I am sorry did you say something?

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

Palin Demands I.Q. Test For Sonia Sotomayor:

Auburn, N.Y.—As the keynote speaker for a dinner to help Auburn, N.Y., celebrate their Founder’s Day, Palin spoke on various political topics, but demanded that an intelligent quotient test for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor be administered as soon as possible.

More than 20,000 people turned out for the dinner, and more than 20,000 people cheered loudly when Palin urged that an I.Q. test be administered. She said that she is surprised “that Sotomayor made it this far,” and “that anyone’s opinions that were overruled by the Supreme Court that many times can’t be that bright.”

Elective Decisions

Apparently Sarah doubts Sotomayor's intellegence as well. You betcha, Sonia's an itiot, fer sure.

well, those remarks of hers, Palin’s are not very bright either. The last remark ala watering her, was uncalled for and will come back to haunt her.

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

I don't understand this division of the Sotomayor story into two separate threads. How is it possible to separate the race/sex angle of the story from the rest of it?

The whole basis of the opposition to her is her references to race and sex as the basis for her decisions.

It becomes impossible to discuss it.

Because it turned into the usual bias debate white vs. black vs. Hispanic vs everyone and Sotomayor wasn't even discussed anymore..

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

and where did sarah palin go to law school?

i think its hilarious that palin, whose ignorance and inability to construct an argument cost john mccain millions of votes, is criticizing the intelligence of a federal judge.

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I picked this from Michelle Malkin Racism rejected: SCOTUS reverses Sotomayor in firefighters case

What kills me about this case is that Sotomayor, Obama and 4 of their friends in SCOTUS think it is fine to have people die in a fire as long as the person in charge is Black. Shouldn't the MOST experienced, the MOST qualified, the MOST credentialed and the HIGHEST person evaluated, regardless of gender or race, be the one who should be promoted to protect innocent children, parents and the elderly from burning alive in a fire?

They are twisting this to make is sound as if a test could be slanted to give Whites and Hispanics a better score. This is all about Black. Do African American homes burn down any different than any other home? Does it take longer for a White or Hispanic's water to put out a fire because their water decides to come out of the hose with a different chemical makeup rather than H2O? But as soon as a Black man uses the hose all of a sudden water works? They didn't score well on the test for some reason. Did they study? Does their inexperience reflect on the test scores? Were they all having a bad day? Did they figure that since they are Black they already had a leg up on everyone so they didn't have to try as hard? If that is true, should they be the ones who stand between the innocent and a burning death?

Face it. This is about putting one race ahead of all others. It isn't about putting the very best we have to offer on the front line of safety where the most talent can be brought to bare. It isn't about putting safety first at all. It is race first and the hell with the innocent who die in fires. Makes me sick.

Sotomayor is a dangerous person and I hope she is discarded for the SC. It makes you wonder why Obama picked her knowing the SCOTUS ruling on this case was lurking. Why would he choose her at such a time?

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You do realize you are arguing with a mindless vegetable, don't you?

You are wrong and so is the person you quoted.
Ginsberg explained that no one had a basis for suing because no one was damaged.
No one had been denied any promotion yet.
And there was clear evidence that those who hired tutors and bought additional materials were not the best suited for command.
You asked questions that have already been answered.
There was plenty of evidence the tests were not based on the actual procedures used by the city.
For example, the direction truck were to face when parking on a hill.

Back pay would be concidered damage in my book.

Why did it end up in the Supreme Court if no one was denied promotion?

If they were tutored and had the best learning materials and they still didn't score well on the test, too bad, regardless of skin color.

Wouldn't be the first time that happened.

Where I'm from there are procedures in place for the parking of fire apparatus. Depending on the terrain at the site truck location is important, pump function, ladder function and leaving room for other vehicles is very much a procedural matter. In fact, for example, many fire departments know exactly where to park each vehicle at say, a school because of the length of hose required to reach specific areas, library, cafeteria, etc. Also it should be within the knowledge of a leader to know where all water access is located throughout their area. These are not racially specific questions, it is general knowledge.

