President Obama's Supreme Court Pick

[oldiebutgoodie]

Obama announces he has chosen Sonia Sotomayor as pick for Supreme Court

President Barack Obama has chosen Sonia Sotomayor as his choice to succeed Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court and will announce her nomination Tuesday at 10:15 AM ET.

NY judge rises from projects to the Supreme Court

Sonia Sotomayor's path to the pinnacle of the legal profession began in the 1960s at a Bronx housing project just a couple blocks from Yankee Stadium, where she and her family dealt with one struggle after another.

She suffered juvenile diabetes that forced her to start insulin injections at age 8. Her father died the next year, leaving her to be raised by her mother — a nurse at a methadone clinic who always kept a pot of rice and beans on the stove. The parents had immigrated from Puerto Rico.

Sotomayor immersed herself in Nancy Drew books and spent hours watching Perry Mason on television, and knew she wanted to be a judge by the age of 10 after being inspired by a Perry Mason episode that ended with the camera settling on the robed sage.

"I realized that the judge was the most important player in that room," Sotomayor said in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press.

Now, Sotomayor is one of the most important players in the nation after being nominated for a Supreme Court seat by President Barack Obama. It is the crowning accomplishment in a career that included a long list of achievements: Yale Law School; a stint as a prosecutor and at a Manhattan law firm; a key ruling in 1995 that brought Major League Baseball back to the nation after a strike; and most recently a job as a federal appeals judge.

[...]

Her work and everything else in her life are sure to face close scrutiny in the months ahead in a process Sotomayor is all too familiar with. Her nomination to the appeals court was delayed 15 months, reportedly because of concerns by Republicans that she might someday be considered for the Supreme Court.

[...]

Her baseball ruling in 1995 was among the most important moments of her career. Because of her position on the bench in New York, she was put in the position to essentially decide the future of the sport she so loved.

Acknowledging the pivotal moment, Sotomayor described how it is "when you see an outfielder backpedaling and jumping up to the wall and time stops for an instant as he jumps up and you finally figure out whether it's a home run, a double or a single off the wall or an out."

Then she scolded baseball owners for unfair labor practices and urged lawyers for striking players and the owners to salvage the 1995 season, reach a new labor agreement and change their attitudes.

As she showed with her March 1995 baseball ruling, the 54-year-old Sotomayor embraces the dramatic moment as well as any of the roughly 80 judges in the lower Manhattan courthouse that has been her home since her appointment to the bench in 1992 by President Bush.

As a district judge, she advanced First Amendment religious claims by tossing out a state prison rule banning members of a religious sect from wearing colored beads to ward off evil spirits, and by rejecting a suburban law preventing the display of a 9-foot-high menorah in a park.

In 1995, she released the suicide note of former White House aide Vincent Foster, acting on litigation brought by the Wall Street Journal under the Freedom of Information Act.

Sotomayor, who has a brother who became a doctor, presided over a civil trial in 1996 in which the family of a lawyer who died from AIDS sued the makers of the movie, "Philadelphia," contending that Hollywood stole their story. The case was settled but not before the movie with its dramatic courtroom showdowns was aired in court in its entirety, prompting Sotomayor to caution: "I don't expect melodrama here. I don't want anybody aspiring to what they see on the screen."

A year later, she ruled in favor of the creators of the "Seinfeld" show in a claim that a trivia book infringed on their television program's copyright.

Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, then became an editor of the Yale Law Journal at Yale Law School. She then joined the Manhattan district attorney's office and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

She spent five years as a prosecutor before joining the midtown law firm of Pavia & Harcourt, where she worked eight years before her appointment to the federal bench.

Sotomayor is less affluent than many of the typical high court prospects. Though drawing a six-figure income, she lives in expensive Manhattan. Sotomayor earned $179,500 as a federal appellate judge in New York last year, plus $14,780 teaching at New York University's law school and $10,000 as a lecturer at Columbia University's law school, according to her most recent financial disclosure report.

Sotomayor owns a condominium in trendy Greenwich Village. She has had the property since at least 1998, and took out a $350,000 mortgage from JPMorgan Chase Bank last fall, the city records show. Sotomayor refinanced and used proceeds for renovations, her office said.

The condo, the only property Sotomayor owns, appears to be her primary asset. Other units in the building have sold for $900,000 to $1.5 million over the past five years, city records show.

Sotomayor listed two bank accounts as her only investments: $50,000 to $100,000 in a Citibank savings account and up to $15,000 in a checking account.

