BoniVore parroting the RL/NG attack line. What a benighted tool.
The entire Repug party's influence is now condemned to the racist South because the have been playing to southern racists since that s bag Nixon.
She ing said it. I didn't make up the words.
Even in your characterization of the word "hope," it is a statement that confers superiority to one race over another. That's racism.
Quit changing the subject.
La Raza is racist. She's a member. That's inappropriate.
Of course they did.
And you supported them.
It doesn't confer belief in that superiority. You're getting nowhere with this.
So it must be open to discipline by the bar.Quit changing the subject.
La Raza is racist. She's a member. That's inappropriate.
Show me the list of people who were disciplined for being members of La Raza. This is what you believe -- so back it up. Don't run away like a pussy from this one.
No, they didn't.
Yes, I did.
Sure they did. in Thomas' case, GHW Bush appointed him specifically for that empathy -- so you should have opposed any of his nominees.
Alito pimped his empathy himself -- so you must still be calling for his impeachment.
The word "better" confers superiority.
Look, it was on the questionnaire. I didn't even know the rule existed until today.
If the rule is accurate. And, if La Raza is a racist organization. And, if Sotomayor is a member. It would seem she's counter to this rule. No?
Why aren't you arguing one of those points?
Does the rule exist?
Is La Raza a racist organization as defined in that rule?
Is Sotomayor a member?
I can't help that organizations don't enforce their own rules and I'm not sure where I'd go to find out if the rule were applied in any instanced involving La Raza. But, I do know that other nominees for various offices -- maybe even the Supreme Court (I don't recall) -- have failed confirmation due to their associations with historically racist organizations.
Only when you're a Democrat is this overlooked.
No, he didn't
Again, no he didn't.
And more
Sotomayor's Disparate Impact
The New York Times has an article today about Sonia Sotomayor's board membership at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEP) starting in the 1980s until she joined the federal judiciary in 1992. According to the article, Sotomayor was far from a passive board member, and took an active interest in supervising and planning legal strategy.
The most interesting part of the article comes at the end, when the article notes that Sotomayor was involved in supervising a lawsuit brought by PRLDEP challenging test scores on the New York City Police exam, on the ground that too few minorities passed the test. Challenging employer conduct on the basis that test scores or other hiring criteria have a racially negative result is known as a "disparate impact" theory.
The PRLDEP case, as described by the Times, has a striking similarity to the Ricci v. DeStefano case in which white New Haven firefighters claimed that they were the victims of discrimination. In the Ricci case, the City of New Haven utilized a racially-neutral officer qualifying exam, specifically designed to avoid inherent or implicit biases which might discriminate against minorities. I'm not sure how a test on firefighting skills could be racially non-neutral, but out of an abundance of caution, New Haven had the test prepared by a third-party vendor which specialized in preparing fire-fighting tests.
New Haven had no intent to discriminate in administering the test, and had an actual intent not to discriminate. To the extent there was a fear of discrimination lawsuits, that fear was sufficient to result in a racially-neutral qualifying exam.
The result of the test, however, was that no blacks would be promoted (using New Haven's criteria for appointment in which test scores played an important part), but 17 whites and 1 Hispanic would get promoted. New Haven, fearing a lawsuit claiming racial discrimination under a "disparate impact" theory, similar to the types of lawsuits brought by PRLDEP, nullified the results. The case now is before the U.S. Supreme Court and may be decided prior to Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. More to come on Ricci, for sure.
The significance of the NY Times article and the Ricci case is not that Sotomayor had a hidden agenda in deciding Ricci. That may or may not have been true given her prior advocacy role at PRLDEP, but would be extremely difficult to prove. What is significant is how legal interest groups, such as PRLDEP, can shape conduct merely by creating a climate of fear of lawsuits focused not on intentional discrimination but on "disparate impact" theories of discrimination, and how Sotomayor was part and parcel of that strategy.
In some cases, the threat of a lawsuit claiming racial discrimination may shape conduct in a positive way, for example, when there is intentional discrimination. Intentional conduct can be deterred. Lawsuits focused merely on results, however, serve little social utility because there is no means of deterring unintentional conduct. Remember, in Ricci there was no evidence that the test itself was inherently biased or that New Haven intended to discriminate.
As the Ricci case shows, the threat of a lawsuit claiming disparate impact can go too far, causing employers to bend so far over backwards as to create absurd, and discriminatory, results. It would be as if the results of a running race, using the racially-neutral test of the time clock, were nullified based on the race of the winners.
Whether Sotomayor's position in Ricci was shaped by her history of using lawsuits as a social tool, or a dispassionate review of the law as applied to the facts of Ricci, is fair game for analysis as part of the confirmation process. Sotomayor's involvement at PRLDEP deserves more scrutiny, and the NY Times should be credited with starting that scrutiny.
