Paging Nate Gulley and Diego Hernandez…
Barack Obama’s new Supreme Court nominee is stealing your act:
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,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.
It’s nice to see that the President of the United States is nominating an open believer in race-based identity politics to the highest court in the land.
Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy weighs in:
I am not yet sure what position to take on President Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor. My general sense is that she is very liberal, and thus likely to take what I consider to be mistaken positions on many major constitutional law issues. I am also not favorably impressed with her notorious statement 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.” Not only is it objectionable in and of itself, it also suggests that Sotomayor is a committed believer in the identity politics school of left-wing thought. Worse, it implies that she believes that it is legitimate for judges to base decisions in part on their ethnic or racial origins.
Once again the mask slips and the race politics espoused by people like Diego Hernandez, the Commentator’s erstwhile punching bag Nate Gulley, and Sonia Sotomayor is exposed as little more than racism by another name.
Oh, but kids we are busy trademarking the Tracktucky Town USA brand for UO and Eugene. That will mean a lifetime of identity sustainability for us all. I bet Jan Oliver is busy working on that important UO related business. UO baseball just needs the Duck mascot to stop by and molest the other teams mascot over at PK park. That will end up on Youtube and we will end up cultivating that “hot brand” of Frohnmayers dreams.
Have you guys heard about the firefighter thing?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30946676/
I’m pretty sure I’m on there already. After all, I AM a white male.
LEARN HTML YOU FUCKING MORON
I’m sure even the good doctor would be flabbergasted (I’ve been looking for a way to word drop that for-EVER) at his name being used so liberally.
Either way, just a slip of the tongue. It’s a good thing I’m a nobody. Otherwise I’d be on Hernandez’ shit list now.
L. Hammett, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. in Eugene now, you racist.
The Oregon decision to start a baseball team was a faux pas, in my humble opinion. As much as I love the spirit of competition, all the Ducks are doing is limiting the Beavers’ recruitment pool. You don’t see the Beavs advertising for track and field. They have a women’s cross country team, I think, but nothing much more than that. (Too lazy to fact check.)
That’s not to mention that Centennial is going to be even *more* of a bitch on football game days since they completely screwed parking at Autzen.
She “saved baseball” as Obama says. She must be good. She supports Kevin “field of schemes” Costner also I am sure. Hope you guys do some article about the UO baseball comeback….stunning season and turnouts. I bet it is a big money maker.
Sun owen once said, “white men are the devil”, which is worse.
The nomination of Sotomayor was not unexpected, and was even being called 4 months ago. Barack Obama is a man who has to always be in the news, always doing things first, and always doing things to fuel his narcissism.
Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic (that is of Caribbean-Central American descent) on the court. This not only gives him something to run with in 2012, but also helps him (however marginally) with solidifying his hispanic voters. He’s already got a majority of hispanic voters, he’s just needing to solidify them into his broad coalition. This helps him, and it also takes off the filibuster option due to the political stink that could be raised by it against Republicans.
If Republicans are smart, and contrary to some people’s opinions they actually are, they will focus on her judicial record and hammer her on it. The columnist Charles Krauthammer said it best in a recent interview that by bringing firefighter Frank Ricci (of the New Haven Firefighter case) in to show that Sotomayor’s dismissive attitude was a problem, there could be a great public case against Sotomayor that could give enough damage to at least relegate her to a muffled status upon her confirmation.
The issue now is when to have the hearings to confirm her. Republicans want September, Democrats want before they adjourn in August. The Supreme Court doesn’t start hearing arguments until October, so there’s a lot of time in between to really shake things up.
Vincent, you just broke the first rule of fight club. Expect Limbaugh to show up at your doorstep with his crew of thugs.
I found this bit to be a pretty good summation of the potential issues (and non-issues) facing Sotamayor as she proceeds through the confirmation process.
So far, her Hernandezian pontifications on the inherent wisdom of the Latino woman are the biggest sticking point, but the author of that piece also points out a couple of potentially worrisome features of her legal thought as it might apply to business interests as well as mentioning that she seems to have a history of decisions that were later reversed. Neither are necessarily red flags, of course, but do raise some questions about just exactly who we’re dealing with.
Just as conservatives should be wary of engaging in kneejerk opposition to anyone Obama appoints (though some would say it’s just desserts for liberals’ behavior during the Bush years), liberals might do well to resist the urge to treat anyone proposed by the current President as somehow anointed from on high.
Sotomayor, at this juncture, doesn’t appear to be a complete trainwreck. If she really does buy into the sort of racist hokum that the MCC kids take seriously, though, I think that’s a legitimate point of criticism. But that’s just what my RNC brain chip tells me to say.
Here’s a little more, from a libertarian perspective.
Thanks for the specificity in your link, Flash! Next we’ll be learning about Eschaton!
(It’s a really embarrassing quote. But it doesn’t sum up a lengthy judicial career. She’s going to be confirmed, and it’s going to be fine, as Vincent’s links indicate.)
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, Sean. While the Supreme Court sometimes makes stunningly bad rulings (See: Kelo), I think it tends to be a bit steadier at the helm than the Executive or Congress.
Then again, that sounds like damnation by faint praise…
In any case, I think this reflects more poorly on Barack “I am the Post-Racial Messiah” than the Court, which is replacing someone who I think is essentially a moderate with someone who may well be more liberal, but is hardly Ward Churchill or whatever.
I also think it’s interesting that it’s suddenly an “RNC talking point” to note that some of this lady’s rhetoric essentially conforms to bargain basement ASUO identity politics standards. I guess it’s an instance of what Jeff Goldstein might call an attempt at “controlling the narrative“.
Pejman Yousefzadeh has a few concerns about her record, too. More sound-bites from the Republican Noise Machine(tm), I expect.
The Court judges will straighten her out. They always do. I have more faith in the Supreme Court than I do in any other branch of the US government.
Vincent, you just broke the first rule of fight club. Expect Limbaugh to show up at your doorstep with his crew of thugs.
I hardly see how trying to claim that her views, which she lays out quite explicitly in the quoted section, aren’t in fact her views, following that with a by-the-numbers “But John Roberts is a Republican shill!”, and ending with a “well, conservatives said the same thing about Clarence Thomas in any case!” counts as a “refutation”. More like seeing what sticks, you know?
But good job on spotting the “RNC talking point”. I’ll have to report back to my paymasters that the rhetoric is too obvious. What would I do without their marching orders?
That particular RNC talking point has already been refuted.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/