Bryan Fischer
Obama chooses racist for Supreme Court
By Bryan Fischer
President Obama's nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is by all objective accounts an activist judge who will indulge left-wing policy preferences instead of impartially applying the law.
She appears to be intellectually shallow, and perfectly willing to use her judicial power to discriminate on the basis of race, as long as the victims of discrimination are white.
She proved this in a one-paragraph ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano, siding with a city that used racially discriminatory practices to deny promotions to white firefighters, and was even chastised for her blatant racism by a colleague, a Clinton appointee.
Said the colleague, Judge Jose Cabranes, her opinion "contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case," and represents a "perfunctory disposition" of a case that required thought because of the "weighty issues presented."
Her racism-tainted ruling was so bad that even a Washington Post columnist lamented that the firefighters in question had been "deprived of the pursuit of happiness on account of race."
In other words, Judge Sotomayor is willing to cavalierly brush aside the profound principles of the Declaration of Independence if the people involved have the wrong skin color. Didn't we fight a Civil War to resolve this very thing?
If we want to go back to the America of 1857 and Dred Scott, Sotomayor is the express train who will take us there.
Her ruling is under review by the Supreme Court, and an opinion is expected by the end of June.
Tellingly, Sotomayor freely admits that she makes judicial decisions based on her feelings and personal politics rather than the Constitution and the law, as if this were something to be proud of rather than ashamed of.
She said in 2002 that it is appropriate for judges to consider their "experiences as women and people of color" and that such experiences should "affect our decisions."
She added, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Picture a major league umpire with a Hispanic background who vows publicly to allow his race to factor into calling balls and strikes. His "empathy," he admits, drives him to cut a break to players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela out of sympathy for the impoverished circumstances under which they grew up.
This obviously would make a mockery of the rules of baseball. And so Sotomayor will make a mockery of the Constitution and the rule of law.
And perhaps most tellingly, she famously admitted in 2005 that the courtroom (rather than the state legislature or Congress) "is where policy is made." That's as succinct a creed for judicial activism as you will find anywhere.
She is so far out of the mainstream even among her judicially-activist peers that she has been frequently reversed by the Supreme Court.
Sadly, we have a Republican president, Bush I, to thank for this inept and dangerous judge, as he appointed her to the bench in 1991. If there was ever a clarion call to the party of constitutional principle to wake up and smell the napalm, Sotomayor is it.
According to Jeffrey Rosen of the far-left The New Republic, Sotomayor's colleagues have questions "about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices."
Some of her colleagues have said that she is "not that smart" and that she is "kind of a bully on the bench." Said a former Second Circuit clerk for another judge, "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue."
Apart from her own racism, prejudice and bias, she does not appear to have the intellectual heft for a responsibility of this magnitude.
The bottom line is that we simply cannot afford to have a racist lightweight exercising tyrannical judicial power.
This morning's advice from Republican elites is to go easy on Sotomayor and reserve judgment. This is the worst possible strategy. The GOP must come out fast and hard against a judge who will lurch the Court even further to the left than the justice she will replace.
The longer they wait to vigorously oppose her nomination, the more vulnerable they will be to completely false charges that they, rather than Sotomayor, are the racists in the drama. They must openly and unapologetically oppose her as unfit to occupy a seat on the Supreme Court beginning right now.
The president is cynically appealing both to racial and gender bias in presenting this Hispanic woman to the nation. But Republicans should expose and reject this blatant appeal to characteristics that have absolutely nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with qualifications for a seat on the highest bench in the land. This decision is far too important to let racism and gender bias influence their decision.
If our system of justice is to be color-blind, as it should, then the place to begin is by refusing to be intimidated into supporting an obviously flawed nominee because of either her gender or the color of her skin. Preferring a candidate just because of her race is itself racism, plain and simple, and the party of Lincoln should be way better than that. But don't hold your breath.
© Bryan Fischer
May 26, 2009
President Obama's nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is by all objective accounts an activist judge who will indulge left-wing policy preferences instead of impartially applying the law.
She appears to be intellectually shallow, and perfectly willing to use her judicial power to discriminate on the basis of race, as long as the victims of discrimination are white.
She proved this in a one-paragraph ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano, siding with a city that used racially discriminatory practices to deny promotions to white firefighters, and was even chastised for her blatant racism by a colleague, a Clinton appointee.
Said the colleague, Judge Jose Cabranes, her opinion "contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case," and represents a "perfunctory disposition" of a case that required thought because of the "weighty issues presented."
Her racism-tainted ruling was so bad that even a Washington Post columnist lamented that the firefighters in question had been "deprived of the pursuit of happiness on account of race."
In other words, Judge Sotomayor is willing to cavalierly brush aside the profound principles of the Declaration of Independence if the people involved have the wrong skin color. Didn't we fight a Civil War to resolve this very thing?
If we want to go back to the America of 1857 and Dred Scott, Sotomayor is the express train who will take us there.
Her ruling is under review by the Supreme Court, and an opinion is expected by the end of June.
Tellingly, Sotomayor freely admits that she makes judicial decisions based on her feelings and personal politics rather than the Constitution and the law, as if this were something to be proud of rather than ashamed of.
She said in 2002 that it is appropriate for judges to consider their "experiences as women and people of color" and that such experiences should "affect our decisions."
She added, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Picture a major league umpire with a Hispanic background who vows publicly to allow his race to factor into calling balls and strikes. His "empathy," he admits, drives him to cut a break to players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela out of sympathy for the impoverished circumstances under which they grew up.
This obviously would make a mockery of the rules of baseball. And so Sotomayor will make a mockery of the Constitution and the rule of law.
And perhaps most tellingly, she famously admitted in 2005 that the courtroom (rather than the state legislature or Congress) "is where policy is made." That's as succinct a creed for judicial activism as you will find anywhere.
She is so far out of the mainstream even among her judicially-activist peers that she has been frequently reversed by the Supreme Court.
Sadly, we have a Republican president, Bush I, to thank for this inept and dangerous judge, as he appointed her to the bench in 1991. If there was ever a clarion call to the party of constitutional principle to wake up and smell the napalm, Sotomayor is it.
According to Jeffrey Rosen of the far-left The New Republic, Sotomayor's colleagues have questions "about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices."
Some of her colleagues have said that she is "not that smart" and that she is "kind of a bully on the bench." Said a former Second Circuit clerk for another judge, "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue."
Apart from her own racism, prejudice and bias, she does not appear to have the intellectual heft for a responsibility of this magnitude.
The bottom line is that we simply cannot afford to have a racist lightweight exercising tyrannical judicial power.
This morning's advice from Republican elites is to go easy on Sotomayor and reserve judgment. This is the worst possible strategy. The GOP must come out fast and hard against a judge who will lurch the Court even further to the left than the justice she will replace.
The longer they wait to vigorously oppose her nomination, the more vulnerable they will be to completely false charges that they, rather than Sotomayor, are the racists in the drama. They must openly and unapologetically oppose her as unfit to occupy a seat on the Supreme Court beginning right now.
The president is cynically appealing both to racial and gender bias in presenting this Hispanic woman to the nation. But Republicans should expose and reject this blatant appeal to characteristics that have absolutely nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with qualifications for a seat on the highest bench in the land. This decision is far too important to let racism and gender bias influence their decision.
If our system of justice is to be color-blind, as it should, then the place to begin is by refusing to be intimidated into supporting an obviously flawed nominee because of either her gender or the color of her skin. Preferring a candidate just because of her race is itself racism, plain and simple, and the party of Lincoln should be way better than that. But don't hold your breath.
© Bryan Fischer
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