Sonia Sotomayor: Supreme Empathizer?

[William Joyce]

Are there experiences that whites have in America that its pretty much impossible for Latinas to get?

Talk to Frank Ricci, asshole.

If you're white, you get screwed.

If you're a LATINA, you get to sit on the Supreme Court.

And they wonder why David Duke got elected!

 

[Chris]

Because she will understand the effects of racism and sexism better.

Because the US Constitution is racist and sexist?

Great avatar, elvis!

So glad you read your Consitution.

Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person, and women don't have the right to vote!

Ahh....those "founding fathers"......

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

Because she will understand the effects of racism and sexism better.

Because the US Constitution is racist and sexist?

Great avatar, elvis!

So glad you read your Consitution.

Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person, and women don't have the right to vote!

Ahh....those "founding fathers"......

Next time, buy a copy of the Constitution with all the Amendments.

They cut out all the racist and sexist parts.

 

[Annie]

Because she will understand the effects of racism and sexism better.

Because the US Constitution is racist and sexist?

Great avatar, elvis!

So glad you read your Consitution.

Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person, and women don't have the right to vote!

Ahh....those "founding fathers"......

Yeah, how long ago were those? Never mind, you've not a clue to amendments. You are the epitome of the left, ignorant to the core.

 

[foggedinn]

Because the US Constitution is racist and sexist?

Great avatar, elvis!

So glad you read your Consitution.

Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person, and women don't have the right to vote!

Ahh....those "founding fathers"......

Yeah, how long ago were those? Never mind, you've not a clue to amendments. You are the epitome of the left, ignorant to the core.

Do you actually believe that the founding fathers wrote the amendments that gave women the right to vote and negated the 3/5 of a man definition of blacks.

Your ignorance is showing.

 

[Annie]

Could it be? Never mind:

The Volokh Conspiracy - Now and Then:

[Orin Kerr, May 26, 2009 at 9:28pm] Trackbacks
Now and Then:
Dahlia Lithwick, The Rational Hysterics, today:
Confirmation hearings are inevitably an invitation to behave badly. Something about the bright lights of the Senate judiciary committee brings out the worst in people. Legal thinkers who are otherwise reasonable and intelligent somehow become great big puddles of snarling, hateful id. I think Democrats made a mistake when they accused Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito of being misogynists and racists at their confirmation hearings. And Republicans are poised to make the same mistake when they attack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. . . .

Dahlia Lithwick, John Roberts' Woman Problem, August 19, 2005:

Score one for Bruce Reed. He picked up on what I completely missed this week: that the most telling aspect of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' adolescence was not his staunch refusal to get high in the woods, but his contempt for all things female. . . .

Yesterday's info dump from the National Archives, raining down more than 38,000 pages of memos from Roberts' service as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House from 1982-86, suggests that Reed has the better of it. . . . What's truly is shocking is his dismissive tone, which seemed to surprise even ultraconservative Phyllis Schlafly, who described it yesterday as "smart alecky." Gender disparities are invariably "perceived" or "purported," in Roberts' eyes. Every effort to solve them is laughable. At a moment when serious inequities in women's wages, employment, and opportunities existed in this country, Roberts seemed to dismiss every attempt to remedy them as a knock-knock joke. . . . .​

Does all this add up to John Roberts, woman-hater?

Elliot Mincberg, senior vice president of People for the American Way, told the Chicago Tribune today, "You do see a real clear lack of regard for—and even it could be argued, hostility toward—laws and theories and arguments that would promote equality for women in important ways." And Kim Gandy, president of NOW, fumed in the same paper: "I don't see Roberts' positions as conservative. ... I know a lot of conservatives who expect women to be paid fairly, who think women should become lawyers if they want to be lawyers. That is not a conservative position, that is a Neanderthal position. It's unfair to conservatives to call the positions he takes conservative.​

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

So glad you read your Consitution.

Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person, and women don't have the right to vote!

Ahh....those "founding fathers"......

Yeah, how long ago were those? Never mind, you've not a clue to amendments. You are the epitome of the left, ignorant to the core.

Do you actually believe that the founding fathers wrote the amendments that gave women the right to vote and negated the 3/5 of a man definition of blacks.