Since joining the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Sotomayor has shown an independent streak and an interest in separating emotion from interpretation of the law, as she did in writing the dissent in a 2-to-1 decision in 2000. The appeals court ruled that the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 eight miles off the coast of Long Island occurred within U.S. territorial waters, allowing victims' families to sue for damages that would have been barred if it happened in international seas.

Sotomayor said it seemed that the appeals panel was ignoring legislative history and earlier case law "in an understandable desire to provide the relatives and estate representatives ... a more generous recovery."

She said it was clear that Congress intended the Death on the High Seas Act to apply to any deaths that happened beyond three nautical miles from the U.S. coast and that those who drafted the law wanted to "provide a remedy, not the most generous remedy."

Her rulings and comments during oral arguments also have reflected a law-and-order interest.

In 2000, she warned a lawyer who appealed the 30-year prison sentence given to a police officer who sodomized a defendant that the appeals court might suggest the sentence should be increased because of the brutality of the crime.

In 2007, she wrote an appeals opinion finding it was constitutional for state troopers to lure suspects away from two vehicles while they searched the cars for cocaine.

"There was ample probable cause to support these searches, and a disinterested magistrate judge assuredly would have issued a warrant had one been sought," she wrote.

In another case, she gave an asylum seeker a second chance after his claim was rejected because he failed to appear at a hearing because his attorney was upstairs in possession of the document he needed to get into the building.

Sotomayor describes herself as "extraordinarily intense and very fun-loving."

At a recent program honoring the creator of a documentary showing children who have thrived even in threatening environments, Sotomayor, her round face beaming, seemed to be enjoying the attention she was receiving as her nomination to the Supreme Court seemed likely.

In brief remarks, Sotomayor described the documentary as fabulous.

"We should applaud more frequently those who transform a lost life," Sotomayor said.

As Sotomayor saw it, she was not so far from her humble childhood that she was not emotionally touched when she signed her first judgment of conviction after becoming a judge.

"That emotion will never leave me — humility," she said. "A deep, deep sense of humility. And a deep, deep sense of there but for the grace of God could I have gone and many that I have loved."

LINK

[oldiebutgoodie]

I found an interesting tidbit about this SCOTUS nominee:  "Besides, Sotomayor is not that easily assailable. While her credentials are undeniably liberal, she was originally nominated to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush. She has top notch academic credentials, having attending Princeton and Yale Law School, and has more experience on the federal bench than any nominee to the bench in the last half century."

ALSO FROM THE SAME ARTICLE:  "...it's not likely that Sotomayor will lose a party-line vote of the judiciary committee. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a key Republican vote on the committee, has already suggested an unwillingness to block the nomination. And Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), another Republican member of the committee, has already voted to confirm Sotomayor once before (for the Second Circuit eleven years ago) making it unlikely he'll oppose her this time."

 LINK

Hmm... appointed to the federal bench by a Republican President and confirmed by a Republican Senator who is now on the Judiciary Committee. Hmm.

[oldiebutgoodie]

Some more info:

SOTOMAYOR SUPPORTED BY REPUBLICANS: In 1992, Republican President George H. W. Bush appointed Sotomayor to the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Later, in 1998, President Bill Clinton nominated her to the 2nd Circuit, and she was confirmed with bipartisan support in a 67-29 vote.

All Democrats voted in favor of Sotomayor (although three did not vote), while Republicans opposed her by a 29-25 majority. Among those Senators who are still in the chamber today, however, Sotomayor's margin of confirmation was a bit more comfortable: 35-11.
Indeed, five current Republican Senators voted in favor of her nomination then: Sens. Collins, Gregg, Hatch, Lugar, Snowe. Among the no votes were current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, current Minority Whip John Kyl and Sen. Jeff Sessions, currently the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Additionally, the White House points out, "Known as a moderate on the court, Sotomayor often forges consensus and agreeing with her more conservative nominees far more frequently than she disagrees with them. In cases where Sotomayor and at least one judge appointed by a Republican president were on the three-judge panel, Sotomayor and the Republican appointee(s) agreed on the outcome 95% of the time."

SOTOMAYOR ON ABORTION: Sotomayor's record on two key hot button cultural issues is thin. But, quite notably, her sole opinion regarding abortion was in line with the anti-abortion movement's position. Some details from the anti-abortion site LifeNews.com:

"Despite 17 years on the bench, Judge Sotomayor has never directly decided whether a law regulating abortion was constitutional," the pro-life group Americans United for Life noted in a recent analysis of potential Supreme Court candidates.

