Obama was going to nominate a wild-ass liberal and everybody knew it.

Well, when you become an American maybe you can vote against him. Until then, how about you make substantive arguments in support of your position rather than just throwing out op-ed drivel?

Hey, you too, buddy.

I am going to start referring to myself as The Wise Caucasiana.

If you flip Sotomayor's comments--imagine a white male expressing the hope that a person like him would make better decisions than a Latina

...she is suggesting it's possible (not a universal truth, but a possibility) that a member of an ethnic minority with many life experiences that privileged white males *tend* not to have, in view of the fact that they are privileged and sheltered, will be wiser. The idea being that experience and exposure to the world, especially the world outside of the privileged legal elite, tends to inform and enrich one's wisdom, including judicial wisdom.

If you flip Sotomayor's comments--imagine a white male expressing the hope that a person like him would make better decisions than a Latina--you get something that would bring down a wild frenzy of shrieking vitriol.

The point is: losing elections have consequences.

Some have suggested that Sotomayor brought this on herself by saying that her background and experiences as a Hispanic woman give her a unique perspective when judging cases.

Yet the isolated snippets of Sotomayor's remarks that have become so contentious are hard to distinguish from some of the comments made by recent Republican appointees to the Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito, for example, explained during his confirmation hearings that when he gets a discrimination case, he takes into account the experiences of people in his "own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender."

The general thrust of these comments - that personal perspective affects the way judges construe facts - is well-supported in the academic literature. But that has not stopped critics from assailing Sotomayor as an "activist" judge and casting Obama's call for an empathetic appointee as code for one guided by feelings rather than the law. As freelance Inquirer columnist John Yoo put it in a recent blog post that echoed comments by Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sen. Mitch McConnell, and others, the danger is that Sotomayor will be "voting her emotions."

Whether deliberate or not, such statements play on stereotypes of women as ruled by hormones, devoid of reason, and lacking the discipline to put aside their feelings and make hard decisions. The same assertions have been raised for centuries to prevent women from taking positions of power outside the home.

If you have a argument, let's hear it, ok?

Sonia Sotomayor has, ... in her decision as a judge to dismiss out of hand the appeal of white firefighters who had been discriminated against, betrayed a racism that is no less racism because it is directed against different people than the old racism of the past.

What an interesting comment. Perhaps you can find the part of his testimony where he proclaims that his rich experiences make him a better judge than a black man, or woman, or Latina. And right afterwards he sailed through with Ted Kennedy's blessing. That would really be a gotcha.

Moneyrunner, why did no one complain about Alito?

Acknowledging that one is an outsider and a pioneer is not inappropriate.

You can argue all day that this is about race, and I will say right back that it is about ideology and politics. That's all.

SS was part of the majority that affirmed the district court's ruling that New Haven could refuse to certify the results of a content-valid promotion examination because it believed that the racially disparate results would cause it to lose a lawsuit brought by minority-group plaintiffs. But she could not have done it alone. So were the judges who agreed with her racist too?

If you have a argument, let's hear it, ok?

YOU:

In the absence of any substantive argument of your own, for your substitution to be valid, one must assume you are arguing implicitly that the experiences of a "wise Latina" who had made it to the Court of Appeals was indistinguishable from any white male's.

If that curious assertion were true, if there were nothing special about a Hispanic female being nominated to the Supreme Court, if it was just as easy in the aggregate for Hispanic females to make it as white males, there would be proportionately as many Hispanic females as white males on the Court.

But that is manifestly untrue, as the past two centuries of the white male dominated Supreme Court shows.

So your argument fails.

For your substitution argument to describe Sotomayor's actual situation, the white male would have to have had an outsider's experience, the same as the Hispanic female has in reality. The odds would have had to have been stacked against him, the same as for the Hispanic female in reality.

And for that to be true, the Supreme Court would have had to have been dominated historically by Hispanic females.

And that's why the simple substitution fails.

Many folks, including myself, get annoyed every time someone repeats the phrase "Latina woman" because it is the equivalent of the phrase "female of Spanish-speaking descent woman".

Sotomayor's use of this sort of barely coherent redundancy in a prepared speech is a sign she shouldn't be on the 2nd Circuit, let alone the Supreme Court.

"You're able to see such a huge difference because the "content of their character" consensus forged in the years following Brown led to its widespread acceptance, and, now, celebration."

For this reason I think it's just plain silly to brand people who support affirmative action as racists/sexists etc.

"wise Latina woman," or simply a "wise woman,"

we'll outbreed the bastards. How's that working out for the Palestinians?"

"Now if my experience is any guide, you number yourself among the bastards, but of course you'd be among the Elect who have accepted the doctrine of original racial sin, and have atoned for it/bought you indulgence from the privilege priesthood by accepting the affirmative action creed into your heart, so at least your can look down on us Reprobates."

“Both race and criminal record had a huge effect of the likelihood on receiving a callback from employers. Probably the most surprising finding was that a black applicant with no criminal record was no more likely, in fact even slightly less likely, to receive a callback from employers than was a white applicant with a felony conviction.”

"Guess it's better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven for some folks."

"If I knew that Perry was serious about secession I would vote for him. Although Perry himself is a reason to be pessimistic about who we elect as president of the Republic of Texas.

"I thought you were the one arguing for continuing the pathetic charade.

"1963, asshole. Seems to me that you're the one pining for the old days before Dr. King forged that consensus. Would Dr. King support AA? Likely he would, but as a buttress to that consensus, not as its hateful replacement.

"In August 1963, Gallup found considerable public opposition to the now-famous civil rights march on Washington in which King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. The poll was conducted about two weeks before the march, at which time 71% were familiar with "the proposed mass civil rights rally to be held in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28." Of those who were familiar, only 23% said they had a favorable view of "the rally"; 42% had an unfavorable view of it (including 7% who predicted violence would occur) and 18% said it wouldn't accomplish anything.

In May 1964, Gallup asked, "Do you think mass demonstrations by Negroes are more likely to help or more likely to hurt the Negro's cause for racial equality?" In response, only 16% of Americans -- including just 10% of whites but 55% of nonwhites -- said such mass demonstrations would help the cause."

"He spoke to those ideals you so foolishly defame. As does our current President, you may have noticed."