Ouch! From liberal Louis Michael Seidman – hammers on Sotomayor’s testimony (scroll down):
Speaking only for myself (I guess that’s obvious), I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor’s testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified. How could someone who has been on the bench for seventeen years possibly believe that judging in hard cases involves no more than applying the law to the facts? First year law students understand within a month that many areas of the law are open textured and indeterminate—that the legal material frequently (actually, I would say always) must be supplemented by contestable presuppositions, empirical assumptions, and moral judgments. To claim otherwise—to claim that fidelity to uncontested legal principles dictates results—is to claim that whenever Justices disagree among themselves, someone is either a fool or acting in bad faith. What does it say about our legal system that in order to get confirmed Judge Sotomayor must tell the lies that she told today? That judges and justices must live these lies throughout their professional carers?
Perhaps Justice Sotomayor should be excused because our official ideology about judging is so degraded that she would sacrifice a position on the Supreme Court if she told the truth. Legal academics who defend what she did today have no such excuse. They should be ashamed of themselves.
To me, of course, judging should only be about applying law to the facts – but if you’re to be a liberal judge, that isn’t what you hold to be correct. And Sotomayor certainly is no conservative jurist – so, why is she lying about her own views or, if you wish to put it charitably, being a moron? Because even with a 60-Seat Senate majority, liberal jurisprudence is politically toxic. Its not so much that the Democrats couldn’t muscle her through – they could, because at least one or two GOP Senators (and probably more) will vote to confirm even if she’s in favor of clubbing baby seals to death. No, its because Democrat Senators up for re-election in red States don’t want to have to defend a vote in favor of liberal, judicial activism to the folks back home. Voting for the first hispanic Justice is great – voting for a liberal kook who will invent constitutional law out of thin air is less great.
Rush Limbaugh commented yesterday that if Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” remark was available on good quality video, she wouldn’t be getting confirmed. Here is an excellent example of the dishonesty and cowardice of our modern politics. Everyone knows she’s a kook leftist, but as there’s no televised proof of this, the fact that she says she’s not a kook leftist is going to be held as sufficient by the gathered Senators. As long as Sotomayor doesn’t spill the beans in the hearings, all will be well – and so she just blandly states what everyone knows to be false; making the claim that she’s not a kook leftist in judicial get-up.
Mr. Seidman, God bless him, is outraged that Sotomayor doesn’t show the courage of her convictions and wishes that people had a better understanding of the issue, so that Sotomayor’s dissembling would be un-necessary. Poor man – he doesn’t realize that people understand the issue perfectly well, and thus the issue – as it were – is being shoved under the rug in favor of non-issues which poll better in focus groups. A dishonest obscuring of the truth is necessary to get Sotomayor on the court – and she appears to be mercenary enough to play the game (hey, its a well-paid life appointment requiring minimal work and no thought at all – thought will be provided by NARAL and the ACLU). And this should come as no surprise – after all, it took a dishonest obscuring of the truth to make President Obama palatable to the American people.
So, what can we do? Not much – but we can start to figure out ways to trick liberals in to admitting to their views. Do that, and we’ll have 80 Senate seats, and then we won’t have to play these silly games any more.
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