Your ignorance is showing.

The ones in question were written long after the founding fathers were dead. What's your point? You want Sonia to write some amendments of her own?

 

[Annie]

So glad you read your Consitution.

Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person, and women don't have the right to vote!

Ahh....those "founding fathers"......

Yeah, how long ago were those? Never mind, you've not a clue to amendments. You are the epitome of the left, ignorant to the core.

Do you actually believe that the founding fathers wrote the amendments that gave women the right to vote and negated the 3/5 of a man definition of blacks.

Your ignorance is showing.

LOL! Don't go there. Trust me, I know the amendments and that wasn't implied.

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

If you are looking for a critical analysis of Samuel Alito you'll need to look elsewhere. Category humor.

Can you believe it Scalia and now Alito, another Italian Catholic just too much. Is it an accident Fascism started in Italy? Living in Philly is a great place to eat great Italian food but have you ever known a Italian man who was not a dictator.

Can a dictator be other than a Fascist? Give you some examples. My wife asked her sister to come up and stay the weekend with the girls. "oh no, I can't do that Tony would never allow that." Names are changed to protect the guilty.

My neighbor Thomas's wife goes out with the girls, the phone rings - where are you - the phone rings again - where are you now. The phone rings - these kids, what do I do...the phone rings, you get the picture.

My south Philly friend with a desk nearby, has fighter jets for his calendar and B52s on bombing runs. Peaceful sort of fellow.

These are old fashioned Italian men, raised and pampered by mom, and future dominators of all women folk. Need I go on?

Are they all petty dictators, what else can you say, listen to the language. Maybe it is a Mediterranean thing, I know Greeks that are the same.

Girls you are in trouble now.

My wife? Too late for my wife living with a liberal all these thirty plus years has spoiled her, she thinks she has a mind and life of her own and freedom too. The nerve of some.

Calling all woman in America, you need to move to Europe or at least Canada. Good luck.

Ahhh... Yes. Italia... Home of "The Third Way"... the ideological middle ground where Mussolini finally came to realize that 'socialism' was too hard... capitalism was too soft... and formed up that Middle Way... to be JUuuuuust RIGHT!

The only thing worth noting in this drivel is how the LIBERAL comes to lament the result of PRESICELY that for which he advocates with EVERY FREAKIN' POST!: A mixed Economy of where reason and idiocy are applied in equal doses... Where people are free to pursue the fulfillment of their lives; but not TOO free... Where the government controls EVERYTHING! Yet not so harshely that Liberals can't pretend that it controls NOTHING... A Culture which embraces WRONG as being JUST AS IMPORTANT as RIGHT... 'cause after all, that's only FAIR...

Yes... eternal fascism... Founded by Progressives to be held up as the best example of PURE reason... which was celebrated by the American left of that day; while they promote to the extent of their means, the establishment of precisely that... right here in the good ole' US of A....

LOL...

Leftists...

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

Because she will understand the effects of racism and sexism better.

Because the US Constitution is racist and sexist?

Great avatar, elvis!

So glad you read your Consitution.

Black people only count as 3/5ths of a person, and women don't have the right to vote!

Ahh....those "founding fathers"......

Brilliant! Well said Chrissy...

Its a rare individual who has the grasp of the Constitution as you do... A lot of people will take the Constitution as the enumerated laws which resulted from the charter documents of the US, from the Declaration of Independence, through the Federalist Papers and so on and try to rationalize that the Constitution was the best that could be provided in terms of the period in which it was written... and they'll further claim that the principles espoused in the documents of the founding charter provided the religios principles, founded in the judeo-Christian values, as basis on which slavery was finally abolished (except in the Muslim world of course) as well as for the recognition that women were in fact human beings thus were endowed by their Creator, Nature's God, with the same rights as the Negro-slave and everyone else... where the Constitution was the instrument wherein those rights were inevitably recognized and summarily protected...

