About the same number of topics that conservatives boil down to guns and god.

She's not backpeddling at all in that vid.

But the right in America sees everything so black and white these days, just look at the same situation with Michael Steele a couple months ago when he got into trouble for admitting that in America today, a woman does indeed have "choice".

As soon as that got out there, the far right was all over him, accusing him of reversing his position on abortion.

However, he has always been pro-life and continues to be pro-life, but was simply saying that the way the law is now, choice is indeed a legal option.

Sotomayor was saying precisely the same thing in that vid. When she described how appellate courts actually work, she was simply stating a fact of how things are. It was removed from whatever personal opinion she has on it one way or the other, and it is why she admitted this irony on tape since that was enough to set off the simplistic far-righties in believing their fantasies that she was actually expressing her own opinion.

Nothing in any of her rulings backs the far right up, but it hasn't stopped them from saying the dumbest things about her, most notably that she is a racist, or that she would put her emotions before jurisprudence.

Read any decision she's written, or any dissenting view she's written, and it is clear that she is a sensible moderate who is closer to swing voter Justice Kennedy than the more liberal Justice Souter.

It is for that reason that Jesse Helms, Rick Santorum and Orrin Hatch, among other conservatives, who voted 67-29 in favor of her confirmation to court of appeals 11 years ago.

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“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."-Sarah Palin, not having a clue once again about what she is talking about.

Im confused by all the editorials coming out saying the GOP risks losing hispanic votes if they challenge Sotomayors nomination. Why would they lose votes? Would the challenge be anything to do with her being hispanic? Would hispanics be offended simply because the person being challenged has the same heritage?

For example, if you say you dont like how much Obama is spending, will that lose Black votes? Do people vote for someone simply based on heritage? (obvious answer), but doesnt this seem to imply that the editorials are accusing voters of being superficial or racist?

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

The GOP will actually have a very hard time in challenging her nom as seven current Republican senators voted for her when she was appointed to the bench, so unless they can find something that she has done since then, they'll have no reason to not vote for her.

With regards the latino vote, you have to keep in mind that the GOP is involved in some pretty big election battles in 2010, particularly the Florida senate election. Charlie Crist is giving up the Governors mansion to run for the senate ... against a Dem latino, so if the GOP screw this SC confirmation up and vote against her for no apparent reason, it will be viewed as a latino slight, and will have big implications for next year.

Well I agree but this doesn’t make it right. You are forgetting the wild card here- and that card is IF a white male GOPer had made a comment ala being a latina etc. from their ‘world view’ they would be above the fold on every major paper in the country, the networks and every cable outlet even O’Rielly the sometime moderate chummer would have taken issue with it and we would be hearing about it , the remarks and the exposure would not be classified as a dem. hate fest vs. a guy just saying what he feels about his mindset, and you me and everyone with a reasonable iota of intellect knows it. The guy would never have gotten any further as the press and their ideological cousins in government would have pounded a stake into his heart as it should be.

There for the public debate is already tainted. Identity politics has won another victory, no one gave a shit when Estrada was put down after 2 years for a appellate appt., the first by the way, hey he was Hispanic too, so? We know why, the press did not find it in its interests to take a side, as they so clearly have here, so the debate is crippled and will remain so as the image makers have the power.

Expecting any sense of fairness in the process while you have the new 5th column taking sides is barking at the moon, I know this.
But as I said it doesn’t make it right, the public discussion is already being manipulated, so as to pull the pin on any substantive questioning as to her statements that appear slanted and clearly risible under normal circumstances.

Lets see how the scrutiny of the Ricci decision she made , which according to her own Clinton appointee Hispanic bench mate and others on the court found very wanting, is handled in the press, just wait, you’ll see.

The press is ideologically predisposed, they are no longer referees, or interested in honest debate or coverage on an equitable basis and we’ll see this play out while parsing her consideration for a post that is a LIFETIME appointment, one in which I think due to such requires more scrutiny than any other.

The scenario here provides one of those clear looks at just how far down the liberal guilt rabbit hole we have allowed ourselves to go.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

Last night, I saw a commercial about Sotomayor. The voice-over was Obama, talking about her attributes, why she'll make a good SC Justice, etc.

