Sotomayor: More Than A Slip Of The Tongue Or Mistatement.

[FirefightnRick]

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/senate-r...o-one-objected/

From a speech by Sotomayor in 1994:

“Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that “a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion in dueling cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes the line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, if Prof. Martha Minnow is correct, there can never be a universal definition of ‘wise.’ Second, I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.”

No Mr. President, that was not just a slip of the tonque or a mistatement back in 2001.

Also heard about this interesting bit concerning her senior thesis.

....There are also a few jarring elements that contrast to the pedagogical approach. First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence -- as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position....

Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre -- in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.

Third, she had an odd habit of inserting [sic]into quotes not to identify an error but because she disagreed with the (usually innocuous) content of the quotes.

Fourth, she asserted that Muñoz Marín's economic program, called Operation Bootstrap, failed primarily because Puerto Ricans continued to think of themselves as colonials. This, like the reference to the US Congress as the 'North American' Congress, was 1970s-trendy dependency theory rhetoric, but was wholly unsupported by the evidence that she presented in the thesis (and, indeed, by virtually any evidence that has appeared since that time).

Rick

Edited June 4, 2009 by FirefightnRick

[SUMG]

There are many who are more qualified to be on the Supreme Court than Sotomayor is. Here's one:

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/text_...rail_06_02_2009

[untbowler]

Haha someone might have been listening to Mark Levin last night. Caught those excerpts on the way to the courts last night, but alas the media won't mention one peep.

[hickoryhouse]

Haha someone might have been listening to Mark Levin last night. Caught those excerpts on the way to the courts last night, but alas the media won't mention one peep.

But Mark Levin just did, is he not media?

[untbowler]

But Mark Levin just did, is he not media?

Sorry the "Mainstream Media". Levin, Hannity, Rush, and millions of Conservatives are only "Extremists" remember.

[SilverEagle]

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_12534701

"As you know unless you are just back from Antarctica, this sudden spasm of righteous Republican rage is due to a speech Sotomayor gave in 2001 about the role gender, ethnicity and other characteristics play in a judge's judgment. "I would hope," she said, "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."

It is, yes, a wince-inducing statement. You might even call it a tone deaf and culturally chauvinistic one. But does it support comparisons to the Ku Klux Klan such as Tancredo and Gingrich have made? Not in a million years.

"The attempt to paint Sotomayor as such represents more than political overreach. No, this is part and parcel of a campaign by conservatives to arrogate unto themselves and/or neutralize the language of social grievance. We've seen this before. They sullied the word "feminist" so thoroughly even feminists disdain it. They made "liberal" such a vulgarity you'd never know liberals fought to ban child labor, end Jim Crow or win women the right to vote."