After all the furor over the claims by Janeane Garofalo that the "All the Tea Party Protestors were Racists" because they choose to ignore Bush and only became frustrated with spending when Obama became President - we know have Limbaugh using Sotomayor's comment about the Appelate Court establishing policy (which is true, but only within their jurisdiction, and can clearly be overturned by SCOTUS) as a Racist Statement.
What she actually said was this.
SOTOMAYOR: I -- from my answer earlier, I don't -- doing either is going to get you a whole lot, so you don't make a mistake in whatever choice you make. But there is a choice. The saw is that if you're going into academia, you're going to teach, or as Judge Lucero just said, public interest law, all of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with court of appeals experience, because it is -- court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know -- and I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't make law, I know. OK, I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it, I'm -- you know. OK. Having said that, the court of appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating -- its interpretation, its application. And Judge Lucero is right. I often explain to people, when you're on the district court, you're looking to do justice in the individual case. So you are looking much more to the facts of the case than you are to the application of the law because the application of the law is non-precedential, so the facts control. On the court of appeals, you are looking to how the law is developing, so that it will then be applied to a broad class of cases. And so you're always thinking about the ramifications of this ruling on the next step in the development of the law. You can make a choice and say, "I don't care about the next step," and sometimes we do. Or sometimes we say, "We'll worry about that when we get to it" -- look at what the Supreme Court just did.
All she was doing was contrasting what the District Court does versus what the Appellate Court and Supreme Court does - at the District they're only thinking about the case in front of them, at the other levels their thinking about precedent and the ultimately ramifications of their decision on other similar cases within the structure of case law. That's just factually true...
But not to Limbaugh who also said this...
* "She is a hack like he is a hack, in the sense that the court is a place to be used to make policy -- not to adjudicate cases, not to adjudicate constitutional law, but to make policy."
* "I mean, do I want her to fail? Yeah. Do I want her to fail to get on the court? Yes -- she'd be a disaster on the court."
* "You know, Obama talks about 'we need people with empathy.' It's not even about empathy, folks; that's just cover. He just wants one of his own on the court to do his dirty work from the highest court in the land, and she fits the bill."
But this is where he really hammered Sotomayor on the Racist Charge.
: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Rush offered his thoughts on this: "So here you have a racist. You might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist. And the libs, of course, say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone, because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he's appointed one."
The core of her statement - was about the "richness of (ones) life experience", and recognizes the reality that different people do have different experiences and that those can - and potentially should - give some context to the consequences of their court decisions. It was simply about race or gender - but about about LIFE.
Naturally Limbaugh misses the point by the Kentucky Mile.
Here's some clips from Young Turks which carefully deconstructs many of the attacks against Sotomayor on the issue of her "Intellect" and being a "Single Latina".
She's been on the Federal bench for 17 years, graduated Suma Cum Laude from Princeton as was 2nd in her class, then went on the become editor of the Yale Law Review - and they think THIS person isn't qualified enough? They think she's a dumb latina single mother - named "Maria" like the girl from West Side Story?
It's pathetic how badly they project. This is Day-One of the nomination and I franky haven't had a change to develop and opinion on this nominee one way or the other, but for Pete's sake lets evaluate based on facts, not just anti-Liberal "Activist Judge" Hysteria.
As it turns out the most "Activist Judge" on the Supreme Court, the one who has "overturned the will of the people and the law as written by Congress and effectively Legislates from the Bench - is Clarence Thomas.
Vyan
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