Sotomayor participated in a decision concerning the Mexico City Policy, which President Obama recently overturned and which prohibits sending taxpayer dollars to groups that promote and perform abortions in other nations.

Writing for the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor upheld the Mexico City Policy, but AUL says the significance of the decision "may be minimal because the issue was largely controlled by the Second Circuit's earlier opinion in a similar challenge to the policy."

AUL notes that Judge Sotomayor also upheld the pro-life policy by rejecting claims from a pro-abortion legal group that it violated the Equal Protection Clause.

AND FINALLY:   "...during her 1997 confirmation hearing, Sotomayor spoke of her judicial philosophy, saying "I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."

LINK

[WhiskeyGirl]

Daily Gut: The Reign of Race

So President Barack Obama just named federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nominee for the next Supreme Court Justice.

So what do we know about her?

Well, she’s Hispanic.

Also, she’s Puerto Rican.

And…she’s Hispanic.

Plus, she’s Puerto Rican.

Case closed.

That’s the joy of racial politics and the media that swallows it– all you need to know about a person is their racial makeup - and in the words of the cop grimly taping off the bedroom in my vacation condo, there’s “nothing more to see here.”

(snip)

Granted, I don’t know the first thing about Sotomayor (I’m sure she’s a nice lady!) other than she’s Hispanic, and an “inspiring woman” who grew up in “poor surroundings,” etc… But it all sounds a bit familiar in an unnerving way. The bottom line is, when a person’s “story” is the story, it’s purely a diversionary tactic to take you off the ideological ball.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggutfeld/2009/05/26/daily-gut-the-reign-of-race/

Should justice depend on the color of your skin or your ethnic origin?

Should justice be colored by the life experience of any individual?

Is everyone equal under the law?  Should the law be for some, and not others?

Barack didn't grow up in America.  Did he experience the pain of those that were treated badley because of their race in America?  Did he experience the pain of those singled out for ill treatment in America because of race? 

Barack attended religious services in a church known for it's "Black Value System" - not a system based on fairness or equality for everyone, but on the color of someone's skin.

When do we reach a time and place in America where justice isn't decided on the color of your skin, the length of your hair or your ethnic origin?  

When do we reach a time in America where everyone is entitled to equal treatment under law?

A popular preacher I know often uses this phrase as part of his program - "Is it about sin or the color of your skin?"

For Barack and his administration, is it about equal treatment under law or is it about the color of your skin?  Is it about your ethnic background?  Is it about your sexual orientation?

Is it ok in Barack's America to treat others horribly because they are different?  Because they aren't part of the Obama empathy quotient?

Is it ok in Barack's America to treat others horribly because they are different?  Because they own a gun or attend religious services?

Is it ok in Barack's America to treat others horribly because they are different?  Because they volunteered to defend this nation and ALL it's people?

Something is wrong in America when it's about the color of your skin and not equal treatment under law.

jmho

[WhiskeyGirl]

...This is a time for sound and sane leadership. (Yes, sir) This is no period for rabble-rousers, whether the rabble-rouser be white or Negro. (That's right) We are grappling and dealing with the most complex, one of the most weighty and complex social issues of the centuries. (Go ahead, Go ahead, sir) This problem is deeply rooted in the emotions, deeply rooted in the customs and traditions of the South. And we can't solve the problem with misguided emotionalism. (No) This is a period for sane, sound, rational leadership. (Yes) We must be calm and yet positive at the same time. We must avoid the extremes of hard-headedness and uncle-Tomism. (Yes) Oh, this is a period for leaders. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity. (Yes, sir) Leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice. (Yes) Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause. (Yes) Oh,

God give us leaders. (Yes)
A time like this demands great leaders. (Yes, sir)
Leaders whom the lust of office cannot kill;
Leaders whom the spoils of life cannot buy; (Yes)
Leaders who possess opinions and will; (Yes)
Leaders who will not lie;
Leaders who can stand before a demagogue and damn his
treacherous flatteries without winking. (Yes)
Tall leaders, (Yes) sun-crowned, who live above the fog
in public duty and in private thinking.

