Elections have consequences

President Obama has seen fit to nominate Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, as is his privilege. This lady, who admittedly has a compelling life story, nonetheless is on record as saying the following:



"The Court of Appeals is where policy is made... I'm not promoting it, I'm not advocating it, you know"

"Wink wink, nudge nudge, ha ha. We all know how the game is played, so we'll just leave the rest unsaid."

How completely disgusting.

Judge Sotomayor also saw fit to dismiss with a one-paragraph ruling a lawsuit filed by white firefighters who had passed a promotion exam, only to have those results thrown out when the city of New Haven, Connecticut fretted that the minorities who failed the exam would sue, and also because "promotions based on the test results would undermine their goal of diversity in the Fire Department". The Supreme Court disagreed with Sotomayor's simplistic discarding of the firefighters' grievance, and the case was recently argued in front of them. A decision is expected shortly.

(As an aside, we suspect these exams test the candidates' knowledge of firefighting procedures and techniques, not calculus or particle physics, therefore the passing of such a test would seem to be a reasonable requirement for promotion to a position of responsibility in a fire department where one will be responsible for the safety of people under their command.)

Sotomayor also seems to believe that her life experience uniquely qualifies her to sit on the Court:

"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,"

directly contradicting both Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, two very ideologically different justices who nevertheless agreed that cases should be decided upon the blind rule of law, as opposed to some sort of misguided "empathy", "fairness" or social justice yardstick. Imagine a white male who dared to suggest that just because he was white and male, he was better able to decide the merits of a case than, say, a black woman or an Asian man. He would immediately be discounted as a racist kook, and rightly so. Why doesn't the same standard apply here?

Don't answer that. We already know why not.

Let the confirmation battle begin. We're very interested in what other defining statements Judge Sotomayor has made, and we're quite sure we all will hear about them quite soon.


UPDATE: Yep, she's apparently solidly anti-gun, too:

"Judge Sotomayor, a New York native, ruled on a Second Circuit Appeals Court panel that the Second Amendment is not a fundamental right and does not apply to the states [and, by extension, to individuals] in the case of Maloney v. Cuomo."

We suppose she feels that other important ideas such as free speech, protection from unreasonable search and seizure and due process are also the exclusive province of the same overbearing Federal government that the Amendments are in place to specifically protect us from.

The Constitution's a "living, breathing document", you know, despite what it plainly states. Yikes.