It's so much fun watching the right workin' in the quote mines, trying to find something that they can take out of context in a manner that allows them to lie while claiming "that's what she said."

I agree that it was good that Rod read the entire speech to see what the context was -- no doubt that will force Limbaugh to read Dreher out of the party, since there's no room for people who actually think for themselves in Rush and Dick's GOP.

I suspect any intellectually honest and serious observer...

Umm, and how many leading Republicans do you think this describes, exactly?

So --

Is this gonna have an impact equal to the daily ramblings of Fat, Drug-Addled Bloviator and Disgraced Former Legislator?

Will it be mentioned on CNN? In a NY Times op-ed? In any editorial in any major newspaper? At the Sotomayor confirmation hearings?

No? Why?

"Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases."

It appears to me that Sotomayor is saying that while it might be ideal for judges to "transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law", she doesn't think that she can do it "in all or even in most cases."

This quote validates the Conservatives' arguments against her. If she cannot transcend her personal sympathies and prejudices when deciding the cases that come before her in order to achieve a "greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law," then she has no business being any kind of judge, let alone a Supreme Court Justice.

Steve Benen wrote: "The 'controversy' over the remark is little more than a foolish exercise, launched by partisans who couldn't be bothered to do with Dreher did: read the whole thing."

No, it is not a "foolish" exercise -- it is a carefully crafted, scripted propaganda ploy, precisely targeted to push the programmed emotional buttons of an audience of Ditto-Heads who have been brainwashed for decades to respond slavishly and predictably to just such propaganda about "reverse racism" on the part of "liberals" being the cause of all their problems.

And this deliberately dishonest propaganda about a fake "controversy" will be amplified and legitimized by the corporate-owned, so-called "mainstream" mass media for wider audience -- an audience who most certainly won't be "bothered" to find out what Sotomayor was actually saying. They will hear what the Republican commentators on CNN and NPR have to say about it, and that's it.

And as for the "partisans", don't kid yourself that they "couldn't be bothered" to read the entirety of Sotomayor's speech. Whether they read it or not is irrelevant to their rote recitation of deliberately dishonest, trumped-up, scripted, teleprompted, corporate-sponsored talking points.

They aren't calling Sotomayor a "racist" because they are too lazy to read her speech. They are calling Sotomayor -- and by extension Obama -- "racists" because they are deliberate liars who are paid lots of money by America's corporate oligarchs to tell vicious lies that undermine public support for and confidence in the Obama administration.

"...but if this is the best they've got against Sotomayor..."

It's the best they have ever got against everything and anything they don't like--misleading, out of context, claims, quotes and reports. For if it were not for such deceptive practices the GOP would have a hard time keeping even the 22% that remains today.

What SecularAnimist said ... seriously he sums it up. I think I will have to forgo any TEEVEE NOOZE tonight in an endeavor to preserve my sanity.

Gingrich, Rove and the other ultrapartisans are not credible in 2009, and much to their ignorance, they don't get it. If one were to proffer and then put into a State of the Union Address Iraq's procurement of yellow cake, and one were to work to out a CIA analyst whose husband had a political difference with the WH, and one were to try to nominate Harriet Miers to the SCOTUS, and one were to attack the sitting Speaker of the House for nothing worthy of our attention, then one would realize we are laughing at instead of with the one who's showing himself to be a fool!

Try as they may, these ultrapartisans will not succeed unless we Americans regress back into a fearful approach to our lives, the universe, and everything! -Kevo

I was reading the book Moral Clarity by Susan Neiman last night, and damned if she didn't quote Benjamin Cardozo (the other possibly Hispanic member of the SCOTUS). The quote was very similar to Sotomayor's speech, in that it basically admitted that like anybody else, a judge is going to make judgments based on their personal experience, whether they want to or not.

I wish I had the book in front of me to give the exact quote, but here's another random Cardozo quote that fits in somewhat nicely:

"Often a liberal antidote of experience supplies a sovereign cure for a paralyzing abstraction built upon a theory."

