Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Completely Unqualified, or Unqualified Completely?

(note: this post was first published May 3rd, 2009. As I feared, Sonia Sotomayor has been picked by Obama for the open SCOTUS seat...)

The papers in New York are all talking up the possibility of Barack Obama nominating Bronx girl Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circut Court to fill the soon-to-be empty seat of the retiring Justice David Souter.

Made famous primarily for ending the 1994-95 baseball strike by siding with labor, she was originally appointed by President Bush I, then evelated to the 2nd Circut by President Clinton. Which led to a bit of a nasty confirmation hearing:

Some Republicans were convinced Clinton was promoting her to the 2nd Circuit so he could later move her and her allegedly liberal views to the Supreme Court.

She was eventually confirmed 68 to 28. A true-blue liberal grudge-holder 'till the end, she never forgot or forgave the rough treatment she received from Congress. Which leads us to this gem, the single reason - beyond any other - that she must not be allowed to sit on the Supreme Court:

Today, even after she won Senate approval and is prepared to begin work in the 2nd Circuit, she remains angry at what she says was the Republican stereotype of her: she's a woman, she's Latina, she must be a bleeding-heart liberal.

"That series of questions, I think, were symbolic of a set of expectations that some people had [that] I must be liberal," she said. "It is stereotyping, and stereotyping is perhaps the most insidious of all problems in our society today."

Let's play that last part again, folks!

"...stereotyping is perhaps the most insidious of all problems in our society today."

Really, your Honor?

Can you imagine where that mindset will take her when interpeting the Constitution from the nation's highest judicial seat?

Unqualified - right off the bat...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, I hear mucho talk, and am open to her being unqualified. But if true, give us some case citations to back it up! If all amyone has is affirmative action, forget about it! Her degrees could have been tainted by aff. action, but no Senator would ever have an aide look up her transcripts (grades), scores, etc. & actually bring that up (if true). Senators simply have no balls, and that includes the female ones (esp. B. Boxer, who I suspect...).

Anonymous said...

If you look at her academic records, you'll see that she graduated summa cum laude at Princeton, and was a member of the Law Review at Yale Law. Even if affirmative action helped her gain admission to these institutions, to do as well as she did academically, she had to be incredibly intelligent of her own accord.

The JerseyNut said...

Questionable logic, Anon #2. Put it this way: Both George Bush and Barack Obama went to Ivy League schools. Both have extremely divergent ideas about the right way to manage foreign affairs, the economy, etc.

One of them will be proven to be quite right, the other spectacularly wrong.

And the wrong one? We'll, one thing for sure: They'll be an Ivy League product.

Just like all those genuises on Wall Street that never saw the bubble coming, or NJ governor Jon Corzine, Ivy League/Goldman Sachs billionaire who has run New Jersey into the ground with insane liberalism.

Not convinced.