Obama gets first Supreme Court pick

[Yuri-G]

oh god the Maria thing cracked me up. way to fart in your own face, huckabee!

[0ni0n]

Haha, republicans are a bunch of comedians.

[ZarakiKujata]

Haha, republicans are a bunch of comedians.

except comedians are intentionally funny?

[0ni0n]

except comedians are intentionally funny?

Like republicans are accidental? touche

[Yuri-G]

Like republicans are accidental? touche

well they don't believe in birth control or abortion, so... I'm guessing most of them are.

[Rhinox]

I'm not sold on Sotomayor. she has a real big potential of being a stealth conservative.

We really don't know much about her aside from being pro-big business and pro affirmative action.

Obama could have gotten Karl Marx on the supreme court with all the fucking political capital he has gotten and yet he chooses someone we know nothing about on social issues. This isn't the change I voted for.

[Kuya]

I have to agree on that point, i'm rather worried about her near blank record on executive power. And though it's great that she's latin and a woman, i was also hoping she might have had a decent record on limiting presidential power, considering how much of that we've seen lately. If she is chosen, she could go any either way on that.

[pohibaba]

(in a speech from 2001) ....Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion — often invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court colleague, Sandra Day O’Connor — that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases.
“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,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

While I don't think this statement should be enough to keep her off the bench on its own, it's still a pretty ignorant statement. What about being a brown person or a woman leads someone to interpret the law differently? More importantly, what about it would lead them to interpret the law better? Newt has a point in that if this statement was reversed the white guy saying it would be chastised.

[Olo401]

You're making the same mistake Newt Gingrich did. The statement isn't about being white or brown or black, or hispanic or italian or whatever. It's about the perspective each of us have during our individual lives.

...with the richness of (her) experiences...

...who hasn’t lived that life...

I fail to see how this is ignorant - in fact, it's a extremely ENLIGHTENED statement.

[Kuya]

While I don't think this statement should be enough to keep her off the bench on its own, it's still a pretty ignorant statement. What about being a brown person or a woman leads someone to interpret the law differently? More importantly, what about it would lead them to interpret the law better? Newt has a point in that if this statement was reversed the white guy saying it would be chastised.

What it means:

AMY GOODMAN: And also significant that she grew up right in the shadow of Yankee Stadium. She grew up in the public housing project. I just want to also mention her parents came from Puerto Rico to New York, but her father died at the age of nine, so she was raised by her mother, something that she brought up yesterday, honoring her mother in the White House when she was nominated.

Marjorie Cohn, the New York Times quotes a lecture she gave in 2001 called “A Latina Judge’s Voice,” where she said, “My hope is [that] I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

Can you wrap up for us?

MARJORIE COHN: Yes. Judges certainly make decisions through the lens of their experience and of their background. And the fact that she is a woman, the fact that she is a Latina, is going to invariably figure into her decision making and make her, I think, perhaps more sensitive than she might have been otherwise.

Compare to what Alito said:

ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point.

ALITO: I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.
And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.
But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because 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.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But 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 have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. 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. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

COBURN: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I think I'll yield back the balance of my time at this time, and if I have additional questions, get them in the next round.

SPECTER: Thank you very much, Senator Coburn.

It relates to her empathizing, and understanding where someone is coming from. She is also being attacked for being "empathetic" even though Samuel Alito basically said the same thing, that he's empathetic and has experiences that help him understand something better than someone else. Nobody quite called for Alito to be thrown out for being empathetic or for mentioning how his experiences colour his vision.

[pohibaba]

You're making the same mistake Newt Gingrich did. The statement isn't about being white or brown or black, or hispanic or italian or whatever. It's about the perspective each of us have during our individual lives.

...with the richness of (her) experiences...

...who hasn’t lived that life...

I fail to see how this is ignorant - in fact, it's a extremely ENLIGHTENED statement.

She's still claiming that simply by being a hispanic woman that she's led a life with more rich experiences than a white male.

[Correction]

She's still claiming that simply by being a hispanic woman that she's led a life with more rich experiences than a white male.

The statement leaves open the idea that a white man with a smilar life would obtain the same wisdom. It's a poorly constructed image but the meaning isn't that obscure. Latina woman with her life experience > wiser than a white man without. Granted, she didn't have to say 'latina woman' or 'white man' but the inclusion of both isn't patently racist.

[Olo401]

The statement leaves open the idea that a white man with a smilar life would obtain the same wisdom. It's a poorly constructed image but the meaning isn't that obscure. Latina woman with her life experience > wiser than a white man without. Granted, she didn't have to say 'latina woman' or 'white man' but the inclusion of both isn't patently racist.

Exactly. Nowhere does she says it makes her life more rich, nor does she say that a white man is less rich without it. It's simply that her life experiences will have a different affect on her actions than the life experiences of a white man. How is that any different from what Ginsburg or O'Connor or Alito have said themselves?

[Maxxthepenguin]

Has anyone found any link to the full speech? I've been wondering about the context of the quote. As it is, it's not definitely racist as it qualifies the Latina woman to be wise and does not qualify the white man to be the same way. It doesn't say that all Latina women are wiser than all white men. A wise person is usually that way due to life experience.

Also OMG LIBERAL RAG NYT BREAKS STORY KILLING ULTRA-LEFT WING SUPREME COURT PICK WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO.

[Seraph]

I don't the quote is necessarily racist, but the fact that a potential supreme court member is spouting off unclear messages makes me worry a little bit. Lack of ambiguity is just so absolutely necessary with how people take things out of context these days.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Nobody can talk unambiguously 100% of the time in every sentence. Good judgment is still what really matters and we don't really know if she has that as her "controversial" cases were procedural or non-controversial in the system she worked in.

[archibaldcrane]

While you can get into the semantics of it and say "oh no it's ok because..."

Jesus fucking christ that was some stupid shit to say. Don't hand the conservatives racial ammo, now they feel they have carte blanche to make as many sideways comments about her gender and ethnicity as they like because "she started it." What a retard.

[Correction]

While you can get into the semantics of it and say "oh no it's ok because..."

Jesus fucking christ that was some stupid shit to say. Don't hand the conservatives racial ammo, now they feel they have carte blanche to make as many sideways comments about her gender and ethnicity as they like because "she started it." What a retard.

Apparently the line drawn between stupid remarks that keep you from a spot on the supreme court and those which don't falls somewhere between "latina women vs white men" and "there's a pube in mah coke."

[Maxxthepenguin]

While you can get into the semantics of it and say "oh no it's ok because..."

Jesus fucking christ that was some stupid shit to say. Don't hand the conservatives racial ammo, now they feel they have carte blanche to make as many sideways comments about her gender and ethnicity as they like because "she started it." What a retard.

I don't know if you've noticed, but right now they are willing to take potshots at anything and everything that somebody they define as liberal right now (cue Limbaugh saying that Colin Powell is both a liberal and somebody who only voted for Obama based on race in one sentence.) Giving them ammo shouldn't be their concern; speaking truthfully should be.

[Vajra]

Here is the Whole Speech, apparently Republicans took 1 quote out of the speech (out of context) and blew it up into a whole racist controversy: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us...ewanted=5&_r=1, Republicans are some distorting mofos man.