Textbook think tank operation.
control/frame/disseminate message.

I'm curious, chicounsel, how her dissent in Pappas v. Giuliani, 290 F.3d 143 (2d Cir. 2002) fits into your view that she "cannot transcend her personal sympathies and prejudices." Or are you saying that she agrees with the virulently racist speech she was endeavoring to protect in her dissent?

Chicounsel wrote: It appears to me

...as an opportunity for more hackneyed and disingenuous legal "analysis" that just happens to coincide with conservative talking points? You don't say!

Take note of chicounsel's trenchant analysis, demonstrating that he got his money's worth when he got his law degree out of a gumball machine.

Chicounsel almost makes the idiotic commentor of old "Nathan" seem like a sage.

I pity their clients.

...if this is the best they've got against Sotomayor, it says more about them than her.

All that matters is whether they can make it stick. Kudos to Dreher for reading, though.

yeah, chicounsel, those conservative jurists who also cannot rise above in all or most of the cases but who blatently lie about the ability to do so are so much more qualified than Sotomayor.

i shouldn't be surprised at you. on the right it seems the ability to suspend disbelief and live in an alternative reality is a most valued trait.

This quote validates the Conservatives' arguments against her.

It's twu! It's twu!

Whatever.

I pity their clients. -Gregory

Well, to begin with, any fool can claim to be anything on the intertubes.

And if they are legitimately what they say they are, I'm reminded of the words of a wise old prophet:

Who is more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him.

I was especially surprised and pleased to see Dreher break ranks on this. The whole spectacle of the religious right/GOP working its base into a frenzy over trumped up charges of 'reverse racism' isn't just galling, it's terrible for the country.

Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, ... .

That's all she needs to say in the hearings in order to be confirmed. The worse quote was that she said that the Supreme Court "makes policy". The Supreme Court decides cases that work their way through the system up to it. Of her 380 or so majority opinions, 5 worked up to the SC, and 3 of those were overturned. The only "policy making" comes from deciding which laws and facts are determinative in particular cases. In Kelo vs. New London, would she agree with J. Kennedy that the city had met the burden of establishing that the property was taken for a "public" use? In a medical marijuana case, would she agree with the latest majority opinion that the US Congress had the authority to write the law that it wrote? Those are only "policy" decisions to the extent that some important terms (e.g. "public" use) are not well-defined.

Presumably, had she been on the court she would not have overruled in those 3 cases, and that is probably why she has been chosen by Obama. It's less than 1% of her total opinions, illustrating the extremely conservative process by which justices get chosen and confirmed.

Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

- Justice Sam Alito

Steve writes: " really doubt Limbaugh, Gingrich, & Co. care about the integrity of their criticisms..."
Why do we care about their criticisms at all? The Rethugs are in the minority--although the Dems can't seem to grasp that. We have the majority of votes. She gets out of committee, she wins confirmation. End of story. Only Dems and Dem media care so much about placating a toothless minority. WHEN do we get to rule?!

Well we have a good track record on Sotomayer research then, don't we.

Rosen flat out states that he hasn't done his research, begging the question as to why he wrote his piece when he hadn't done the prep work.

Now we have Dreher, who first attacked based on those 32 words. I guess at least he finally looked up the context and corrected himself. It just that even that is typical conservative. Throw your angry, righteous spin out there first, loudly. If you are wrong you can whisper a correction later even though most will only remember the first thing you said about it.

Does anyone else find it somewhat amusing that the right insists that white males have neither race or gender? Poor, poor things. No wonder they are feeling put upon.

Chicounsel: This quote validates the Conservatives' arguments against her. If she cannot transcend her personal sympathies and prejudices when deciding the cases that come before her in order to achieve a "greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law," then she has no business being any kind of judge, let alone a Supreme Court Justice.

