Attention all Nutbags of the Retail Right.
Before you carry on with any more whining that 'Maria' Sotomayor is somehow unfit for the bench due to her gender, nationality, cultural identity, empathy, sympathy or anything else, read these quotes:
…when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant – and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases – I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position…when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.
When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. – Samuel Alito coming on all Italian immigrant at his confirmation hearing to sound of Republican silence.
The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible. Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe, and has least support in the churchgoing United States.
I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal. Intentionally killing an innocent person is a big deal: it is a grave sin, which causes one to lose his soul. But losing this life, in exchange for the next? – Anton Scalia crashing through the wall between church and state to the sound of the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.
I have followed this man's career for some time…he is a delightful and warm, intelligent person who has great empathy and a wonderful sense of humor. – Poppy Bush 41 dropped the 'E" word about Clarence Thomas to the sound of distant crickets.
The thing is that conservatives like biased Supremes and 'activist' judges' just fine, so long as their activism is directed in the right, ie their, direction. 'Not only do state-court judges possess the power to "make" common law’ opined Scalia, ‘but they have the immense power to shape the States' constitutions as well’ and without conservative judges 'legislating from the bench', corporate personhood would still be a distant nightmare and the world would have just waved goodbye to President Gore.
However, if the Supremes weren'tprone to the odd bit of interpretation then the unfortunate Terri Schiavo would not have had to go through that pathetic farrago as the letter of the law would have seen dispatched to the great hereafter on the PDQ.
Is Sotomayer biased? Who isn't? Plainly the rest of the Supremes are. Maybe conservatives would prefer the SCOTUS to consist of a series of Hewlett-Packards running MicroSoft ConJustice™ 2.0 that would digitally determine how the 18th Century Constitution would apply in the 21st, but that would mean that the occasional case would go against them. Grrr! Stoopid activist computers!
So he who hath no sin cast the first stone! Judge not lest ye be judged! And stop being such bloody hypocrites.
Petting Who?
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First Published in The Skinny, 1 November, 2009
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3 comments:
About Sotomayor: it was her left wing extremist views that drew the sparks of opposition, not her race or gender. The far lefties in the United States keep pulling out the race card whenever they face opposition from centrists and conservatives. That whining is getting old in the United States. What the world is being fed from the press is left wing extremist propaganda; the press tips far left. The Daily Los and the Huffington Post are 2 examples of left wing extremist media on the web.
Oh dear Mystere, I'm afraid you have, as always, ass-about. That you guys bitch so much when the possibility of a dissenting voice threatens the cosy little corporate-freindly cabal that is driving the destruction of your United States just shows how little you care for democracy, plurality and equality but Sotomayer is not, by any stretch of even the most fevered conservative imagination, a left-wing extremist – that is merely propaganda spread by the Corporate-owned mainstream media.
See? We can both play at that game, but the canard that the mainstream media is run by a bunch of rabid commies has long been busted. The MM is owned, and operated for the benefit of, large corporations and their shareholders; these are not benign altruists hell bent on their own destruction, they are for-profit organizations who will never actually go so far as to tear down the system that keeps them alive.
The problem, however, is not with the MM, who will go so far but never further, but with the way in which the conservative mind processes information – faced with having to admit that their world view is at odds with reality, they merely claim that reality is, in actual fact, a giant plot constructed by, er, somebody in order to do, um, something, hence the psychotic ramblings of Glenn Beck and...you. When the MM report anything that does not favor the Right, the Right claims that the MM is biased – the Right cannot consider the concept that the Right may might be at fault.
Furthermore, you seem a tad confused on what constitutes the 'mainstream' media; The Daily Kos certainly ain't, it is an unrepentantly progressive website, ALTERNATIVE media, as was the Huffington Post until it was sold to AOL, just as Town Hall and Free Republic are urepentantly regressive sights, so get it straight – just who are the 'Mainstream Media' that you are convinced are all part of some great global conspiracy?
What evidence, what hard, documented evidence do you have that Sotomayer is a left-wing extremist? Good luck with finding any, but while you're searching for it I'll explain the left's supposed 'whining' – the reason that the left complained that the Repubs were being sexist and racist is because they were being, um, sexist and racist. They took the assumption that the views of white men (Clarence Thomas notwithstanding – more of him later) were superior to those of a Latino women in that she couldn't be 'trusted' to deliver an 'impartial' judgement which intimates that the judgement of white men is, at all times, the gold standard of impartiality by which all others shall be, ahem, judged which, in turn, implies that the judgement of a Latino woman is somewhat less than the gold standard, that is, inferior, and so, QED, the Republicans are both racist and sexist. Get it?
As for Clarence Thomas, the left's objection to him was not based on 'race'; his ethnicity never came into it – even the NAACP didn't like him! – their problem was with his politics which, it turns out, was well founded. It seems that the 'Conflict of Interest' concept is yet another matter he is yet to form an opinion on, like Roe Vs Wade (as if!), as he consistently takes favours from the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society while his good lady wife is not merely a Republican Party activist, she actively runs a lobbying firm which advertises its ability to make GOP contacts and specialises in healthcare reform while her husband sits as silent as the grave on the SCOTUS and makes law about, yes, healthcare reform.
Thanks for the 'That whining is getting old' gag – that, coming from a conservative with no hint of irony, is rich indeed. How come it's 'old' for us but OK for y'all? Hmm? Because you want it both ways and, like typical bullies, you can dish it out but can't take it? Is that it? It is axiomatic of the Right that they will passionately accuse their opposition of that which they themselves are guilty of – corruption, a lack of morality and the spreading of propaganda – without really understanding what they are on about; propaganda, for instance, is the GOP's forte – they even have a 24 hour news channel devoted to their message.
I'm happy to explain propaganda to you, but maybe you would better served by doing some serious reading on the matter. Good luck! Happy hunting! (Here's a clue – Edward Bernays) Get back to me when you are a little more schooled on the issue!
Cheers
Elroy
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