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Why Sonia Sotomayor is simply wrong for the Supreme Court
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While she is certainly an example of what someone with drive and ambition can achieve in America, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is someone who should not serve on the highest court in the land.
Gun rights activists are already lobbying hard against Sotomayor’s nomination, not only because her position on the Second Amendment is clearly spelled out in this year’s Second Circuit ruling in Maloney v. Cuomo, but because she is an unabashed liberal activist judge, and such judges – as a Washington Times editorial points out – are typically bad news for the country.
This goes deeper than a gun rights issue, however.
There is more than a subtle hint that Judge Sotomayor may be something of a bigot, albeit an acceptable bigot by Far Left’s standards. Seven years ago, she contended during a California speech that gender and race affect a judge’s decisions, which may translate to affecting her decisions.
It was during that speech that Sotomayor uttered the now infamous contention that, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
If a white male judge ever uttered such a remark about how his life experiences gave him a better grasp of wisdom to reach a conclusion than a Latina woman, he not only would never be nominated to a spot on the Supreme Court, he might be driven from whatever federal or state bench he currently occupied, and ridden out of town on a rail.
Her high rate of reversals is concerning, but the Maloney ruling is a red flag to everyone in the gun rights movement. I brought this up in my previous column. She was part of the Second Circuit panel that ruled the Second Amendment does not apply to state and local governments. That is in direct conflict with the Ninth Circuit ruling in Nordyke v. King that the Second Amendment does apply to the states. A civil right is a civil right, and no level of government should have immunity from the exercise of that right, nor the authority to regulate that right to the level of a privilege.
But judicial activism is no joke. It undermines the Constitution and substitutes judicial whim for democratic decision-making. Unelected judges, answerable to no one but themselves and serving for life, can all too easily become dangerous oligarchs.
The disparity between Sotomayor’s position and that of the Ninth Circuit was enough to alarm Reason magazine, which discussed the nomination here.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s resident Liberal icon, Joel Connelly, on Wednesday took to task conservatives, including the Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb, for daring to suggest that “Judge Sonia Sotomayer” might not be the right pick. Connelly once again struts his partisan stuff, with the added entertainment of his inability to correctly spell her name.
The KeepAndBearArms website is running a poll on whether Sotomayor should be confirmed, and at this writing, she was being rejected dismally by more than 97 percent of respondents.
Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the American Civil Rights Union/Family Research Council, said Sotomayor’s nomination was a “declaration of war” against American gun owners by the Obama administration.
It is not likely that Republicans – currently in political disarray – can mount the kind of blistering opposition that sank the nomination of Judge Robert Bork and nearly scuttled the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas, even if they all wanted to. Despite promises from Republicans like Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to thoroughly examine this nomination, it is not clear that all Republicans want any such thing, perhaps fearful that it will subject them to even more disdain from the press.
But when it comes to gun rights, we don’t need to guess. Judge Sotomayor has put in writing what she thinks. President Obama has nominated a radically anti-Second Amendment judge to be our newest Supreme Court justice. - Ken Blackwell
Here’s a news flash for timid Republicans: The press isn’t going to like you, ever. Get over it and do your job. The press, especially the national press, is in the tank for Obama and anyone he wants in his cabinet or on the Supreme Court. The press gives a buffoon like Joe Biden pass after pass, yet they savaged Dan Quayle for less ineptitude 20 years ago. The press was partisan then, and it is worse now. Once regarded as “The Fourth Estate,” the national press has evidently abandoned the estate for the far more cushy job of White House lapdog for “The One.”
The press will vigorously defend the First Amendment – as it should – but has a solid track record of encouraging and endorsing any and all infringements on the Second Amendment. That being the case, you can bet the farm that Sotomayor’s coverage by the “mainstream” press (which isn’t “mainstream” at all) will be largely dominated by rather complimentary puff pieces like the story in Wednesday’s New York Times or the gush-awful (not a typo) diatribe in the New York Daily News.
If Judge Sotomayor’s credentials reflect the philosophy of Barack Obama, then it is no wonder why America’s firearms community has great apprehension about his presidency. Her remarks about using the court to set policy, her position on the Second Amendment, and her suggestion that she can make better decisions than a white male are signals about the kind of philosophy Sonia Sotomayor would bring to the Supreme Court. That’s why she should not be allowed to take a seat on that bench.
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