Oh, that's absurd. You are trying to hold her to a higher standard than any other Justice has ever been held to. Most of them have written or spoken words that could be interpreted as meaning, more or less, "All I can promise is to do my best effort, not claiming to achieve my ideals in all cases." Even Robert Bork, the most arrogant nominee I ever listened to, didn't claim that he could always be perfectly unbiased.

Uh-oh, it's looking dark for Sotomayor's opponents when even the rightwing nut Hugh Hewitt praises her. From Andrew Sullivan:

"But Judge Sotomayor will almost certainly prove to be sharp and charming, intelligent and witty -- because that's what federal appeals court judges are trained to be, and she has been on the bench a very long time. Cryptic references to her temperament by retired clerks eager to be "in the mix" are the worst sort of gossip-dressed-up-as-journalism, and simply lower expectations which she will easily meet and exceed. The judge is obviously a bright and accomplished professional with an enormously appealing personal story which resembles that of Justices Thomas and Alito. This is a great country that allows anyone who works hard to rise, and some to rise spectacularly as has Judge Sotomayor," - Hugh Hewitt.

That's all she needs to say in the hearings in order to be confirmed.

Marler, no one imagines the Republcian opposition is principled or in good faith.

That includes you, jackass.

A common tactic on the Right has been to point out the double-standard - "if a white man had said the same thing...". There are, of course, tons of legitimate counters to that argument. However, I just came across a variation that I find more nuanced and thus more interesting:

Suppose for a moment that a conservative Catholic man in a similar position said that he hoped that the richness of his religious tradition would inform and shape his judgments that would more often than not help him to make better judgments than someone without that background.

I have to admit, that statement actually would concern me. I would worry about the speaker's attitudes on things like abortion, gay rights, separation of church and state, etc., and whether or not he would be impartial in his decisions when the law conflicted with his religion.

Is Judge Sotomayor's statement about her race/gender really that different? To be honest with myself, I have to say, I'm not so sure.

marler, you're as bad as Dreher about taking Sotomayor's words out of context. the quote - and it was about appellate courts generally, not the supreme court specifically - was not saying that courts make policy in the legislative sense. she specifically starts that portion of her comments talking about how trial court cases only impact the parties to that specific case, but how policy is made at the appellate level - and more specifically she was noting that appellate judges need to be mindful of the fact that their decisions are precedental on facts other than those of the specific case before them.

This, frankly, is inarguable. Moreover, the view she was expressing is judically rather conservative: that appellate judges need to be circumspect when making decisions of broader applicability, regardless of the equities (or empathies, to use the word de jour) of the parties before them in a way that trial court judges need not worry about.

this is only a controversial statement if one is a political hack or legally ignorant or dishonest and looking for a fight or all of the above.

Marler, she's had 6 cases at the SC, with the three reversals. Since the general rate of reversal for the SC is normally much higher than 50%, her decisions have actually fared better than the norm.

Dave, I'll worry about that when we get anywhere close to having a majority of women or a race other than caucasian on the Sup Ct :)

(and yes, I am concerned about the Sotomayonr nomination because of the overabundance of Catholics on the Court)

I will make this distinction, however: race and gender have no agenda, in large part because they are not organized and hierarchical. If you do not support reproductive choice, there is no papal figure who can remove your gender; if you do not support affirmative action, there is no papal figure who can strip you of your melanin. But as long as the Catholic Church uses the power of the hierarchy, the fear of damnation, and the force of excommunication and public humiliation through the denial of the sacrement to extort politicians into making the state obey the church, being in the Catholic Church should come in for much more scrutiny than being of a particular race or gender.

MatthewRMarler wrote: "The worse quote was that she said that the Supreme Court 'makes policy'."

You have that quote wrong. She didn't say that about the Supreme Court. Check your talking points again.

Marler, she's had 6 cases at the SC, with the three reversals. Since the general rate of reversal for the SC is normally much higher than 50%, her decisions have actually fared better than the norm.

On top of that, the SCOTUS doesn't generally grant cert to cases to affirm them just for laughs. Any case before the Court would have to have at least a decent chance of reversal.

