Sonia Sotomayor-- Obama Makes The Right Nomination

What a proud moment for America! There were tears in my eyes when President Obama announced (watch it here) that Sonia Sotomayor, a Bronx gal from a poor working class Puerto Rican family, would be the nation's first Supreme Court Justice of Hispanic heritage. What a great country we live in! Not only will she be the first Hispanic to serve on the Court and only the third female justice in the history of the Court, she will also be someone from a working family, not a some worthless legacy child of privilege. I'm so very, very proud today and I remember now why I voted for Barack Obama. She sounds like everyone I knew when I was growing up!

A few weeks ago, when it started to look like she was Obama's first choice and Republican Party apparatchiks began their predictably vicious smear campaign, we did a comparison between Appellate Court Judge Sotomayor and a man who had been rejected as unqualified and unfit for the Appellate Court, Alabama Senator and KKK supporter Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (now looking for personal revenge). Jefferson Beauregard III was chosen by his Republican colleagues to run the anti-confirmation attacks for their party. Where Ms. Sotomayor struggled to win scholarships and graduate from Princeton summa cum laude and then get her law degree from Yale, Sessions went to a fifth rate Bible "college" that lost it's academic accreditation. Somewhere along the way he picked up his racism and a Know Nothing outlook that has served him well in Alabama politics, but that cost him a judgeship in 1986 when his toes to the KKK were exposed.

As we saw yesterday, the GOP has already started their coordinated fundraising appeals to their ignorant racist base by attacking Judge Sotomayor with misinformation and propaganda. This morning they couldn't wait for Obama to make it official before their predictable, hackish, any-size-fits-all attacks began. A typical frothing wingnut:

“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

The Republicans will filibuster the nomination. It is unlikely that Olympia Snowe, who met with President Obama and asked him to given special consideration to nominating a woman (and, presumably, a moderate), will join them.

A little background on Judge Sotomayor, who has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit since October 1998 when she was elevated by Bill Clinton after her first appointment to the bench by George H.W. Bush. The American Philosophical Society lauded her as “one of the ablest federal judges currently sitting” for her thoughtful opinions and as “a role model of aspiration, discipline, commitment, intellectual prowess and integrity.” She is the embodiment of the qualities President Obama said he was looking for in a Supreme Court justice: someone with a sharp and independent mind, and a record of excellence and integrity plus a common sense understanding of how laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives

• Her American story and three decade career in nearly every aspect of the law provide Judge Sotomayor with unique qualifications to be the next Supreme Court justice.

• Out of law school, Judge Sotomayor became an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, where she tried dozens of serious criminal cases over five years and was known as a “fearless and effective prosecutor.”

• She entered private practice in 1984, and worked as an international corporate litigator handling cases involving everything from intellectual property to banking, real estate and contract law. 

Judge Sotomayor’s Judicial Track Record
 
• If confirmed for the Supreme Court, Judge Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years.  She has been a big-city prosecutor and a corporate litigator, a federal trial judge on the U.S. District Court, and an appellate judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.  

• Before she was promoted to the Second Circuit by President Clinton in 1998, she was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush-- a show of bipartisan support that proves good judging transcends political party.

• As a trial judge, she earned a reputation as a sharp and fearless jurist who does not let powerful interests bully her into departing from the rule of law. In 1995, Judge Sotomayor ended the baseball strike by issuing an injunction against major league baseball owners. 

• In 1998, Judge Sotomayor became the first Latina to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, one of the most demanding circuits in the country.   She has participated in over 3000 panel decisions and authored roughly 400 opinions, handling difficult issues of constitutional law, to complex procedural matters, to lawsuits involving complicated business organizations. 

• Judge Sotomayor is widely admired as a judge with a sophisticated grasp of legal doctrine and a keen awareness of the law’s impact on everyday life.   She understands that upholding the rule of law means going beyond legal theory to ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts.

• 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

• Judge Richard C. Wesley, a George W. Bush appointee to the Second Circuit, said “Sonia is an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind.  She brings a wealth of knowledge and hard work to all her endeavors on our court. It is both a pleasure and an honor to serve with her."

Aside from Sessions personal problems, the right-wing is still looking for revenge because Robert Bork was turned down for a Supreme Court job in 1987. Only two Democrats voted to confirm him, conservatives David Boren (OK) and Ernest Hollings (SC), while half a dozen mainstream Republicans-- John Chafee (RI), Bob Packwood (OR), Arlen Specter (PA), Robert Stafford (VT), John Warner (VA) and Lowell Weicker (CT)-- were as repulsed by his extremism as were the 52 Democrats who voted to turn down the nomination.

Among the senators who voted to confirm her as an Appellate judge in 1997 were current Republican senators Thad Cochran (MS), Susan Collins (ME), Olympia Snowe (ME), Dick Lugar (IN), Judd Gregg (NH), Arlen Specter (PA) and Judiciary Committee member Orrein Hatch (UT). Do you think David Diapers Vitter (R-LA) will filibuster? Watch him speaking on the Senate floor: