It was only a few days ago when Barack Obama tried to cover for Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark by saying "she would use different words today if she could revisit her 2001 comment".
Obama uses "comment" in the singular, as if this was a one-time occurance. Turns out this was a remark she repeated over and over:
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor delivered multiple speeches between 1994 and 2003 in which she suggested "a wise Latina woman" or "wise woman" judge might "reach a better conclusion" than a male judge.
Sotomayor delivered a series of earlier speeches in which she said "a wise woman" would reach a better decision. She delivered the first of those speeches in Puerto Rico in 1994 and then before the Women's Bar Association of the State of New York in April 1999.
The summary descriptions of speeches Sotomayor provided indicated she delivered remarks similar to the 1994 speech on three other occasions in 1999 and 2000 during two addresses at Yale and one at the City University of New York School of Law.
Her repeated use of the phrases "wise Latina woman" and "wise woman" would appear to undermine the Obama administration's assertions that the statement was simply a poor choice of words.
And, after all, "words matter", right?
The fact that Sotomayor is a racialist is at this point beyond dispute. Even more concerning, however, may have been her cheerleading for Barack Obama. Via The Corner, we get a number of remarks from Judge Sotomayor that would concern any honest man who dares questions the laws of The One at the Supreme Court:
The power of working together was, this past November, resoundingly proven.”
“The wide coalition of groups that joined forces to elect America’s first Afro-American President was awe inspiring in both the passion the members of the coalition exhibited in their efforts and the discipline they showed in the execution of their goals.”
“On November 4, we saw past our ethnic, religious and gender differences.”
"What is our challenge today: Our challenge as lawyers and court related professionals and staff, as citizens of the world is to keep the spirit of the common joy we shared on November 4 alive in our everyday existence.”
“It is the message of service that President Obama is trying to trumpet and it is a clarion call we are obligated to heed.”
The last is most disturbing. She takes one of Obama's controversial (if under-reported) policies of "mandatory" voluntary service and deems it one we are "obligated to heed". Should a case come to the court where one chooses to fight the constitutionality of Obama's "service", can we trust she would recluse herself? Or would we just have to have faith that our "wise Latina", who knows better than Whitey on all things great and small, will make a fair and unbiased choice?
Me? I prefer my justices blindfolded, not checking skin tones and waving campaign banners...
UPDATE: More here: "Sotomayor's speech is in many ways a distillation of the most extreme views of the liberal civil rights establishment.... "
2 comments:
Dear Sonia,
There were 40+ million of us on November 4 who did not share "the spirit of the common joy."
Yours truly,
One of the Forty Million
it is even worse if you are a resident of Jon Corine's Socialist republik of New Jersey.
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