Sonia Sotomayor

Is Closet Queen Lindsey Threatened by Strong Sonia?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:14:30 -0400

I don't usually get bitchy, but Lindsey Graham's reaction to Sonia Sotomayor set off my gaydar. As Howie Klein regularly reminds us, Lindsey is a bachelor for a reason. So I must ask: is Lindsey the kind of closet queen who is threatened by strong women? (h/t ThinkProgress)

In his post-meeting news conference Graham also raised questions about Sotomayor’s temperament. He said that while she was friendly in the meeting, he could not simply ignore reports of her fiery attitude.

“I believe she does have the intellectual capacity, but there is a character problem, there is a temperament problem,” he said.

"Temperament problem"? Translation: she's a ball-busting bitch.

Hey Lindsey: it's time for you to come out of the closet and deal with your "women" issues.

Sotomayor's Problem isn't being Too Latina; It's Having Hung with White Suits Too Long

dlindorff — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:16:48 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I don’t know at this point whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a good choice for Supreme Court Justice or a bad one.

She certainly is a lousy judge for writers and other creative
people, having ruled (and been overruled by an appellate court and
then, when that reversal was upheld, by the US Supreme Court in a case
called New York Times Inc. v. Tasini) that the Times and periodical
publishers could reprint, without any additional compensation, any
freelance works they contracted on the basis that they had a general
copyright on each entire issue they publish.

And she appears to have rarely met an insurance company that she
didn’t feel was more deserving of court succor than any insured person
suing an insurer. In a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer,
reporter Joseph N. DiStefano quotes an insurance attorney named Randy
Maniloff as saying that in cases involving insurance companies and
insurance policyholders “It’s insurers by a landslide.” Such a
pro-corporate position would put her in league with the
Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomas wing of the court, and would be consistant
with her pro-corporate stance vis-à-vis writers and artists and
copyright law. (In fairness, Sotomayor did rule against an insurance
firm and in favor of a policyholder’s family in 2005.)

Having said that Sotomayor shows a disturbing pro-corporate stance
in her past rulings, I have to say that the freak-out on the right over
Sotomayor’s comments regarding the impact of her being female and
Latina on her decisions as a jurist is the height of nonsense and
hypocrisy. To watch them frothing, you would think that she was a
latter-day William O. Douglass, which is hardly the case.

What Sotomayor said that has the right in a lather was:

“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.”

She made that comment at a lecture in Berkeley in 2001, but it came following this earlier statement:

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or
cultural differences...our gender and national origins may and will
make a difference in our judging. Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has
often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will
reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure....that I
agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted,
there can never be a universal definition of wise…”

She went on to note:

“Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and
Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race
discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever
upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case.”

The point is, as long as we have an unequal society, in which some
people are denied equal treatment because of race or religion or
gender, and we clearly have that type of society in America today, the
people from those discriminated-against groups are bound to see the
world in a different way than do most white males.

But the elite—the white male editors and TV commentators, the white
male politicians, and the white male public—don’t see their own
decisions as rooted in their white male expereience. They see their
experience as being “normal” and “unbiased.” It is, to them, only
others who are not “normal” like them who are biased, or or who are
carrying some kind of chip on their shoulders.

What Sotomayor was saying at Berkeley was simply a fact of life: as
a Latina woman, and hopefully as a women who grew up in a poor,
working-class, fatherless family, she is going to view the world
differently than the white male and even black male or white female
colleagues who currently constitute the members of the US Supreme
Court. If this were not so, there would be no need to have women on the
court at all, or African Americans.

That is obviously ridiculous.

White upper-class males on the court for a century saw nothing
wrong with slavery being inflicted on black people, nor did they see
anything wrong with denying the vote to people who didn’t own property.
White males on the court for a century and a half saw nothing wrong
with women not having the vote. For two centuries they saw nothing
wrong with white governments using Jim Crow laws to prevent blacks from
voting, either. (Many of them still see nothing wrong with such legal
obstructionism.)

There are plenty of reasons to oppose President Barack Obama’s
appointment of Sotomayor to the Supreme Court—she is not a particularly
profound Constitutional scholar and she has a record of accommodating
corporate interests at the expense of individuals—but her acknowledging
that being female and Latina may have a positive impact on her judicial
decisions is not one of them.

If she is confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice later this year, as
appears likely, one can only hope that she will allow her decisions to
be informed by that background, and that she will not just become
another one of “the boys” on the bench.
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

How Dare They Call Sotomayor a Racist?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:59:42 -0400

An endless parade of conservatives have called Sonia Sotomayor a racist. They include Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Tom Tancredo, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and others.

How dare they???

Did they ever observe Sotomayor engage in racist behavior? Did they ever hear her use a racist smear against a non-Latina? Did she ever spit at someone or sic a dog on them? Did she ever burn a cross on their lawn or hang them from a tree?

How dare they???

Calling someone a racist is a serious defamation. If Sotomayor were not a public figure, she could sue them for major damages. In an earlier day, she would have challenged them to a duel.