I'm sure there were other questions besides those of procedure, but can you honestly come up with a single question that only a White or Hispanic person would know that a Black would not? Honestly, can you? I can't. Are Whites and Hispanics the only ones to know, say, how to climb a ladder? Did they exclude Blacks from ladder training so that their scores would be lower? That would be lame. Face it, for whatever reason those who scored higher and those who scored lower gave it their best and either failed or sailed. Being Black had nothing to do with it other than this case threatens to change all kinds of discrimination and includes the protection of all races. This is good for America.

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You do realize you are arguing with a mindless vegetable, don't you?

Well, her hearings start tomorrow. She will be confirmed it appears. There should be no filibuster, I don't believe in using that mechanism in this process. The questions should be on point and civil, based on qualification issues. As to her platforms or past comments, well, the court of public opinion has spoken out by and large, and this should not turn into a recitation of such.

She would not be my choice, aside from social views, I would think that we could do better as to scholastic qualifications and success, I am left with the feeling that we didn’t look for the best, we looked to make a social/political statement and that should not be what this is about.

An article I ran across the other day-

The Judge Sotomayor I've Faced
Her questioning is tough and fair, demanding and acute.

Having argued cases before Judge Sonia Sotomayor on a number of occasions, I have been struck by the assertion by some lawyers that her questioning has been too harsh, even abrasive. True, Judge Sotomayor once described herself in a speech as a "bear on the bench." And her questions can lead some lawyers to wish they had been quizzed in a far more cuddly manner.

But in my experience her questions are tough and fair, demanding and acute. One could say worse things about a judge.

Consider two of the cases I have argued before her. One arose after a jury had been chosen in federal court to hear accusations that a prominent Wall Street investment banker, Frank Quattrone, had obstructed justice. Days before Mr. Quattrone's trial commenced in April 2004, a state court judge in another widely publicized case ordered a mistrial after two New York newspapers published the name of (and much critical and personal commentary about) a juror who'd behaved in a manner that led many to think she favored the defendant. Concerned that the same might occur in his court, the federal judge in the Quattrone case entered an order barring the press from publishing the name of any juror.


Well-intentioned as the judge was, his action ran directly into a First Amendment wall. The order was not only a prior restraint on the press, and thus very likely unconstitutional. It also barred publication of juror names already referred to in open court. If anything, this was an even clearer basis for the Second Circuit of Appeals in New York to strike down the lower court's ruling. Many cases had held that what occurs in a public court is public property, and that the press may not be punished for publishing it.

I pressed the latter point in my oral argument on behalf of a number of press organizations. This was, I said, one of the rare legal rules that were truly absolute.

Judge Sotomayor quickly responded with a series of questions about whether I really meant that the rule was absolute. Yes, I said, I meant it.

What if, she asked, there was some emergency that required a brief halt on publication and to do otherwise would cause grave harm? If the information was already revealed in open court, I said, neither the press nor anyone else could be prevented from revealing it.

Suppose, she said, a hired mob assassin stood up in open court and announced that 20 minutes later a particular person would be killed if the information were made public. Did I really mean that even in that circumstance the courts were without power to act?

Good question. Too good. I paused, concerned that I was wearing out my welcome by taking what increasingly seemed (because of Judge Sotomayor's questions) a far too extreme position.

I made a last try. If that occurred, I said, you could lock the doors of the courtroom to keep the press and everyone else from leaving, but you could not enter an order barring them from publishing what they had heard in court.

She looked at me in a bemused way. I looked away and started talking about something else.

We won the case a few weeks later. Judge Sotomayor's opinion concluded that the order barring publication of the juror names was unconstitutional because it was a prior restraint on speech and because the information had been revealed in open court.

