Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Stuart Taylor writes again on Sotomayor with even stronger condemnation of her affirmative action views.
Conservative critics of Judge Sonia Sotomayor may be digging themselves into a hole if they keep hurling the tired old “liberal activist” slogan at her. The reason is that her supporters can plausibly retort that these days, the Supreme Court’s conservatives are as activist as the liberals, especially on racial issues.
But conservatives and like-minded centrists can win the political debate if they focus not on buzzwords but on in-depth, civil discourse about the very big issue on which Sotomayor and her liberal supporters are most at odds — and the conservative justices most in tune — with the vast majority of Americans.
That issue is racially preferential affirmative action. By this, I mean the many forms of supposedly benign discrimination against whites and Asians that have been engineered over the past 45 years to advance blacks and Hispanics in the workforce, in college admissions, and in government contracting.
The long-standing public disapproval of such preferences was documented yet again by a major Quinnipiac University poll released on June 3, showing that American voters, by a lopsided margin, want them abolished. …
Abby Thernstrom wants to know when Obama is going to get past race.
Some of us thought the election of Barack Obama as president might signal a fading away of the old identity politics.
The assumption that fundamental lines of division in politics are set by race and ethnicity would seem to be a bit passé when 43 percent of white voters cast their ballots for a proudly “post-racial” African-American.
But the president himself has made identity politics front-page news with his selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee. She played an important role in the New Haven firefighters’ case (Ricci v. DeStefano) now awaiting decision by the Supreme Court. …
Given the way Obama treated Roberts and Alito, David Broder says he has nothing to complain about when Sotomayor gets slammed.
… Based on the Obama precedent, the White House can hardly complain if Republicans push beyond the question of Sotomayor’s qualifications and examine her values — and her biases.
Someday, the Senate may again be satisfied to examine only professional credentials, recognizing the uncertain dynamics of a nine-person bench. But while the Bork and Obama precedents live, that is not likely.
Victor Davis Hanson wants to know if it’s going to be race and resentment all the time.
… One would have thought with the presidency, or nomination to the Supreme Court, or with the office of Attorney General, or First Lady, such hurt feelings and old grievances might wane; but instead the resentment seems to be ubiquitous, and growing, and the lectures will be with us for the next four years in almost every imaginable circumstance. If the administration is not careful, millions of Americans are going to begin feeling that they are caricatured pretty much as those once were in rural Pennsylvania.
VDH says she can her resentments and he’ll have his reservations.
… I think Team Obama will have to retract any characterization that Sotomayor “misspoke,” given that she seemed to say it ad nauseam over the years — at some point how can one really suggest that she did not believe what she so often proclaimed?
Despite the solid credentials of Justice Sotomayor, and her winning personality, I still think all this is going to be a lot more serious than Obama thinks, since the president is essentially saying to the American people that their next Supreme Court justice on regular occasions, in print and before the public, has reiterated that race and gender make someone intrinsically a better or worse judge — precisely the opposite ideology from what Obama embraced in his hope-and-change, no-blue/no-red-state rhetoric.
A disinterested observer would conclude that Justice Sotomayor is race-obsessed. In her now much quoted 2001 UC Berkeley speech she invoked “Latina/Latino” no less than 38 times, in addition to a variety of other racial-identifying synonyms. When one reads the speech over, the obsession with race become almost overwhelming, and I think the public has legitimate worries (more than the Obama threshold of 5% of cases) over whether a judge so cognizant of race could be race-blind in her decision making. …
Ed Whelan Corner posts on Soto’s Puerto Rican nationalism and her public cheerleading for Obama.
In a speech that she delivered to the Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American Law Alumni Association on April 17, 2009 — two weeks before news of the Souter vacancy broke — Judge Sotomayor made a number of references to President Obama that seem surprisingly and disturbingly partisan coming from a sitting federal judge:
“The power of working together was, this past November, resoundingly proven.” (p. 6)
“The wide coalition of groups that joined forces to elect America’s first Afro-American President was awe inspiring in both the passion the members of the coalition exhibited in their efforts and the discipline they showed in the execution of their goals.” (p. 7)
“On November 4, we saw past our ethnic, religious and gender differences.” (p. 10)
“What is our challenge today: Our challenge as lawyers and court related professionals and staff, as citizens of the world is to keep the spirit of the common joy we shared on November 4 alive in our everyday existence.” (p. 11)
“It is the message of service that President Obama is trying to trumpet and it is a clarion call we are obligated to heed.” (p. 13)
Canon 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides that a judge “should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Sotomayor’s public cheerleading for Obama seems clearly to violate that ethical obligation.
Jennifer Rubin closes the Sotomayor section.
… Obama and his team, not without good reason, have a nearly unlimited confidence in their ability to control the narrative and direct the national debate. But from time to time, whether on Guantanamo or the stimulus plan, reality swamps the spin. The voters can assess for themselves what is being sold. On Sotomayor they can decide whether she and, by inference, the president are selling a vision they don’t like.
Along the way they may discover that the president and his nominee are, how shall we say it, not at all empathetic toward the victims of race preferences.
David Harsanyi says if Coloradans are not careful their state will be broke just like California.
… Colorado’s dynamic economy relies on a multitude of factors, but none of those factors happens to be the presence of wise governors or legislators. Sensible governance is made compulsory by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) and other state spending limits — which keeps government lean and responsible, yet also allow the state the flexibility to ask voters for more funding.
Now, politicians abhor few things more than the unpleasant task of justifying their spending to the riff-raff. Even more distasteful is dealing with bothersome spending limits that retard an elected official’s transcendent powers to help you out.
Accordingly, the bellyaching over spending caps in Colorado is ceaseless. How anyone but a shyster politician could argue that allowing a budget to grow 6 percent over the previous year’s total (and more if you count transportation and capital projects) is unfair is yet to be determined. Few Colorado families or businesses, I am relatively sure, enjoy that kind of latitude.
Yet, this week — only days after California voters overwhelmingly rejected their state’s bid at economic anarchy — Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter signed legislation to eliminate Colorado’s spending limit, which henceforth will be referred to as the “Californiacation.” …
It turns out Wal-Mart is helping people eat better. This from Forbes.
One might think that “everyday low prices” for food would mean that people would eat much more–stuff themselves, even. So one would expect to see more obese folks in places where Wal-Mart does more business. Right? Think again. Research tells a different story.
The University of North Carolina-Greensboro’s Charles Courtemanche and I are finishing a study of big retail stores and obesity. In our first round of statistical analysis we found that greater consumer access to a Wal-Mart store was associated with lower body-mass indexes and a lower probability of being obese.
As we gathered more data on Wal-Mart discount stores, Wal-Mart Supercenters, warehouse clubs like Sam’s Club, Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club, and other outlets, we found that the correlation holds up under a variety of different circumstances, with a clear relationship between warehouse clubs and better eating habits emerging over time. Further, we found that Wal-Mart’s effect on weight is largest for women, the poor, African-Americans and people who live in urban areas. …
According to Scrappleface, Sotomayor says a “wise Latina” would not have picked her.
… President Obama said he would not comment further on the controversy, “since matching wits with a Latina woman is above my pay grade.”
Click on WORD or PDF for full content