Regardless, the failure of Sotomayor and some of her two colleagues to recognize the absurdity of the City of New Haven's conduct in the Ricci case shows a profound lack of judgment, which hopefully will be remedied by the U.S. Supreme Court. And Ricci needs to be explored at the confirmation hearings even though two other appeals court judges voted with Sotomayor, since a collective lack of judgment does not excuse a lack of judgment.
The Truth About Clarence Thomas
He's an independent voice, not a Scalia lackey.
by JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG
Sunday, January 28, 2007 12:01 A.M. EST
Clarence Thomas has borne some of the most vitriolic personal attacks in Supreme Court history. But the persistent stereotypes about his views on the law and subordinate role on the court are equally offensive--and demonstrably false. An extensive do entary record shows that Justice Thomas has been a significant force in shaping the direction and decisions of the court for the past 15 years.
That's not the standard storyline. Immediately upon his arrival at the court, Justice Thomas was savaged by court-watchers as Antonin Scalia's dutiful apprentice, blindly following his mentor's lead. It's a grossly inaccurate portrayal, imbued with politically incorrect innuendo, as do ents and notes from Justice Thomas's very first days on the court conclusively show. Far from being a Scalia lackey, the rookie jurist made clear to the other justices that he was willing to be the solo dissenter, sending a strong signal that he would not moderate his opinions for the sake of comity. By his second week on the bench, he was staking out bold positions in the private conferences where justices vote on cases. If either justice changed his mind to side with the other that year, it was Justice Scalia joining Justice Thomas, not the other way around.
Much of the do entary evidence for this comes from the papers of Justice Harry Blackmun, who recorded the justices' votes and took detailed notes explaining their views. I came across vivid proof while reading the papers as part of my research for a book about how the Rehnquist Court--a court with seven justices appointed by Republican presidents--evolved into an ideological and legal disappointment for conservatives.
Justice Thomas's first term was especially interesting. He replaced legendary liberal icon Thurgood Marshall, and joined the court just a year after David Souter took William Brennan's seat. There appeared to be a solid conservative majority, with the court poised to finally dismember the liberal legacy of the Warren Court. But that year it instead lurched inexplicably to the left--even putting Roe v. Wade on more solid ground.
Justice Thomas's first year on the job brought to life the adage that a new justice makes a new court. His entry didn't merely change the vote of the liberal justice he replaced. It turned the chessboard around entirely, rearranging ideological alliances. Justice Thomas acted as a catalyst in different ways, shoring up conservative positions in some cases and spurring others--the moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in particular--to realign themselves into new voting blocs.
Consider a criminal case argued during Justice Thomas's first week. It concerned a thief's effort to get out of a Louisiana mental ins ution and the state's desire to keep him there. Eight justices voted to side with the thief. Justice Thomas dissented, arguing that although it "may make eminent sense as a policy matter" to let the criminal out of the mental ins ution, nothing in the Cons ution required "the states to conform to the policy preferences of federal judges."
After he sent his dissenting opinion to the other justices, as is custom, Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Kennedy changed their votes. The case ended up 5-4.
Justice Thomas's dissents persuaded Justice Scalia to change his mind several times that year. Even in Hudson v. McMillan, the case that prompted the New York Times to infamously label Justice Thomas the "youngest, cruelest justice," he was again, initially, the lone dissenter. Justice Scalia changed his vote after he read Justice Thomas's dissent, which said a prison inmate beaten by guards had several options for redress--but not under the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment."
From the beginning, Justice Thomas was an independent voice. His brutal confirmation hearings only enforced his autonomy, making him impervious to criticism from the media and liberal law professors. He'd told his story, and no one listened. From then on, he did not care what they said about him.
Clarence Thomas, for example, is the only justice who rarely asks questions at oral arguments. One reason is that he thinks his colleagues talk too much from the bench, and he prefers to let the lawyers explain their case with fewer interruptions. But his silence is sometimes interpreted as a lack of interest, and friends have begged him to ask a few questions to dispel those suggestions. He refuses to do it. "They have no credibility," he says of critics. "I am free to live up to my oath."
But the forcefulness and clarity of Justice Thomas's views, coupled with wrongheaded depictions of him doing Justice Scalia's bidding, created an internal dynamic that caused the court to make an unexpected turn in his first year. Justice O'Connor--who sought ideological balance--moved to the left. With the addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, the court now is poised to finally fulfill the hopes of the conservative movement. As George W. Bush told his legal advisers early in his presidency, he wanted justices in "the mold of Thomas and Scalia." Interestingly, on President Bush's marquee, Justice Thomas got top billing.