This statement by the nominee reveals the most cynical and shameful resort to identity politics I can imagine, and the final part of it fairly oozes with a ridiculous kind of "empathy" that has no place on the Court. I encourage all conservatives — especially those who visit this site—to speak up against this nominee. There can be no room for backsliding.

"I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up. And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.
But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives. And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position. And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result. But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country." When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

— Samuel Alito, during his confirmation hearings.

"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."

Justice Sam Alito

"And then I rule in favor of white men, whichever side they're on."

Proof that empathy doesn't change your political predilection voting.

"Cryptic references to her temperament by retired clerks eager to be "in the mix" are the worst sort of gossip-dressed-up-as-journalism."

I read in the last day or two that because she never had children, she thinks of her clerks as her children.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth ...

Why do we care about their criticisms at all? The Rethugs are in the minority--although the Dems can't seem to grasp that. We have the majority of votes. She gets out of committee, she wins confirmation. End of story. Only Dems and Dem media care so much about placating a toothless minority. WHEN do we get to rule?!

When the national media outlets go back to being "liberal" or at least nominally neutral.

The editors at a dozen or so news channels and major newspapers every day get to decide who gets air time in the national political dialog. We are unfortunate in that most of that handful of editors and publishers are part of the same social clique as the leaders of the conservative establishment and long ago (per their own statements) gave up any pretense to respecting moral integrity and truth.

As long as this group allocate the larger share of that time to right-wing extremists and decline to pass judgment on the honesty and sense of their statements, the rest of us have to deal with them.

I know this is slightly OT but... Several of you seem to have questions about the *quality* of Chico Unsel's law degree (gumball machine, etc). But, where did you get the idea that he has *any* kind of legal degree, worthy or worthless, chi-chi or dull?

Some of the lawyers I've known may have been obnoxious and irritating, and liars and what have you but none had ever been illiterate or even particularly stupid. Yet here is Chico, unable to properly understand Sotomayor's simple statement. She's not talking about *her personal* inability to transcend what she is (her upbringing, her life experiences, etc); she's talking about that inability being the human condition, common to everyone. That's something that a 10th grader, with half-decent reading comprehension ought to be able to understand. But not our Chico...

Our Chico must be in that 30% of Hispanics, who have yet to realise which side their bread is buttered :)

Sotomayor would be the sixth Catholic on the court. There have been 15 Catholics on the Court in its entire history.

We just call him Chico Unsel, exlibra. He calls himself Chi counsel, as in suburban Chicago counsel.

We don't believe him. Well, maybe about the suburban Chicago part.

Chicounsel -

Yes, if she cannot join their biased voting, she's just not worth anything to them. Who cares how unjust the reactionaries on the court, the ones who are more likely to overturn a law are. It's all about how the rich need to stay rich, for some reason or other.

We just call him Chico Unsel, exlibra. He calls himself Chi counsel, as in suburban Chicago counsel. -- shortstop, @ 19:21

Are you sure? How do you know? Has he ever actually claimed to be a lawyer? "Chicounsel" can be sliced either way and, since I used to know someone whose surname was Unsel (though her first name wasn't Chico), Chico Unsel is how I read the handle from the first time I saw it.

This guy doesn't sound smart enough to be a lawyer. If you're right, and the handle *is* sliced as Chi-counsel, perhaps he's a different sort of "counsel"? One of those church types, telling youngsters to keep their legs crossed and their jeans' zippers up?

Judge Sotomayor: “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,”
 If a white man had made a similar statement " I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life." he would be called a racist. As Thomas Sowell said  "Racism doesn't have a very good track record. You would think you would want to put an end to it rather than put it under new management."

Marler, no one imagines the Republcian opposition is principled or in good faith.

