The American Spectator

Murphy| 5.27.09 @ 6:04PM

Is there any chance Sotomayor's Princeton education, followed by Yale law school, will mean anything to you people, or do you just think all Puerto Ricans are stupid?

DougN| 5.27.09 @ 6:27PM

Murphy,

"You people" ?
YOU PEOPLE????
Just what do you mean by that?

Some Puerto Ricans are brilliant; some are rather dim. Just like everyone else. Sotomayor's Princeton/Yale background is not in evidence when one reads her opinions, her statements to groups, etc.

Pete| 5.27.09 @ 6:34PM

If she encountered enough "empathy" (read: reverse racism) along the way, perhaps it doesn't mean very much at all? Her colleagues don't seem to think too much of her from what I have read, which ought to say something. If just a college name guaranteed anything, the Messiah himself would be certified as intelligent - but instead, his actions reveal him to be a corrupt, power hungry elitist, who either knows nothing of economics or simply doesn't care. Had people examined his past record (or lack thereof), perhaps the current debacle could have been avoided. Based on Sotomayor's past record, she either doesn't have the brain power to interpret the law or doesn't care to in favor of the far less scholarly "social justice" where one uses one's 'heart' instead of brain. In my mind, they are both dangerous idiots, but I see you are giving her a free pass based on the schools she went to - say, didn't Bush go to an Ivy League school as well?

Mary| 5.27.09 @ 6:41PM

This is starting to be fun. I suspect enjoying it this much is sin.

I think the dull-witted meme is starting to take hold.

You can see what Turley is really driving at, and that’s the awful possibility that he/they might have to defend her writing, if appointed. As I said yesterday, if she’s a half-wit as compared to Scalia, there’s only so much media bias can do to shield her from the unfolding of that.

We’re in the position we’re in right now because we long ago ceded the battle for language to the Left. We never wanted to pay the price for principle, and now, when it’s most critical we lack any power whatsoever. We ceded the battle to poorly educated, half-witted, fascistic, cretinous historicists, to boot. We let them define us without much of a fight.

Republicans have a tremendous opportunity here to stand for what is just. Her whole “I’m Latina, hear me roar,” has a short shelf-life, I think. By the way, she’s not Latin; I am!

There isn’t an Italian I know who wouldn’t have been insulted by an offering of Affirmative Action. We'd be worried everyone would assume we were all Fredos.

Oh, and look for another shiv-sticking from McCain. He’s not doing that well in his bid for re-election. This is a perfect opportunity for him to show his “bi-partisanship,” and kill two birds with one stone.

Lastly, also look for the anti-neo-cons to find that the enemy of their enemy is their friend.

From Paul Johnson’s Enemies of Society:

“Democracy is the least evil, and on the whole the most effective, from of government. Democracy is an important factor in the material success of a society, and especially in its living-standards. But of course the essence of democracy is not one-man-one-vote, which does not necessarily have anything to do with individual freedom, or democratic control. The exaltation of 'majority rule' on the basis of universal suffrage is the most strident political fallacy of the twentieth century. True democracy means the ability to remove a government without violence, to punish political failure or misjudgment by votes alone. A democracy is a utilitarian instrument of social control; it is valuable in so far as it works. Its object is to promote human content; but perhaps this is more likely to be secured if the aim is rephrased. As Karl Popper says, the art of politics is the minimization of unhappiness, or avoidable suffering. The process of avoiding suffering is greatly assisted by the existence of free institutions. The greater their number, variety and intrinsic strength, and the greater their independence, the more effective the democracy which harbours them will be. All such institutions should be treated like fortresses: that is, soundly constructed and continually manned.
Free institutions will only survive where there is the rule of law. This is an absolute on which there can be no compromise: the subjection of everyone and everything to the final arbitration of the law is more fundamental to human freedom and happiness than democracy itself. Most of the post-war democratic institutions have foundered because the rule of law was broken and governments placed themselves about the courts. Once the law is humbled, all else that is valuable to a civilized society will vanish, usually with terrifying speed. But the rule of law is essential, not merely to preserve liberty, but to increase wealth. A law which is supreme, impartial and accessible to all is the only guarantee that property, corporate or personal, will be safe; and therefore a necessary incentive to saving and investment.
Always, and in all situations, stress the importance of the individual. Where individual and corporate rights conflict, the political balance should usually be weighted in favor of the individual; for civilizations are created, and maintained, not by corporations, however benign, but my multitudes and multitudes of individuals, operating independently.
Beware of those who seek to win an argument at the expense of the language. For the fact that they do is proof positive that their argument is false, and proof presumptive that they know it is. A man who deliberately inflicts violence on the language will almost certainly inflict violence on human beings if he acquires the power. Those who treasure the meaning of words will treasure truth, and those who bend words to their purposes are very likely in pursuit of anti-social ones. The correct and honourable use of words is the first and natural credential of civilized status. "

Mary| 5.27.09 @ 6:43PM

Sorry for the lack of paragraph breaks. Thought I'd taken care of that.