And NOT through the ethereal virtue of FAIRNESS... but upon the bed-rock of immutable principle which bears EQUALITY... NOT on the premise of empathy for the individuals whose rights were not RECOGNIZED... But on the certainty that where the PRINCIPLE IS VALID AND TRUE for one human being, it is valid and true for ALL HUMAN BEINGS and upon the FACT that those individuals were endowed with the SAME rights as everyone else and to FAIL to recognize those rights was a FAILURE to defend and maintain the RESPONSIBILITY INHERENT IN ONE'S OWN RIGHTS and that such a failure, once realized was tantamount to rejecting the validity; the sustenance of one's own rights...

Meaning that the framers designed, through divine inspiration, a principled basis for sustainable equality that can only be destroyed through the addle-minded notion that the antithesis of those objective principles, which LIMITS THE SCOPE OF GOVERNMENT POWER, THE PRINCIPLES WHICH FREED THE SLAVES AND PROVIDED WOMEN WITH THE MEANS TO EXERCISE THEIR PRE-EXISTING RIGHT TO EXPRESS THEIR POLITICAL BELIEFS... Where Government Power is projected through the empathetic desire to IMPART FAIRNESS FOR ALL!

But not YOU! You see right through this... and understand that the individual's who TRULY UNDERSTAND THAT NOTHING PROMOTES FAIRNESS LIKE A LITTLE PAY-BACK... that FAIRNESS can only be realized, where such enlightened souls HAVE THE POWER TO BRING THE PAIN!

Only THEN can we TRULY become free, through the generous application of government power which infringes upon the unjustified application of antiquated notions of the RIGHTS of the powerful, (average white boys) and give THAT POWER and THOSE RIGHTS to the downtrodden Brown folk...

Which will work... right up to the point where whitey gets tired of it and decides to take their power back... but Hey... what's the worst that can happen? I mean odds are that when that happens, they'll go right back to the old ideas of equal rights... RIGHT? And not adopt your notions of FAIRNESS THROUGH EMPATHETIC PAY-BACK for previous sins...

Who needs sustainable principles anyway? "... what are they GOOD FOR? Absolutely NOTHIN' ..."

You stay on 'em Chris... You're really demonstrating what people need to see!

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

Yeah, how long ago were those? Never mind, you've not a clue to amendments. You are the epitome of the left, ignorant to the core.

Do you actually believe that the founding fathers wrote the amendments that gave women the right to vote and negated the 3/5 of a man definition of blacks.

Your ignorance is showing.

The ones in question were written long after the founding fathers were dead. What's your point? You want Sonia to write some amendments of her own?

OH! Man that is SUCH a solid point... I mean those people that left blacks to being recognized in the constitution, as... (well black slaves... free blacks were counted as whole people) a partial person and ONLY for establishing representation in the legislature, were worm food when the amendements recognizing their pre-existing rights were amended in the USC...

Of course... the problem we have is that it was those people who left the constitution without the enumerated recognition of the pre-existing rights of woman at a time when such enumerations would NEVER have been accepted by the people, thus preventing the existence of the Constitution... DID provide for the means of the Constitution to be amended... based upon the PRINCIPLES ON WHICH THE CONSTITUTION WAS FOUNDED; PRINCIPLES WHICH WERE DEBATED AND LAID DOWN AS THE BASIS OF THAT CONSTITION IN THE DOCUMENTS OF THE FOUNDING CHARTER... WHICH ESTABLISHED IN FINALITY, the understanding that human rights were a function of humanity, endowments from their Creator which provided their life and the rights which reason provides must be intrinsic to that life...

Uh oh...

Perhaps we need to go back and re-think this one...

 

[midcan5]

Whenever anyone mentions the 'constitution' my feet rise automatically as they must know the BS will flow. Two hundred plus years ago a bunch of pretty smart guys and girls got together and did the best they could. Obviously they were far from perfect as so much has changed since then. Why is that you wonder? Ah, could it be maturity, empathy maybe, Blacks are free, women can vote, society is not the wild west or the racist south, children don't work 16 hour days, and labor has some rights and protections, food is safe. How'd we get here you think? Read a bit of history and you see a fight in many of these areas and you see those opposed to change try hard to push back progress. Sotomayor represents another step along that path to progress. One regret I have as a finite being is that I cannot see what comes 50, 100, 200 years from now. Will humanity have grown or will the naysayers still be around stopping what in the end is inevitable but too slow.

