Grilling began Tuesday of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who pulled one of the oldest political tricks out of the hat that exists to mollify (or at least to try) gun owners.
She told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “I have friends who hunt. I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized.”
The hell you say! It doesn’t appear that Judge Sotomayor understands the right to keep and bear arms at all, if she thinks that it is primarily about hunting. I have friends who go to church. That doesn't make me a Biblical scholar.
And I have friends who hunt. I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized. - Judge Sonia Sotomayor
She said one of her godchildren is a member of the National Rifle Association. Big deal.
Of course, Judge Sotomayor will not specify how she will vote on an issue that is very likely to come before the high court during its next session when – unless she has a “melt-down” as put Monday by an apparently wavering Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) – she will likely be a member of that panel.
The problem with this potential scenario is that Sotomayor will be sitting in judgment of one of her own rulings in Maloney v. Cuomo, handed down earlier this year. That ruling, issued unsigned by the Second Circuit Court, said that the Second Amendment is not incorporated to the states.
Perhaps the proper question to Sotomayor is not whether she believes the right to keep and bear arms applies as a limit on the states, but whether she would recuse herself from deliberating a case she decided seven months ago as an appeals court judge.
Judge Sotomayor assured the committee that "I would not prejudge any question that came before me if I was a justice on the Supreme Court." But she already has, in the Maloney decision, in which she joined an opinion that held the Second Amendment is not incorporated to the states. She cannot have it both ways.
BULLETIN: Judge Sotomayor told the panel later in the day that she would recuse herself from deliberations on the Maloney case, if the Supreme Court takes up that case. This was made clear by the judge to Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona. It was not clear whether she would recuse herself in the event the high court instead takes up the case of McDonald v. Chicago from the Seventh Circuit, or Nordyke v. King from the Ninth Circuit.
Ranking Judiciary Committee Republican Jeff Sessions…is urging the (NRA) to mobilize, saying that the court's 5-to-4 majority stripping DC handgun restrictions in the Heller case is just to narrow to allow Sotomayor to be nominated without a serious fight. - Politico.com
Sotomayor is putting on a good performance for the Senate panel. As a friend of mine in California sagely noted via e-mail Monday evening: “This is a highly intelligent and probably even gifted judge…and her opening remarks were very carefully crafted to try and undo the damage she has done. Let’s hope this woman believes in all parts of the Constitution equally. Let’s hope.”
Let us further hope that she is not of the mindset of fellow Examiner Marc Rubin, the New York Obama Administration Examiner, who insists in his latest entry that “there is no 2nd amendment (sic) right to own a gun.”
“The fact that there are so many people ignorant of what the 2nd amendment (sic) means and who insist on repeating the myth that the 2nd amendment (sic) has anything to do with an individual right to own a gun doesn’t make it so,” Rubin writes.
Judge Sotomayor has not indicated that she is anywhere near as foolish. However, her participation in two rulings that have gun owners raising red flags all over the map certainly suggests that “the richness of her experiences” in New York hardly stack up to the richness of experience someone from western Montana or anywhere in Wyoming might bring to the Supreme Court, if there were such a nominee.
...there is no 2nd amendment (sic) right to own a gun, and that is not in dispute among anyone who knows the constitution which admittedly leaves out at least 3/4 of the members of Congress and probably half the states attorneys general in the country. - Marc Rubin, New York Obama Administration Examiner
Sotomayor needs to face the tough questions about gun rights, and if the dialogue gets testy, well, too bad. Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the committee and a liberal Vermont Democrat, warned Monday, “Let no one demean this extraordinary woman.”
Challenging a judge who would be appointed for life to the highest court in the land is not demeaning, no matter how someone might try to spin it.
The NRA has taken something of a cautious approach to Sotomayor, not coming right out in opposition, as did former NRA presidents Sandra Froman and Robert Corbin, the latter a former Arizona attorney general, and 24 other gun rights leaders. I wrote about their letter to the U.S. Senate here.
According to Politico.com, unidentified Democratic aides to the committee “think the NRA is simply making a cost-benefit calculation, particularly after throwing their weight earlier this year behind a gun rights rider attached to the DC representation bill.”
“I don’t think they want to expend their political capital on Sotomayor,” said one staffer, close to the confirmation process.
Gun rights activists are hoping that the NRA does not have to expend even more “political capital” at some point over the horizon, battling some gun law that a Sotomayor-influenced court deems to be acceptable.
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Comments
As an old sales guy I was trained to watch body language for reactions... as you watch the news clips on TV of her answers pay attention to her rapid "blinking eye". It is often called the "Nixon Effect" because of rapid blinking during his resignation speech... it is an indicator of outright lies and/or an attempt to "avoid detection" on some issue. Also listen to her speech pattern... way too long and drawn out. One who answers every interogatory in a slow and measured tone is concentrating on not misspeaking their pre-rehearsed lines.
Conservatives oppose Sotomayor not because she is unqualified (she is Constitutionally), but because she is unfit to be a SCOTUS Judge who are there to review the law for fidelity to the Constitution, (2A is the strongest part of that document that insures all the others)... not to enact thier own "empathy" and personal policy decisions.
This is why I emphasizied why she needs to be asked about how police have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others. It's because 2A isn't about Hunting, and we need to harp on this to the very end.
How she gets it or how she does not reveals how she will rule in 2A cases.
The Second Amendment is not about hunting. It is about defending one's self from tyranny and self defense.
She doesn't get it. She would rule in favor of an AWB, because "those guns aren't needed for hunting".
Enjoy your single-shot .22s, America.
"Enjoy your single-shot .22s, America. "
For now, it wont be long before that would also be categorized as an evil tool of mass destruction and chaos, of which the American people could not be trusted to own.
Chill out! Sotomayor is not anti-gun rights. If she were she would have a paper trail detailing her bias against gun rights. But no such paper trail exists. That's why the NRA is holding their fire (pun intended). If such a paper trail existed the NRA would attack her like they attacked John Kerry in '04...with guns blazing. Sotomayor will be one judge on a court of several judges. Even if she WAS anti-gun rights one Supreme Court justice is not going to strip the power of the 2nd Amendment without the help of four other justices. And I don't see four other anti-gun rights justices on the Court during the Obama administration. Obama is too Constitutionally literate and too politically savvy to nominate an anti-gun rights justice.
If this liberal minority activist could well be the spark that will trigger the next American Revolution. We, the grassroots conservative CITIZENS of the USA is being pushed to the brink. Having this piece of garbage on the SCOTUS may be the tipping point!
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