all liberal priorities. Feinstein doesn’t want to be detracted too much by a drawn out confirmation process. She also needs time to prevent the solar energy industry from setting up shop in the Mojave Desert where the sun actually shines.
6. “Activist judges have no place on the highest court of the land” (Senator Mark Pryor – D AR) – One has to double check the party affiliation of a US Senator making this statement. However, as one of the surviving southern Democrat Senators, Pryor has to issue this statement for home consumption. He quickly followed it up with the thought that he didn’t think Sotomayor fit the description of a judicial activist. It is interesting that he would arrive at this conclusion prior to Senate hearings.
5. “I applaud the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court” (Senator Arlen Specter D-PA) - Now that he is a Democrat, Specter won’t get nearly the press for disagreeing with Republicans. Specter counted on a myriad of cameras and lights outside his office when he would poke a finger in the eye of conservatives. Now that he has confirmed his leftist credentials, there was only one Harrisburg reporter there this morning with a notepad. Specter will surely be disappointed that the press won’t be knocking on his door to watch him berate Republicans.
4. “Our Democratic colleagues have often remarked that the Senate is not a ‘rubber stamp’” (Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell R-KY) in reference to Obama’s request for speedy confirmation. In the best interests of the country, the longer this confirmation can be delayed, the better. McConnell is correct in noting that the rubber stamp mentality is now firmly in the Democrats’ hands. Leftists want this activist on the bench just as soon as possible to accelerate the process of ruining the country’s social and economic system.
3. “(Sotomayor )is not unfamiliar to the United States Senate” – (White House Press Secretary Michael Gibbs) Duh…Thinking himself a savvy politician, the White House Press Secretary pointed out that Sotomayor has received Senate confirmation to her current post on the US Court of Appeals (where Sotomayor points out that ‘policy is made’). This is why Republicans should never make deals with Democrats. Confirming Sotomayor earlier only weakens their hand in opposing her now. The GOP can look for their past deals to come back to haunt them during confirmation.
2. “A judge’s job is to interpret, not make law. Yet these qualities alone are insufficient. We need something more.” (Obama, the Chosen One) Of course Obama wants the Supreme Court to make His laws when Congress won’t. Justifying federal take-over of Health Care, Auto Manufacturing and spending taxpayer funds to pay off ACORN and Unions that supported His election will require sanctioning from the nation’s highest court. Sotomayor intends to make ‘policy’ – not law anyway. Obama is content to believe that voters can’t tell the difference.
1. “Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see” (Sotomayor Herself). Justifying selective recall and acknowledgement of law and facts frees the potential jurist from having to remember what the important facts are to each argument. This seems to be the typical liberal position that truth is defined by the personal circumstances at that moment. Personal experiences then justify any ruling as well as justify selective exclusion of any fact or important evidence.
LS says:
May 27th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
In stating “personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see” Judge Sotomayor is in the mode of creating a factless approach to her potential rulings. This will give a new meaning to “in the opinion of the judge.” Just opinion, no basis in fact. Her rulings could simply become self-justifications. Then facts will turn into factoids that turn into flexible observations that eventuallyl turn into LAW. At what point will we become lawless.
Publius says:
May 29th, 2009 at 11:17 am
LS and MAS1916 - come on, really? Are you going to believe that judges don’t allow personal biases to effect the outcomes of their opinions? Or is that you don’t like that she actually said it out loud? Justice Scalia has said essentially the same thing.
A “finder of fact”, what a judge is, always “weighs” the facts and assigns more weight to certain facts than others. Juries do the same thing. It is what they are supposed to do.
Now, if she said, “I’m going to let this hispanic female off because she’s a female and hispanic” that would be very, very bad. Just like if Scalia voted to overturn Roe v. Wade because he thought it opposed Catholic doctrine. Judges, whether conservative, liberal, or somewhere in between, ought to be making decisions as neutrally as possible. But it is completely impossible to be completely neutral.
Sally says:
June 1st, 2009 at 12:20 am
Who are we kidding?
When the Supreme Court had to decide the Bush/Gore Election they went straight down party lines.
Justice is a joke. Fairness is an illusion.
Gene Lalor says:
June 1st, 2009 at 11:28 am
Sotomayor and La Raza
Excellent cases can be made both for confirmation of Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court and for filibustering her into submission and ultimate withdrawal such as the Democrat minority did to George W. Bush’s pick for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Miguel Estrada.
It may be recalled that the eminently-qualified Estrada was eventually beaten down because of one serious flaw in his resume’. He was so abused that Estrada’s wife may have died shortly after as a consequence.
As with Sotomayor, he too had a compelling history and was a Hispanic nominee but unlike Sotomayor, he suffered from the terminal malady of unreconstructed conservativism and thus was totally unacceptable to fair-minded Senate liberals.
If they didn’t exactly “Bork” him, they trashed and distorted his record sufficiently to make the guy surrender in frustration. Estrada subsequently entered private practice.
Unlike Sotomayor, Estrada had no unseemly affiliations in his background, although some would allege that Sotomayor’s associations are quite seemly, especially that with La Raza.
This is all but moot anyway since Barack Obama’s choice to fill the shoes of David Souter is a shoo-in and, as I previously argued, it would be counterproductive and a waste of effort and ammunition to go after Sotomayor. See “Save the Ammo and Confirm Sonia,” http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1034. Hence, any discussion of Sonia Sotomayor at this point is irrelevant.
What is worth further investigation, however, is La Raza, a group of which Sotomayor is a member and which proudly published her 2001 speech. In that lecture/speech she said in her infamously racist and stupid fashion, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life:” http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=99420.
The National Council of la Raza, the Race, en Ingles, the NCLR, lapped it up…
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)
Tom the Redhunter says:
June 1st, 2009 at 9:11 pm
An excellent post, and I can see it was a good decision to add you to my blogroll. I do like your top ten, and they’re all pretty devastating. I guess if I had to pick the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it), my choice would be…. #1. Of course.
The sycophantic Obama-adoring media are trying to paint her as a reasonable moderate. Sigh. She’ll probably get confirmed.