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

Racial quotas are "progress?"

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

Whenever anyone mentions the 'constitution' my feet rise automatically as they must know the BS will flow. Two hundred plus years ago a bunch of pretty smart guys and girls got together and did the best they could. Obviously they were far from perfect as so much has changed since then. Why is that you wonder?

'It be' a result of the IMMUTABLE PRINCIPLES which were brought to consciouness; principles which provided the certainty that "All HUMANS ARE CREATED EQUAL" Note that those 'pretty smart guys'... did not meantion FAIRNESS They did not state a principle wherein 'ALL HUMANS WERE CREATED FAIRLY...' They did not espouse in a single script that 'fairness' was a function of equality... thus while 'empathy' is a natural condition for those less fortunate... the ONLY MEANS TO SERVE JUSTICE IS TO DEFEND THE IMMUTABLE OBJECTIVITY OF EQUALITY... and to REJECT ON ITS FACE, the subjective appeal to fairness...

Ah, could it be maturity, empathy maybe, Blacks are free, women can vote, society is not the wild west or the racist south, children don't work 16 hour days, and labor has some rights and protections, food is safe. How'd we get here you think? Read a bit of history and you see a fight in many of these areas and you see those opposed to change try hard to push back progress

ROFLMNAO... Yes yes... because there was SO MUCH pressure to defend unsafe food... The Poisonous FOOD lobby was truly one of the more loathesome elements of US History...

Oh you're all over it.

And those poor kids... FORCED TO WORK to feed themselves and their families...

Sorta like how I'm forced to work to feed my family... THE HORROR!

Isn't it BRILLIANT how these facets of history are reassembled as if they occured in a vacuum? Children worked because the circumstances of their day were such that such was necessary... and given the path which the ideological left is presently on wherein they are busying themselves to destroy the US currency... and the economy which rests upon that currency, children should be preparing themselves to return to hard labor... as it may soon be that, as it was then, HARD LABOR IS VASTLY PREFERABLE TO STARVATION.

Look across the landscape today and see the results of what this intellectual miscreant has brought upon children, who reject work, who are by all intents and purposes incapable of work... who are said by the social scientists to be suffering the ravages of that most devastating of all social plagues... POOR SELF ESTEEM. In their chubby little bodies... who have in MOST CASES no means of perception for 'want'...

Children who as a result of the ideological left has been placed upon the faux pedastal, where RIGHTS of the child now reign supreme; rights which exist in a vacuum; wholly separated from any perception of RESPONSIBILITY.

And what this entire calamity born upon? Why FAIRNESS OF COURSE... Unbridled empathy...

ROFLMNAO... Leftists...

Sotomayor represents another step along that path to progress. One regret I have as a finite being is that I cannot see what comes 50, 100, 200 years from now. Will humanity have grown or will the naysayers still be around stopping what in the end is inevitable but too slow.

Well the wonderful thing about history is it provides a view of the future... Because History is not some much a function of seeing what people did in the past... as much as it provides a means to see what PEOPLE DID WHEN FACED WITH CERTAIN PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES; and the results of their CHOICES.

So, with regard to children and their future, we can look back just 100 years and see the choices that people have made and examine the results of those choices...

in 1909, most children were sufficiently fit and intellectually able to take on the challenges of a full day at play... or work... Their education provided that by the time they had reached the 4th grade, they could read at what is today, a level sufficient to graduate highschool... The 4th grader of 1909 departed for the 5th grade with a full understanding of basic mathematics... having mastered arithmatic; adding and subtracting; and was well on their way towards mastering multiplication and division...

The 4th grader of 1909, was capable of expressing through the written word, complete sentences... able to express entire thoughts, through the construction of whole paragraphs.

And they understood the basic concepts of their nations founding... including the principles which sustained their nations freedom.

Since that time, history has shown us that the US Education systems has become more and more centralized... thus requiring the exponential averaging of standards; standards which must accommodate the lowest common denominator (which FTR: 4th graders of 1909 could define)... and that as a result, the average 4th grader of 1909 could kick the academic HELL out of the modern day college freshmen... And odds are, that with all things being equal... given their physical means, the 4th grader of 1909, could most likely beat the physical hell out of the average modern college freshman...

