I never knew that!

By A.J. DiCintio

Whether the object of their dictatorial pedantry is based upon what "empathic" judges, politicians, and social activists weave according to rules laid down by a penumbra, fashion from the love of power, or create from leftist ideology, liberals have something new and ridiculous to teach us every day.

However, on a number of days since the election of the most leftist president and Congress in the nation's history, we have been sent reeling by so many madly perverse liberal lessons that, frustrated beyond patience, we have no other option but to avail ourselves of the cathartic effects of an especially sarcastic, "I never knew that!"

By the way, the third person pronouns used above refer to a line of common sense folks so long it extends all the way to China, where a billion souls were surely driven to expressions of the sardonic exclamation when they heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promise that only good things will happen to China if it buys up every last penny of Obama's ten trillion dollar debt offering.

A billion Chinese must also have uttered those same acerbic words after their leaders expressed deep concerns about the Fed's monetizing the Obama Debt only to be reassured by administration emissaries with, "Not to worry because printing trillions of dollars guarantees the health of America's economic future — really!"

Although it would be both interesting and instructive to sojourn in the land of justified Sino-sarcasm a while longer, it is time to get back home, where Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court has caused us to be bombarded with so much liberal bunk that we are afforded not a moment's respite from issuing one mordant "I never knew that!" after another.

Following are a few particularly abominable examples of the stuff:

[Judge Sotomayor] has shown little patience for the sort of procedural bars that conservative judges have been using to close the courthouse door on people whose rights have been violated.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Editorialist (NY Times). I never knew that! But I know now, just as I know those same "conservative judges" are certain to slime you for writing "completely unsubstantiated propaganda disguised as fact."

But my gratitude mustn't stop there because you revealed yourself a consummate political thinker when you denied the nation's "conservatives" the opportunity to demagogue the issue of constitutional rights.

Yes, sir, a lesser mind would have gone on to loudly enumerate every last one of the ten thousand rights due a terrorist illegally being held at Guantanamo. But you wisely decided to wait until a liberal majority dominates the Court before making public a list of rights that includes the right even of an Adolph Hitler or a Joe Stalin not to be subjected to the "cruel and unusual punishment" of a supermax prison, where lifers spend 23 ½ "unconstitutional" hours a day confined in a bare bones cell.

So, as the Italians would say it, grazie mille, or "Thank you a thousand times."

. . . Judge Sotomayor's nomination comes at a special moment: the first projection of the remarkable 2008 election onto a Supreme Court that has so often in these last few years appeared headed in the opposite direction from the country.

Where would this nation be without Linda Greenhouse (NY Times), whose perfectly objective reporting about the "direction" of the country has prompted fifty million Americans to exclaim, "I never knew that!"

Not to mention the skull-splitting roar that will be caused by ten million screams of the exclamation after Ms. Greenhouse reports that a majority of citizens support the idea of judicial activism with the same unwavering intensity they bring to the notion that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg "looks like America."

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges.

Judges should rule not according to what the law says but according to their subjective, empathic reaction to situations, emotions, and motives that they believe carry special meaning? I never knew that!

Thank God for you, Barack Obama, the only being ever born whose amazing grace could have saved "a wretch like me" from the evil clutches of two scurrilous autocrats named George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

The first promotes the lie that legitimate law is made only by "an explicit and authentic act of the whole people."

The latter teaches us by example to espouse contemptible ideas and speak them in crude language, for instance, when he condemns judges who declare "what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining, slyly, and without alarm, the foundations of the Constitution" and insists they be "withdrawn from their bench" just as "for the safety of society we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam."

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, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, 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.

Incredible! Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Only because you were blessed with a multitude of wonderful experiences — including being educated at Princeton and Yale — are you able to educate us that although "there can never be a universal definition of wise," there is a universal definition of "better" as applied to selected groups of people.

Curiously, however, your discovery has gone right over the heads of at least ten thousand liberal politicians and commentators, who have explained ad nauseam that you are merely celebrating your Latina heritage.

But the error of a few corrupt liberals notwithstanding, the fact remains that even middle school children can figure out you deconstructed the words of the American political ideal to say, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are [not] created equal. . ."

And that truth, in the fullness of its astonishing brilliance, provides reason for every person of good will, even the most quiet and unassuming among us, to turn a face toward heaven, breathe a mighty lungful of the Lord's air, and intone with a force reminiscent of Gabriel's horn, "Hallelujah, I never knew that!"

© A.J. DiCintio