What's the point of such a commercial? Given that the people watching the commercial have no impact on her confirmation, I can only see it as a waste of money...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

But why is that? WHy would a latino vote against a politicial party for the sole reason that the political party did not support putting someone else of latino origin in office? Is the GOp going to block her because her parents were from Puerto Rico?

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

for the same reason the RNC runs ads on her, attempting to shape public opinion and sppt.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

When a higher (appellate) court makes a decision, it sets a precedent which is immediately binding upon all courts under its authority. When the Supreme Court makes such a decision, it is binding upon all federal courts, and if the case decided is from a state court, the Supreme Court decision sets a binding precedent for ALL state courts. In this manner, appellate courts do in fact "set policy" for lower courts. When the US Supreme Court found, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), that the Louisiana doctrine of "separate but equal" provisions for races was acceptable, that set a policy which prevailed in every American Court for the next fifty-eight years. When the Supreme Court ruled differently in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954), that policy was discarded and replaced by a new one, binding on all lower courts, that required "equal protection" for all persons in such cases.

Sotomayor was right--appellate courts DO set policy for lower courts.

I understand that's what they'd like to see happen, but to what end?

Odds are that relatively few people will contact anyone involved with the confirmation hearings, so what does the support, or lack thereof, accomplish? If the people voted for her, that would be one thing. But we don't.

Huge waste of money...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

That's not how it's supposed to work. They are supposed to interpret the law, not create policy because they don't think the law is fair.

Precedent is not the same as policy. Each and every case is supposed to be weighed on its own merits.

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"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

-Thomas Jefferson

So if you leave out the bullshit lawyer speak, she said what she said. Plain as freakin' day OSB. She realized afterwards that she shouldn't have said it and even stated so. What she said may be true and many judges may even believe it, but that doesn't make it okay and something we should ignore.

You guys keep believing that and maybe it will turn out to be true.

For someone who seems to be intelligent, you sure are acting dumb here.

Could you show me what I said that was stereotypical about hispanics? I didn't say anything about them. What I said was about democrats.

Oh right. Cuz you guys planned this big trap that the GOP is going to fall into. Do you think they will expose themselves as badly as you guys did with Estrada?

Ummm...no. Only I offer honest opinion because if you did, you would have to acknowledge that she made a racist remark and that would jeopordize the agenda. She may not have meant it that way. There are many times when people make racist comments but they didn't mean them that way. It was just an ignorant thing to say. That's where the honesty part comes in but that can't happen because after all, we all know only white people can be racist and a lawyer honest????

Oh. okay. Thanks for clearing that up.

From what I am hearing (and from what she says) it is all about her ethnicity and sex. You need to get the talking points down better. But some of us actually believe a person is guided by their character in addition to other experiences. I know that is a foreign concept to democrats and especially liberals so we'll just leave it at that.

So if it's wrong it 's wrong no? Or are you saying what Limbaugh and others say is okay?

My guess is the GOP will stall as much as they can until the ruling on her firefighter case is made. If she is overturned again, which is very likely, with 4 out of 5 of her rulings that went to the SC overturned, the case can be easily made that she just makes bad decisions in the big cases.

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"If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine," he said. "It's the post office that's always having problems." Barack Obama on government run healthcare. 08/11/2009

American by birth.
Conservative by the grace of God.

Still sore about the war of northern aggression.

Reread what I wrote. At no point did I imply that it was in any way proper to "create policy because they don't think the law is fair." What I WAS pointing out is that it is the very nature of appellate courts to create policy, through the decisions that they make, for lower courts. I offered the examples of Plessy and Brown to substantiate my own understanding of that role. And that certainly IS "how it's supposed to work" and is precisely why precedent plays such an important role in the judicial process.

In order that the law be evenly applied, our courts follow the precedents of the past. The FACTS are weighed on their own merits, and the law is applied to those facts according to precedent.

I do not expect you to even TRY to understand that, but the distinction may be helpful to those who really care about fairness and the law.