Fail.
“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…”
So are the words of Obama’s first (and hopefully LAST) pick for the Supreme court Sonia Sotomayor. Arrogance picks arrogance. Is anyone surprised? How is it that Liberal judges think that accurate jurisprudence is dependent upon someone’s ethnicity, personal experience and feelings on a subject? Could it be that they don’t actually give a rat’s kazoo about the constitution and it’s directive to the court to decide the constitutionality of law and the judgment of cases based on current US law and precedent?
I’ll be anxious to find out how our mainstream media views such an ethnically charged and ignorant statement. By default, it implies that we “poor, stupid, ignorant and inexperienced white folk” don’t have the same “richness of experience” as your standard, “wise (and apparently culturally superior) latina”.
Well, Judge Sotomayor, have you ever lived outside of New York? Ever lived in a foreign country for years at a time, or walked the shell-cratered beaches of Normandy? Have you ever seen the magnificent castles of Europe or studied the walled fortresses of Roman-era Britain first hand? Looked down from the windows of the Marksburg to the banks of the Rhine? Have you ever tasted haggis or listened to the lonely wail of a piper playing Amazing Grace from the towers of Edinburgh castle on a cold spring night? Ever experienced a ferry ride across the pitching north Atlantic to see Vestman Islands? Ever taken stock of the American graves in Europe personally? Ever seen the works of Monet, Manet, Van Gogh and been close enough to touch them? Seen the place where King Henry VIII executed his wives? Seen the bunker where Churchill directed the British War effort during WWII? Visted the Ossuary at Verdun and seen the bones of unidentified WWI soldiers stacked by the room-full? Visited Stonehenge? Seen the Book of Kells? Traveled across the green hills of Ireland? Have you walked the streets of Paris? Dublin? Cologne? Reykjavik? Munich? Bonn? London? Inverness? St. Andrews? Strasbourg? Calais? Seen the ruins of the Abbey at Wrexham? Ever seen the Alps at sunrise out the back of a tent? Ever whitewater rafted down a glacier-fed river in Austria? Ever bothered to visit the battlefields that checker the eastern half of the US that bore witness to our own domestic conflict? Seen the ruins of a Native American palisade wall or a mound complex that contains not only the bones of those who built them but also those of US soldiers? Been aboard a US aircraft carrier?
That’s all just stuff that us poor, stupid honky white folk do. I suppose I still lack the “cultural richness” of your standard “wise latina”.
FAIL.
A new job listing…
Wanted: Candidates to fill an important judicial position in Washington D.C. starting this fall.
Length of appointment: Candidate selected will be appointed to this position for life (or until such time as they see fit to retire)
Requirements:
Candidates must be able to distinguish between the law as written and their own personal feelings
Candidates must understand that foreign law is inadmissible in Supreme Court deliberations
Candidates must demonstrate an understanding of the phrase “Legislating from the bench” and be able to effectively show how doing so is contrary to the very fabric of a Representative Democracy.
Candidates must have read the entire U.S. Constitution at least once (and be intimately familiar with Article III of the same).
Candidate must be able to demonstrate a record of healthy respect for the limits and dicatates of the U.S. Constitution and ALL of it’s ammendments in previous positions of employment.
Well qualified candidates will be able to summarize either (orally or in writing) the duties and responsibilities of the U.S. Supreme Court in relation to the other two branches of government. Must have a spine and an excellent grasp of history, including U.S. founding documents and their contemporaries in literature that describe the thoughts of the founders on the limits of government, especially where the judicial branch is concerned.
Candidates will be expected to appear before congress prior to their appointment, where they may be subjected to endless grandstanding and will undoubtedly be used by politicians of both parties to further their own political agendas (to include scoring cheap brownie points at your expense). Candidates may be defamed, smeared or humiliated as part of this appearance.
Other duties include: Avoiding the US Press at all costs, living in relative seclusion, and sitting through each State of the Union Speech without showing any emotion whatsoever.
Long Black Robes will be provided as part of the candidate’s compensation package.
Originalist, Libertarian and/or Conservative Jurisprudence is a definate plus.
If you fit the above requirements, please forward your resume to the White House, care of Rahm Emmanuel.
However, if you fit the above description, don’t hold your breath…
Justice Ginsburg out?
I think we can all agree that Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was going to resign during Barack’s term, lest she be replaced by yet another conservative justice on the court, but today’s news that she has been diagnosed with and treated for pancreatic cancer may certainly hurry along that process. Pancreatic cancer is a very deadly form of the disease, and almost always fatal within 5 years. I think I can speak for all of us here at H&B when I say that we sincerely wish her all the best for a full and speedy recovery.
Ginsberg has been one of the court’s most vocal and liberal judges, writing and reading the dissent against the court’s decision on the legality of partial birth abortion. I can’t understand why ANYONE, even supporters of free, on-demand abortion for convenience sake would support such a grisly and horrible procedure, but she put her liberal views before common respect for life and said that it was a conservative effort to ‘chip away at a woman’s right to choose’. (Instead of a liberal’s effort to chip away at a baby’s skull and suck their brains out…) I actually heard a detailed description of the process today on an audio book I had borrowed and it almost made me wretch on my keyboard as I worked.
I don’t expect that she will be replaced with anyone other than a screaming left wing female justice (the lefties wouldn’t allow anything else) and Barack will certainly oblige them. You see, THIS is really where elections count. If McCain is Prez, the court is totally changed for a good twenty years. Now it will remain much the same as it has. Again, I’m certainly NOT glad that she has cancer, that would make me an absolute jerk. Do I want her ideology off the court? You betcha. Best wishes, Justice G, but you’re still wrong.