Not all the Republicans oppose Sotomayor. She'll be approved with a large supporting vote, don'tyou think so?

she specifically starts that portion of her comments talking about how trial court cases only impact the parties to that specific case, but how policy is made at the appellate level - and more specifically she was noting that appellate judges need to be mindful of the fact that their decisions are precedental on facts other than those of the specific case before them.

Moreover, look at the nature of her decisions. (Or is that too hard for people, as it entails researching, reading and thinking?)

Her decisions are, for the most part, made on as narrow as ground as possible. She cites lots of precedent in her decisions. She is not prone to wild leaps of legal theory.

It seems to me that she believes that the appeals court inherently makes policy...AND THEN SHE PERSONALLY WRITES DECISIONS THAT MINIMIZES THE SCOPE OF THAT POLICY.

Gee. Sounds to me like a judge the conservatives should love.

Are you sure?

Yes.

How do you know?

Because he explicitly said so here, years ago.

Has he ever actually claimed to be a lawyer?

Yes -- again, long before you joined us here. As I previously mentioned, no one believes him.

Here’s the American Spectator blog on how a group supported by Sotomayor helped kill Estrada’s nomination to the SC Circuit:

President Obama’s radical new nominee to replace Associate Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, used to serve on the board of LatinoJustice PRLDEF (White House backgrounder), one of the racial grievance groups that helped to sink the judicial nomination of Honduran-born Miguel Estrada in 2003.

Along with groups such as the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), LatinoJustice fought a war of attrition against President George W. Bush’s 2001 nomination of conservative Miguel Estrada, a Honduran-born immigrant, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Democrats in the Senate filibustered the nomination and a weary Estrada withdrew from consideration in 2003.

Today LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit, hailed the nomination of Sotomayor on the basis of her ethno-cultural heritage. “As the second largest and fastest growing population in America, with a large pool of qualified individuals to choose from, it was wholly appropriate for the president to nominate a Hispanic,� the group said in a written statement.

According to the group’s website, it gets some of its funding from George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
A search of philanthropy databases reveals other significant donors to LatinoJustice to be Carnegie Corporation of New York ($1,025,000 since 2000), Ford Foundation ($2,280,000 since 2001), Rockefeller Foundation ($1,275,000 since 2000), and JPMorganChase Foundation ($70,000 since 2001).

Among radical left-wing groups, it has a fairly garden-variety agenda. A captive of identity politics, it pushes for enforced multiculturalism, diversity, bilingual public education, race-based gerrymandering of electoral districts, race-based employment quotas, tenants’ rights, and illegal immigrants’ rights.

LatinoJustice PRLDEF was known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund until last year when it filed Articles of Amendment with New York State to change its name. (See pages 35 to 41 of its IRS Form 990 for the group for Tax Year 2007.)

Sotomayor’s radical group

President Obama’s radical new nominee to replace Associate Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, used to serve on the board of LatinoJustice PRLDEF (White House backgrounder), one of the racial grievance groups that helped to sink the judicial nomination of Honduran-born Miguel Estrada in 2003.

Hispanic voters went to great lengths to sink the nomination of a Hispanic candidate.

I wonder what that says about him?

For the record, let it be noted that Steve Benen has never, and never will make a posting of the nature of Rod Dreher's.

For Benen is one of the meanest, most small-minded partisans in operation today.

President Obama’s radical new nominee [...] -- from the posting by david, @20:45

I saw that, and thought: WTF? Sotomayor is as much a radical as Obama is a socialist... Then I backed up and saw "American Spectator" and all was explained :)

David, you really ought to be more selective about who you put your trust into. Cato Institute... Heritage Foundation... American Enterprise Institute... Limbaugh... American Spectator... Weakly Substandard... Club For Growth... They're all branches of the same, BS-producing, corporation :)

.
Trial by a jury, or a jurist of your peers ring a bell?

Oh, wait Latino's are not conservatives' peers.

My bad.
.

Irony alert: Marler comments on Republican bad faith.

Not all the Republicans oppose Sotomayor.

So what? That doesn't change the fact that the Republican opposition isn't in good faith, as usual.