Now this represents a trend doesn't it? A trend which reflects what? Does this trend reflect an ever increasing set of cultural standards? I can't see where it would... As the average modern 4th grader is not able to sum much of anything except their feelings on their having mastered the latest video-game... which have more to do with their demand for the new video-game; they are not capable of expressing whole thoughts of any kind and have little means to express themselves in writing, what so ever.

So the trend is clearly one where cultural standards have long since been on the decline... since the 'enlightenment of the PROGRRESSIVES infected the US Culture...

A trend Born of EMPATHY and wherein, the appointment of this species of reasoning TO US JURISPRUDENCE... can only result in the same trend... towards the same calamity, except where such cannot be sustained for a century... as empathy is NOT a viable substitute for equal justice; empathy can neither sustain nor serve justice and where Justice is not served, it serves injustice; thus serving tyranny... thus promoting the imminent destruction of the free culture.

If you'd like to see what empathy looks like where it is taken to its logical end... go find a copy of "Idiocracy" and examine 'the trial' scene...

It's of course a farce and it's a certainty that a culture could never decline to such levels... because of the certainty that LONG before such could occur, nature requires that another viable culture will conquer it and replace that decadence with a viable model... sadly, not necessarily one which reflects the principles of liberty and freedom; which the Idiocracy had long since destroyed.

 

[Barb]

Whenever anyone mentions the 'constitution' my feet rise automatically as they must know the BS will flow. Two hundred plus years ago a bunch of pretty smart guys and girls got together and did the best they could. Obviously they were far from perfect as so much has changed since then. Why is that you wonder? Ah, could it be maturity, empathy maybe, Blacks are free, women can vote, society is not the wild west or the racist south, children don't work 16 hour days, and labor has some rights and protections, food is safe. How'd we get here you think? Read a bit of history and you see a fight in many of these areas and you see those opposed to change try hard to push back progress. Sotomayor represents another step along that path to progress. One regret I have as a finite being is that I cannot see what comes 50, 100, 200 years from now. Will humanity have grown or will the naysayers still be around stopping what in the end is inevitable but too slow.

They'll be dead within 50 years, and the knuckle-draggers remaining will at least be sufficiently outnumbered.

 

[Nik]

Are there experiences that whites have in America that its pretty much impossible for Latinas to get?

Talk to Frank Ricci, asshole.

If you're white, you get screwed.

If you're a LATINA, you get to sit on the Supreme Court.

And they wonder why David Duke got elected!

Right...because there have been so many Latinas on the Supreme Court....

 

[Nik]

Because she will understand the effects of racism and sexism better.

Because the US Constitution is racist and sexist?

Great avatar, elvis!

Swing and a miss. The Constitution speaks to racism, and outlaws it in certain contexts. Having experienced it makes one better able to recognize it.

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

What are her experiences as a Latina which uniquely qualify her for SCOTUS justice?

"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."

 

[Nik]

are there experiences that latinas have in america that its pretty much impossible for whites to get?

your idiocy is that you are blindly defending her....why should her experience as a latina woman give her the ability to reach a better decision?

Any idea how many Latinas went to law school at all, much less Yale, in 1976 when Sotomayer did? Must have been cause back then Latinas didn't know how to study...or maybe they were just dumber or something.

what does that have to do with anything we are discussing....oh wait, it doesn't, it is nik being emotionally illogical and as such it is causing nik to go off the deep end and create arguments out of thin air that have nothing to do with the topic at hand

how does that give her the ability to reach a better decision. stop making shit up and address the point.

So you think someone with a wider arrange of experiences won't reach better decisions? Really?

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

Because she will understand the effects of racism and sexism better.

Because the US Constitution is racist and sexist?

Great avatar, elvis!

Swing and a miss. The Constitution speaks to racism, and outlaws it in certain contexts. Having experienced it makes one better able to recognize it.

What crap. It makes one better able to seek repartations for it, you mean.