Mary| 5.27.09 @ 7:21PM

From George Will:

“Before Sotomayor's confirmation hearings begin, the Supreme Court probably will overturn a ruling she supported on the 2nd Circuit -- the propriety of New Haven, Conn., canceling fire department promotions because there were no African Americans (although there was a Hispanic) among the 18 firemen the selection test made eligible for promotion. A three-judge panel of 2nd Circuit judges, including Sotomayor, affirmed a district court's dismissal of the firemen's complaint, doing so in a perfunctory and unpublished order that acknowledged none of the large constitutional questions involved.

Stuart Taylor of the National Journal calls this "a process so peculiar as to fan suspicions that some or all of the judges were embarrassed by the ugliness of the actions that they were blessing and were trying to sweep the case quietly under the rug, perhaps to avoid Supreme Court review or public criticism, or both." Taylor says that when "the circuit's more conservative judges got wind of the case," they sought to have it reheard by the full 2nd Circuit. They failed but successfully argued that the Supreme Court should take the case.”

Bean-counters, and nothing but.

Pete| 5.27.09 @ 7:35PM

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/judge-sotomayors-appellate-opinions-in-civil-cases/

Profile of an activist.

Sean| 5.27.09 @ 8:03PM

Princeton and Yale! That settles it she is the second smartest woman in the world behind Hillary. We should be honored to have her make up laws for us. Maybe we will get some more foreign precedents.

Mike | 5.27.09 @ 8:20PM

DougN
How many of Sotomayor's opinions have you read?

Nope| 5.27.09 @ 8:24PM

You guys are really, really losing it, going batsh*t crazy in the process, and embarrassing yourselves. Why don't you save some anger for actual outrages? You're going to have nothing left if you keep screaming "This is the end of the world!" to every goshdarn thing that happens. Obama nominated a liberal judge that you don't like?! Ohmigosh! Who could have predicted.

Suck it up. This is what losing feels like. Stop whining about every little thing and start coming up with actual ideas... then we'll start listening to you.

ruth| 5.27.09 @ 8:28PM

Murphy/Jeremiah, certainly all Puerto Ricans AREN'T stupid, but all liberal trolls like you ARE. Cretin.

Mary| 5.27.09 @ 9:19PM

Andrew Breitbart -what a great face he has!- remembers Clarence Thomas and Arianna Huffinton.

Mary| 5.27.09 @ 9:21PM

Amspec should think about featuring something like Uncommon Knowledge.

Cameron| 5.28.09 @ 9:51AM

Watching you idiots work yourselves into hysteria over Sotomayer is more enjoyable than I thought. Wingnut tears taste like sweet, sweet honey.

If anything, the GOP should be thanking Obama for appointing Sotomayer. If you honestly believe this woman is the most radical choice he could have made, I have a bridge to sell you.

If you want to oppose her because she's too "librul" than go right ahead. But you're really barking up the wrong tree by attacking her intellect. Yes, there are plenty of idiots who went to Ivy League schools. But idiots don't graduate Summa Cum Laude at Princeton and then go on to edit the Yale Law Review. Idiots with Ivy League degrees got there because of their rich daddy (cough*George W. Bush*cough) and have the straight C's to prove it.

Good luck with the self-immolation though! Hispanic voters will really love your attempts to paint the first Latina Supreme Court Justice as a dumb bitch affirmative action beneficiary. See you at the next tea party!

JMSA| 5.28.09 @ 11:30AM

Cameron,

If she's as bright as you claim, why were three out five, soon to be four out of six (see the New Heaven, CT Firemens' case pending before the Supreme Court) of her major 2nd Circuit opinions reversed by the Supreme Court? Bias or possibly some sort of agenda in her part, maybe? Wouldn't you agree that there's something fishy there? As to her great judicial intellect, no less an expert and darling of the left, Jonathan Turley, himself described her opinions as anything more than average on MSNBC. I guess you missed that, too.