And this is the need my friends of the hour. This is the need all over the nation. In every community there is a dire need for leaders (Yes) who will lead the people, who stand today amid the wilderness toward the promise land of freedom and justice. God grant that ministers, and lay leaders, and civic leaders, and businessmen, and professional people all over the nation will rise up and use the talent and the finances that God has given them, and lead the people on toward the Promised Land of freedom with rational, calm, nonviolent means. This is the great challenge of the hour. (Yes)

And if we will do this my friends we will be able to speed up the coming of this new order, (Yes) which is destined to come. (Yes) This new world in which men will be able to live together as brothers. (Yes) This new world in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. This new world in which men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. (Yes) Yes, this new world in which men will no longer take necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

http://www.mlkonline.net/progress.html

[oldiebutgoodie]

Republicans rebelling against party's attacks on Sotomayor

'This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set,' says Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh had called the Supreme Court nominee racist.

While prominent conservative activists are hurling epithets at President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, more and more Republicans are telling them to chill out.

Senior senators and GOP strategists are trying to steer the debate over Sonia Sotomayor away from the apocalyptic battle cries of conservative icons Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh in favor of a more measured conversation about the legal philosophy and qualifications of the first Latino to be nominated to the court.

"I think it's terrible," Sen. John Cornyn (R- Texas), said in a radio interview aired today, condemning Gingrich and Limbaugh for calling Sotomayor a racist. "This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent."

[...]

The GOP is struggling to recover from brutal election losses that shrank its reach beyond the Southern conservative base. Some worry that fighting a shrill, losing court battle will not help -- may indeed hurt -- efforts to rebuild the party.


"Whether or not Barack Obama gets his nominee is not going to determine the future of our party," said Terry Holt, a former advisor to George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. "He's a popular president with the votes to confirm his nominee. That's not our best fight or our worst problem to deal with."

Said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster, "Any kind of ad hominem attacks are not helpful to the party's reputation , certainly not in attracting independents, which is our challenge at the moment."

MORE...

[oldiebutgoodie]

Well... now we know just how disgusting and revolting and inappropriate and chauvinistic the extremists are willing to get. This is exactly why the Republican Party is circling the drain. Don't they see what they are doing to themselves? Enough strong conservatives need to take control and not let this be the image of the Reublican Party:

Conservative radio host says he hopes Sotomayor menstruation doesn't affect judgment

A major conservative radio host, G. Gordon Liddy, attacked President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Thursday in perhaps one of the most grotesque politically-oriented tirades in recent times.

"Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate," Liddy said. "That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

Liddy is no stranger to controversy -- in fact, he spent four years in jail for his role in the Nixon-era Watergate burglaries.

MORE...

[oldiebutgoodie]

Religious-right figure backs Sotomayor over perceived abortion views

Bill Donohue, once described by Slate’s Rebecca Traister as a “conservative Catholic bellyacher,” surprised many religious Republicans by confessing recently that he’s going to support President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

Donohue, head of the Catholic League, is best known outside of Catholic circles for his regular moralism against homosexuals, condemnations of people who make jokes about religion, telling people not to see movies and his high-profile “appearance” on an episode of South Park (which he felt portrayed him as a “heartless thug”).

In an e-mail exchange with Belief.net editor Steven Waldman, Donohue confessed: “I like the fact that [Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor] is not brandishing her religion. I do not want Catholic judges to rule as Catholics but as judges. I am all for Catholic legislators having a Catholic-informed opinion, but a judge has a different charge. Unless something pops that we don’t know about, I am not going to oppose her. Indeed, the experiences I had working with the Puerto Rican community lead me to quietly root for her.”

“Donohue is the head of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and a longtime critic of liberal cafeteria Catholics, pro-choice Catholic politicians and anti-Catholic bias in the media,” Waldman explained. “He’s an honorary member of the ‘religious right’ so his comments are sure to stir conversation among religious conservatives.”

His only guess is that some Christian conservatives, like Donohue, may be quietly supportive of Sotomayor because of her mixed record on abortion.

“In 2002, Sotomayor rejected a challenge to President George W. Bush’s so-called Mexico City policy, which required foreign groups receiving U.S. funds to pledge that they would not support or promote abortion,” reported The Los Angeles Times.

The paper continued: “Sotomayor spoke for a three-judge panel that upheld the policy as constitutional. The government ‘is free to favor the antiabortion position over the pro-choice position and can do so with public funds,’ she said.”

President Obama did not discuss with Sotomayor her position on Roe v. Wade, according to the White House. During his presidential campaign, Obama said he would work to preserve the right to reproductive choice.

Outgoing Justice David H. Souter, nominated to the bench as a “stealth candidate” with no history of rulings on abortion, was chosen by President George H.W. Bush. Souter later became a key vote in the preservation of reproductive rights for women, much to the dismay of many religious activists.

