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Supreme Idiocy
Author: BobR
Date: 05/27/2009 03:45:04
Once again, the knee-jerks on the right have reflexively swung their feet at President Obama's Supreme Court Justice nominee - and kicked themselves in the butt. Even those on the left that are always ready to find the dark cloud surrounding the silver lining are shaking their heads glumly, certain that Obama has "done it again". What he has done in selecting Judge Sonia Sotomayor is picked the right justice at the right time.
The initial brouhaha was over Obama's use of the word "empathy" in a long list of attributes where he described the criteria he was using when coming to his decision. Naturally, the other attributes were ignored by the pundits:
Oops! That one came back to bite them. What next? How about that bastion of liberal media MSNBC? Chuck Todd - fresh from being embarrassed with his stupid questions at the Obama press conference - sinks even further into irrelevancy:
Who else besides Todd is going with this one? You already know the answer:
(bold-face mine)
Chuck Todd - you're in great company! But of course, FAUX News goes the one step further than just misquoting and taking her statement out of context - they attribute something completely out of thin air to her.
The wingers most recent attacks have been against her intellect. This woman graduated 2nd in her class from Princeton, and was an editor for the Yale Law Review. She has more judicial experience than any of the judges now on the court had when they were nominated. Yet these mental midgets have the audacity to call her a "lightweight"??
(video at the link)
Where did they get this from? I'm not sure about the timing, but another MSNBC staple - talking head Constitutional Law expert Jonathon Turley - said pretty much the same thing:
Turley - who has been very anti-Obama ever since the inauguration - moderated these statements last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which shows a certain cowardice on Turley's part.
Finally, in what might seem to indicate how desperate they are becoming - the bigots in their midst are showing their hands:
So white men don't aren't influenced by being white and male, yet being Hispanic and female does? How does this idiot keep getting reelected??
Ultimately, all the Democrats need to do is parrot the phrase used by Republicans when Bush was bringing nominees to the table: "up or down vote".
Sauce for the goose...
The initial brouhaha was over Obama's use of the word "empathy" in a long list of attributes where he described the criteria he was using when coming to his decision. Naturally, the other attributes were ignored by the pundits:
In a May 4 editorial, the [Washington] Times directly asserted that "[Obama] will become the first president in American history to make lawlessness an explicit standard for Supreme Court justices."
"He has boldly proclaimed that he intends to make sure his nominees to the Supreme Court don't harbor any crusty fealty to the written Constitution, or the millenniums of Western law that undergird its principles, or to the timeless truths that underlie our Declaration of Independence," the paper crusades.
[...]
According to [Media Matters], President George H.W. Bush, announcing Clarence Thomas as his Supreme Court nominee, cited Thomas' "great empathy" as a reason for his nomination.
Oops! That one came back to bite them. What next? How about that bastion of liberal media MSNBC? Chuck Todd - fresh from being embarrassed with his stupid questions at the Obama press conference - sinks even further into irrelevancy:
During the May 26 edition of MSNBC Live, NBC News chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd falsely asserted that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor "is on tape saying, I'm not supposed to say this, but guess what, we legislate from the bench." Todd added, "I think that's going to compel a lot of Republicans on principle; that they will actually be sort of -- they would be lying to their own principles if they somehow supported her." In fact, in the "tape" Todd was apparently referring to -- from a February 25, 2005, Duke University School of Law forum -- Sotomayor did not say that "we legislate from the bench." Rather, responding to a student who asked the panel to contrast the experiences of a district court clerkship and a circuit court clerkship, Sotomayor said that the "court of appeals is where policy is made." Moreover, as NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams noted earlier in the broadcast, "[E]ven some conservatives and followers of strict constructionism have said that [Sotomayor] was only stating the obvious: that trial judges, district court judges, decide only the cases before them, and that appeals courts, because they are the, you know, above the other courts, do set policy; they do make precedent that governs the other courts."
Who else besides Todd is going with this one? You already know the answer:
From the 9 a.m. hour of the May 26 edition of Fox's America's Newsroom:
[...]
KELLY: Well, I mean, a lot of people think she was promoting it and she was advocating it --
ROVE: Sure. Absolutely.
KELLY: -- and she believes court of appeals justices should make policy or make law, and they would counter, "No, that's what we have elected representatives for."
ROVE: That's right.
(bold-face mine)
Chuck Todd - you're in great company! But of course, FAUX News goes the one step further than just misquoting and taking her statement out of context - they attribute something completely out of thin air to her.
The wingers most recent attacks have been against her intellect. This woman graduated 2nd in her class from Princeton, and was an editor for the Yale Law Review. She has more judicial experience than any of the judges now on the court had when they were nominated. Yet these mental midgets have the audacity to call her a "lightweight"??
"This is someone who clearly was picked because she’s a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified."
[...]
Similarly, over at the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru calls Sotomayor “Obama’s Harriet Miers.” This morning on Fox News, Karl Rove questioned whether she was smart enough to be on the Supreme Court. “I’m not really certain how intellectually strong she would be, she has not been very strong on the second circuit,” he said. Citing Rosen, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes said that Sotomayor was “not the smartest.”
(video at the link)
Where did they get this from? I'm not sure about the timing, but another MSNBC staple - talking head Constitutional Law expert Jonathon Turley - said pretty much the same thing:
Turley - who has been very anti-Obama ever since the inauguration - moderated these statements last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which shows a certain cowardice on Turley's part.
Finally, in what might seem to indicate how desperate they are becoming - the bigots in their midst are showing their hands:
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said in a statement today that Sotomayor may be subject to the “undue influence” of her race and gender:
[...]In the months ahead, it will be important for those of us in the U.S. Senate to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences...
So white men don't aren't influenced by being white and male, yet being Hispanic and female does? How does this idiot keep getting reelected??
Ultimately, all the Democrats need to do is parrot the phrase used by Republicans when Bush was bringing nominees to the table: "up or down vote".
Sauce for the goose...