PS: I guess you were also unaware of what the Dems did to the nomination of Miguel Estrada, not only a real, and per most expert legal opinions, a truly great judicial intellect, and Ecuadorian-born Hispanic, to boot; yet, it didn't seem to hurt the Dems one bit.

Cameron| 5.28.09 @ 1:17PM

JMSA,

You really should crawl out of the right-wing echo chamber and learn a few things before you try and play with the adults. I'll try and explain things nice and slow for you.

The Supreme Court doesn't rule on every case that is heard by the lower appellate courts. They get to selectively choose which cases they wish to hear. Cases where the Supreme Court agrees with the ruling of the appellate courts don't make it onto the docket.

Sotomayor wrote somewhere around 380 rulings while on the 2nd circuit court of appeals. Of all those rulings, just six were taken up by the Supreme Court. And of those six, a maximum of three will possibly be overturned. One can logically assume that the Supreme Court agreed with Sotomayor's rulings in the other 374 cases, because they declined to hear them. So, 380 total cases, a POSSIBLE maximum of 4 cases overturned by the Supreme Court. 4/380 = 1.5%

Got that?

tonypal| 5.28.09 @ 1:40PM

Cameron:

The Supreme Court is quite selective when it comes to granting certiorari. The fact that they did not choose to review every one of the 380 cases for which she wrote an opinion hardly means they agreed with the ones they chose not to review.

Was that written slowly enough for you to understand.

By the way, speaking of echo chamber, why don't you come up with a different schtick regarding George Bush getting into Yale (you forgot his Harvard MBA - maybe his dad had dirty photos of the Dean of the Harvard Business School).

Oldefarte| 5.28.09 @ 1:43PM

Murphy, your GD idiotic statement ["....Is there any chance Sotomayor's Princeton education, followed by Yale law school, will mean anything to you people, or do you just think all Puerto Ricans are stupid?...."] is pure horse-excrement! The Kennedy clan all graduated from Harvard and/or their Law School----does that qualify them for the SC? Half the so-called GRADUATES of these schools received entrance due to their mommie and/or daddy pouring tons of cash donations into the school's coffers, and their administrators turning a blind eye to their bouncing-baby booboo with lacking high school grades and deficient SAT scores, moron! An Ivy League degree signafies the same thing as entrance into your typical country club due to one's wealth-score in the community. God, what a liberal friggin' moron you are! The average Puerto Rican has twice the apparent IQ as you do, fool! The title of this article is BIOGRAPHY OVER 'BRAINS'----get it, as in intelligence???? Just because someone graduated from an Ivy League School does not qualify them as Albert Einstein, dummie! The point of these articles is that Sotomayor is possibly an AVERAGE jurist,get it? Does everything in your miniscule brain have to do with RACISM, or are you just sucking down/spitting out the typical liberal kool-aid again that has been brainwashed between your ears by the likes of Keith Oblermann and Racael Maddow? Get over this racism excrement----everybody is sick and tired of your ignorant monologue. Argue your point intelligently, or go comment on the NYT, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, NBC,CBS,etc websites, where they'll welcome your ignorant racism diatribes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DougN| 5.28.09 @ 2:00PM

Murphy: All of 'em. Every single one.

Cameron: (cough) Albert Gore
(cough) John Kerry
(cough) every member of the Kennedy family

Oldefarte| 5.28.09 @ 2:13PM

I think that the POINT should be, not whether or not she's intelligent enough [which she obviously is], but WHY is she the nominee? We all know the answer to that---she's Hispanic. Obama is typically playing LIBERAL POLITICS with his pick, using Sotomayor as a precursor to ramming down our throats ENHANCED IMMIGRATION REFORM, which, if successful, will possibly add voting numbers to Democrats' rolls and keep Obama and Crew in power. Just as Democrats have used political/governmental slavery to financially incarcerate African-Americans for centuries, in order to sustain their/Democrats' political power base, so too are they now formulating their Hispanic Gameplan, via Sotomayor and Immigration Reform. If conservatives and Republicans are smart, they can use Hispanics' history of religious devotion and its subsequent conservative views as an instruction tool to convince Hispanics that the Republican traditional values are more in line with their own viewpoints than those being proclamated by the Democrats. Hispanics are hardworking and a proud people, and Republicans should use that to their advantage to argue against this socialism/communism of the Democratic Party. The Sotomayor hearings in DC represent a real opportunity for Republicans to use a clear, concise message to convince Hispanics that YES, Sotomayor is qualified and will be confirmed as a SC jurist, but that Democrats are using her as a foil/tool toward their power/control mantras!!!!!

mimi| 12.15.09 @ 12:26AM

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