If Sotomayor is confirmed, she will be one of six Catholics sitting on the nation’s highest court.

LINK

[Toler]

Judtge Sotomayor on Sex Offenders


Posted on Sunday, May 31, 2009 5:27:36 PM by street_lawyer


          In the matter of United States v. Falso, 544 F.3d 110 the defendant had pled guilty to numerous counts of possession of child pornography. A search warrant was issued based upon the assertions of the requesting officer that Falso’s email address was listed on a site that contained 11 photos depicting child pornography, and that Mr. Falso had attempted to gain access to the membership area that contained numerous additional child pornographic materials. Additionally Mr. Falso had an 18 year old record of molesting a child.

          Judge Sotomayor held that there was insufficient probable cause to issue the search warrant, but that the search was legal for other reasons, and allowed the conviction to stand. The following is an except of her reasoning in that case:

 

Nor is the district court's reasoning saved by the affidavit's general statement, relied upon by the government at oral argument, that "computers are utilized by individuals who exploit children (which includes collectors of child pornography) to . . . locate, view, download, collect and organize images of child pornography found through the internet." n16 There simply is nothing in this statement indicating that it is more (or less) likely that Falso's computer might contain images of child pornography. That is, the affidavit's sweeping representation that computers are [**33]used by those who exploit children to, inter alia, view and download child pornography, would be equally true if 1% or 100% of those who exploit children used computers to do those things.

 

          Essentially Judge Sotomayor held that it is not a rational conclusion to believe that the computer of a convicted child molester, and suspected collector of child pornography who accesses that type of site would contain pornographic material downloaded from the internet.

          While it is the law that the weight to be given to a prior conviction depends upon the proximity in time of the conviction and the nature of the conviction,  Judge Sotomayor concluded that a conviction of child molestation that occurred more than 18 years prior should be given only marginal consideration.  Her reasoning was as follows:

 

First, the sheer length of time that had elapsed renders Falso's prior sex crime only marginally relevant, if at all. Certainly there are cases where it may be appropriate for a district court to consider a dated sex crime; for example, where there is evidence of ongoing impropriety, [**34]because in such cases the prior offense would tend to be less aberrational.

 

          In this statement Judge Sotomayor rejects the relevance of a prior conviction of molesting a child in deciding if there was probably cause to believe that Falso had downloaded child pornography from the internet. She apparently would require proof that the Defendant continued to engage in such illegal behavior - a standard of proof that seems difficult to establish since it would require many known instances of criminal conduct before a search warrant might legally be issued. She would require the police to “bridge the gap” between Falso’s prior conviction and this alleged offence by showing intervening proof of similar violations.

          Her second reason for denying that the Judge who issued the search warrent had probably cause is a stunning display of liberalism. Read it in her own words:

 

Second, although Falso's crime allegedly involved the sexual abuse of a minor, it did not relate to child pornography.

 

          Unbelievably Judge Sotomayor distinguished the Falso case from a reported prior opinion which to me seems indistinguishable. United States v. Brand, 467 F.3d 179, 198 (2d Cir. 2006), involved proof that a collector of child pornography does so to wet his appetite for further sexual contact with children.  She wrote:

 

“That is precisely the inverse of the correlation relied upon by the district court in Falso's case: that a person convicted of a crime involving the sexual abuse of a minor would likely collect child pornography. 

 

          Her conclusion therefore is that if the collection of pornography come first followed by child molestation, then the two bear a rational relationship to each other, but if they occur in the reverse order there is no logical connection between them.

[WhiskeyGirl]

Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor's Financial Disclosure Reports

http://www.judicialwatch.org/judge/sotomayor-sonia

[Toler]

Judge Sotomayor may well have lived in a 'poor' district but she didn't attend public school, private school all the way.

[WhiskeyGirl]

Recipe for balanced court

Re: "How about five women?" by Susan High, Saturday Letters.

I don't know if High intended to indicate bias or not, but the implication I drew from the letter was that it will be OK for Sonia Sotomayor to interpret the law differently for women, merely because they are women.

By extension, we could then conclude that it is OK for black judges to interpret the law differently for blacks, Asians for Asians, Hispanics for Hispanics, American Indians for their own group, and the list could go on ad infinitum. Where does the silliness stop?

Being a white male, I would suggest that we have a Supreme Court made up of nine women who would all interpret the cases brought before them strictly on the basis of the cases' constitutionality.

...

Ernest Leon Morrison, Frisco

read more here -
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/06/recipe-for-bala.html