Then she added two elegant lines. "We need not address what exceptional circumstances, if any, could justify a departure from the doctrine barring restrictions on the publication of information revealed in open court. It suffices to hold that the record is devoid of facts that could justify creating such an exception in this case."

Another encounter was in the 1999 Brooklyn Museum Case, arising out of then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's efforts to strip the museum of all city funding and evict it from its home because it refused to remove a painting the mayor found offensive.

The questions Judge Sotomayor asked the city's lawyer were the judicial equivalent of hard left jabs in a boxing match. The U.S. Constitution generally bars sanctions against speakers based on their viewpoint. So she asked the lawyer:

"I'm still having difficulty understanding how this is not viewpoint discrimination. Please explain to me what the difference between this is and viewpoint discrimination by a state actor. There's a legion of Supreme Court cases holding that viewpoint discrimination can't be upheld."

And then:

"Give me an example of what is impermissible viewpoint discrimination."

Judge Sotomayor was no easier on me. She pressed me hard on my contention that the museum needed an injunction to protect it against the mayor. She pointed out that if we won the case the museum would get back all the money Mr. Giuliani had withheld. She required me to concede that the museum would suffer no immediate financial hardship if there was no injunction. She asked a series of increasingly difficult questions testing my contention that the case could be in federal court in the first place.

We never had a ruling in the Brooklyn Museum case, since Mr. Giuliani threw in the towel before the court could rule and abandoned his efforts to pressure the museum to remove the painting. But hardball questioning of both sides was precisely what good judges do.

Long before Judge Sotomayor was appointed a federal appellate judge, the single most honored and esteemed member of the U.S. Court of Appeals was Learned Hand. Routinely described as the single greatest American jurist never appointed to the Supreme Court, Hand could terrorize counsel who appeared before him.

When counsel made an argument Hand thought was inadequate, he was notorious for turning his chair around so his back faced the hapless lawyer who was arguing. Hand's questioning, his biographer wrote, led lawyers "to blanch and shake." That's how a bear in a courtroom behaves.

The Judge Sotomayor I've Faced - WSJ.com

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

Boy.....in watching about 40 minutes of this hearing, I've drawn the conclusion that Sotomayor is just playing the four corners defense.

I guess she has decided, or been instructed, that she's not going to give real answers to any questions......even simple ones posed by Democrats.

I've learned nothing of substance about her and I think that because she's not willing to take a little risk to speak her mind, I've lost some degree of respect for her.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

Yeah, she is just giving the answer she knows people want to hear, but she's not believable.

I don't trust her one bit.

Actually, she's not really giving answers to anyone's questions. She's not taking a stand on anything, so it's not deception, it's just avoidance.

She will be confirmed based on her resume...and her ability not to cause a controversy during the hearings. When she actually takes the bench as a Supreme Court Justice, we probably won't hear that much about her because he record says she's neither as liberal and radical as Republicans are painting her or as moderate and even-handed as Democrats are painting her.

One justice retires and another fills the spot....Sotomayor is probably less liberal than her replacement, so the makeup of the court will not change nearly as much as it did with the Bush appointees. Republicans should be happy to break even, if not net a small gain in the political makeup of the court.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

I am willing to give Sotomayor the benefit of the doubt. Afterall, none of the sitting judges answered questions during their confirmation in such a way that would allow anyone to know how they would rule on any issue that were to come before the Supreme Court. Sotomayor is only one of nine justices and unless she is able to persuade a majority of the others to accept her point of view in every case we have nothing to worry about.

I wish though, she knew the difference between say eminent and imminent
( that might be important in her future position eh?)...or “province” and “providence” and oh, “store” of knowledge and “story” of knowledge....


Sure ses obfuscating AND whats mnore she has dissembled or completely overturned everything she said of any import asked of her ala the statements that she has made many times in the past. Shes gonna say what shes got to say or not, and do what shes got to do.

She sounds remarkably unconvincing imho.

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