Ms. Crawford Greenburg, legal correspondent for ABC News, is the author of "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story for Control of the United States Supreme Court" (Penguin Press, 2007).
yoni better get on the phone because cornyn and sessions have admitted she's not a racist and that they do not prescribe to the tone or accusations. oni, how does it feel to be totally ed?
Yoni's premise is that she's a racist. It's been proved she's not, by other conservtaives, so his argument is proven false.. keep up the fruitless fight yoni...
How does what Cornyn and Sessions say prove she's not racist?yoni better get on the phone because cornyn and sessions have admitted she's not a racist and that they do not prescribe to the tone or accusations. oni, how does it feel to be totally ed?
Yoni's premise is that she's a racist. It's been proved she's not, by other conservtaives, so his argument is proven false.. keep up the fruitless fight yoni...
Reading statements within context with a shred of intellectual dignity proves she's not a racist, but I couldn't have imagined how well the administration played their hand here. I love how fractured the GOP is right now. Everytime I think they've hit rock bottom something else comes out.
To be fair, GOP candidates can't really say about her even if they hate her because they already lost the hispanic vote but if they decide to block a the first female hispanic supreme court justice they might as well kiss any hispanic votes goodbye.
Anyway, any brown people who don't register as GOP are automatically considered racist by Republicans. Yoni's just scared of the brown folk, thats all. We're running this now.
It's sad how easily they baited these talking heads into making fools of themselves and revealing their true colors.
Intellectual honesty/integrity is what is lacking from the jack's and the yoni's of the world..Reading statements within context with a shred of intellectual dignity proves she's not a racist, but I couldn't have imagined how well the administration played their hand here. I love how fractured the GOP is right now. Everytime I think they've hit rock bottom something else comes out.
To be fair, GOP candidates can't really say about her even if they hate her because they already lost the hispanic vote but if they decide to block a the first female hispanic supreme court justice they might as well kiss any hispanic votes goodbye.
Anyway, any brown people who don't register as GOP are automatically considered racist by Republicans. Yoni's just scared of the brown folk, thats all. We're running this now.
Pandering to a block of voters on the basis of their race, religious beliefs, etc...seems rather insulting, but hey, ___________ (insert your group here, multiple entries welcome) deserve it.
Except she's qualified for the position and there is absolutely no doubt about it. Outside of being qualified for the position how else are political selections made? The fact that she can serve as an uplifting symbol for hispanics and women alike while being a qualified candidate makes pandering a cop out of a word to use here.
I'm not going to sit here and say the administration made this move with no regard to obvious political benefits on so many fronts and how difficult it would be for the GOP to oppose the appointment but those considerations are there for EVERY single appointment we see so I'm also not going to act as though they mean more than they do. There is definitely an element of affirmative action here but we're not elevating an unqualified candidate to an important position we're elevating a qualified candidate to an important position which carries a great deal of symbolism.
Yet what is symbolized? That a decision to nominate an individual to a court allegedly in the pursuit of unbiased justice will be made on the basis of racial, class, or religious divisions?
How?
Putting that quote back in context only demostrates how racist it is. The whole speech was about how race and ethnicity colors her judicial philosophy.
That's racist.
No, but people who make racist statements, join racist organizations, and make rulings based race are automatically considered racist by me.
Yeah, that's why I supported Miguel Estrada's and Alberto Gonzales's appointment. It's also why I have an hispanic wife and a child who is half-hispanic.Yoni's just scared of the brown folk, thats all. We're running this now.
It's the left that are knee-jerk racists. Automatically assuming (which I know is not true -- it just happens to be the rhetoric of convenience) opponenents to minority democrat appointments are racists.
I oppose Sotomayor because she has demonstrated a racial bias in her associations and in her rulings. It's demonstrable. Yet, your only response is to call me a racist for even mentioning it?
She was talking about wisdom. You're changing what she said. She said a wise Latina woman would make a better decision than a [not wise] white male.
She could've said it alot better but that doesn't make her a racist. You should be happy. She's a far less liberal pick than I was expecting. She might end up being less liberal than Souter.
Ah, now I get it. Expect and Change.
Those of you who like Sotomayor should listen to this clip. Think about what the three men in it say.
Here is a take from the Michael Savage radio program:
They are taking a couple of statements out of context.
On autistic children, Savage said...
"In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is."
So his take isn't going to hold much weight. What else ya got?
It's not that I like her, Obama gets to pick the nominee. As long as she is qualified and not overly radical then she'll be confirmed. She's qualified and I haven't seen anything to show she is crazy leftist radical.
Here's the Michael Savage show for 5/26. He covers Sotomayor, North Korea, and Prop 8 on this show. Part 1 of several:
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