Maybe she should sue their asses, just to show them what disgusting lowlifes they are.

Update 1: David Neiwert documents some of the actual racism of Sotomayor's accusers.

Update 2: Roberto Lovato says Latinos are watching Republicans closely:

millions of Latinos will watch what for them is a historical event of the utmost political and intimate importance. Many of these Latinos will be watching to see any signs of the racism and xenophobia many Latinos blame the GOP for and voted overwhelmingly against in the last election. Latino voters will, for example, be vigilant about what GOP Senate Judiciary members like Jeff Sessions say before and during the hearings.

Earlier this month, reports linking Sessions, the ranking Republican on the committee, to anti-immigrant hate groups filled Spanish-language media. According to the Washington-based America’s Voice, the Alabama senator has appeared at several events organized by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), NumbersUSA, the Federation for American Immigration Reform and other groups designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations as “hate groups.”

Anything in this must-see Latino political event resembling the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been Sessions’ trademark will cost his party for years to come. Such concerns about GOP leaders among Latinos, who are only beginning to realize their enormous political potential, pose a gigantic dilemma to a Republican Party that must make inroads among Latino voters if it is to have a political future.

No Empathy Defense for Dick Cheney

Bob Fertik — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:07:48 -0400

It has only been one day since President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, but I'm already bored to tears by the endless parade of conservatives on my teevee telling me empathy is the worst character trait imaginable for a judge. Judges, we are told, should strictly Enforce The Law.

So what will conservatives say when Dick Cheney begs his judge to Ignore The Law which makes torture a crime, and instead show empathy for the absolute and all-consuming Fear of Terrorists that drove Cheney to Torture?

Since PapaDick and BabyDick are all over teevee these days, maybe someone could ask them.

Update 1: Glenn Greenwald writes,

Both Adam Serwer and Daniel Larison note the glaring, obvious hypocrisy in simultaneously insisting that "empathy" has no place in the law while protesting Sotomayor's decision in Ricci on the completely law-free ground that what happened to the white firefighters is so "unfair."

As we all known, white men (like Cheney and Firefighters) have an exclusive entitlement to empathy. Greenwald also catches Sam Alito playing the "empathy card" at his confirmation hearings:

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.

COBURN: Thank you.

Impeach Sam Alito!

Update 2: Adam Serwer writes,

conservative justices on the court -- Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas are not emotionless robots able to interpret the law without bias or personal experience coloring their rulings. They don't lack empathy; they simply don't empathize with the people Obama or liberals might like them to. Conservatives want their justices to empathize with the religious, the unborn, and powerful corporate interests. Liberals want their justices to empathize with women and minorities, workers and the downtrodden.

For all the pearl-clutching horror coming from the right, the conservative legal movement has picked its plaintiffs carefully, with an eye toward catching the winds of public opinion through sympathetic plaintiffs such as Frank Ricci, the white firefighter who was denied a promotion, or Terri Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, who sought to keep Schiavo on life support despite her husband's claim that she expressed a desire not to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state. Empathy is an important element of the conservative legal movement on both sides of the bench. Most recently, it's been conservatives who have been arguing for empathy for the architects and perpetrators of torture on the grounds that they broke the law ostensibly in the interest of the country, while liberals have called for rigidity in upholding laws against torture.

Update 3: OPEN LEFT EXCLUSIVE: PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT GENDERS AND ETHNICITIES VOTE DIFFERENTLY!!!!!

Update 4: Andy Borowitz nails it:

The Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor faces new hurdles today, in the form of pressure to block her confirmation from the powerful anti-empathy lobby.

H. Walker Ranston, executive director of the American Anti-Empathy League, said that his organization was going to "do a full-court press" to convince Republican senators to vote down Ms. Sotomayor.

"Sonia Sotomayor has repeatedly made statements indicating that she has a human heart," Mr. Ranston said. "That is the last thing this Court needs."

The lobbyist said that his group's 50,000 members were "deeply disappointed" by the choice of the empathic Sotomayor, explaining, "We were really hoping for a sociopath."

Great idea - how about Dick Cheney?

Obama Picks Sotomayor

Bob Fertik — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:55:55 -0400

President Obama chose federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to become the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, praising her as "an inspiring woman" with both the intellect and compassion to interpret the Constitution wisely.

Christy Hardin Smith describes her amazing background:

She grew up in the projects in the Bronx, lost her father at the age of nine, and was raised along with her brother (who is now a doctor) by her single mother. That's some life experience to bring to the table.

She began school having much more Spanish than English, but managed to graduate in top levels of her classes all the way through. And went on to become the editor of a law journal at Yale.

She has worked both in a district attorney's office as a trial lawyer in New York as well as in private practice before her seat on the 2nd circuit, so she has trial chops to bring to the table as well.

She was appointed to the bench originally by George H.W. Bush and is considered, even by conservatives who have been before her, as a moderate judge who is particularly well-versed in the law and well-prepared. That makes for good pushback on GOP antics, it's just a pity we have to think politics and not legal temperament.

To the surprise of no one, rightwingers immediately declared war on her nomination.