I never in my life thought I could possibly see a Supreme Court
pick as bad as Sonia Sotomayor. Barack Obama is quite clearly
trying to upend all the underpinnings of American society in
order to create his own version of a Brave New World. Government
takeovers of banks and car companies, firings of executives,
politically based decisions on which individual car dealerships
remain open, world tours apologizing for supposed American sins,
mollycoddling our enemies while insulting our friends, broken
promises about transparency combined with selective release of
classifed documents to serve political purposes.... and so much
more, and now.... THIS. He nominates the most radical possible
choice for the Supreme Court, a woman whose speeches and writings
are so obscenely racialist that no white male could possible get
away with saying anything like those things and live,
professionally, for even a single additional day. Obama's
emphasis today, in introducing Sotomayor, on biography over all
else was absolutely sickening. And despicable. To which all
decent Americans ought to respond: No, it does NOT make a
difference whether she grew up rich or poor, black or white or
Hispanic, left-handed or right-handed, ill or healthy, Jew or
gentile. All that matters is whether or not she will uphold her
oath to serve the Constitution and laws as written, including the
explicit and tacit restrictions therein on judicial authority. In
America, judges are not supposed to be fonts of wisdom, not
supposed to "feel" the right things and not supposed to be
demigods purveying some sort of cosmic notion of fairness.
Instead, they are supposed to apply the laws as provided to them
by the political branches within these United States. Period. As
Justice Potter wrote in a famous dissent, later echoed by
Clarence Thomas, a judge's duty is not to decide whether or not a
law is wise or fair or even whether it is "uncommonly silly." His
duty is just to do what the law says, and let the political
branches change it if its silliness or unfairness is manifest.
Obama has invited a war over the very meaning of being an
American, a war over whether government still is legitimate only
if and when it is based on the duly determined consent of the
governed. This is a war for our civic souls. We dare not lose it.
