Randall Terry, founder of the right-wing extremist group Operation Rescue, has announced a twelve-city tour intended to convince senators that “[t]o refuse to filibuster [Sotomayor] is to bow in abject obedience to the Angel of Death.”
Terry refused to condemn the recent killing of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, instead calling him a “mass-murderer” who “did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.”
Judge Sotomayor stirred controversy by suggesting in speeches that at times it may be proper -- if not inevitable -- for a judge to take into account personal experience and identity when deciding cases. It is clear, however, that in her work thus far she has consistently and appropriately let the law dictate the results.
Uncertain evidence for ‘Activist’ label on Sotomayor
New York Times
When a federal appeals court ruled that the Voting Rights Act did not apply to state statutes that disqualify felons from voting, Judge Sonia Sotomayor accused her colleagues of usurping the role of Congress.
“The duty of the judge is to follow the law,” Judge Sotomayor wrote, “not to question its plain terms. I do not believe that Congress wishes us to disregard the plain language of any statute or to invent exceptions to the statutes it has created. I trust that Congress would prefer to make any needed changes itself,” she added, “rather than have courts do so for it.”
Since President Obama nominated Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, a ubiquitous accusation by her critics - conservative group leaders, talk show hosts, anti-abortion advocates and writers at blogs like RedState.org - is that she is a “judicial activist” who legislates from the bench.
Washington Times minimized Princeton alumni group's opposition to admission of women, minorities
Media Matters
The Washington Times stated that Samuel Alito had "reported involvement in a Princeton alumni group that opposed affirmative action." In fact, the group actively resisted Princeton's increased admission of women and minorities.
Serious props to NPR's Nina Totenberg today. Rather than simply reporting about "concerns over Sotomayor's temperament" or allegations that she's a "bully," Totenberg actually compared audio clips of questions asked by Sotomayor and those asked by her male colleagues -- or those who would be her colleagues if she is confirmed for the Supreme Court. And -- SURPRISE! -- Sotomayor is no "meaner" than your average justice. She is just femaler.
If there’s a knock on Sotomayor, it’s not inexperience
The Christian Science Monitor
The battle over Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court has moved into high gear, with the Senate Judiciary Committee setting hearings for July 13. Some on Capitol Hill are predicting an all-out Republican fight on this one. Others predict there will be some spirited GOP questioning, enough to mollify the base, but not much more - after all, the Latino vote can swing as many as 56 electoral votes in the Southwest and Florida.
Barring a major surprise, Democrats are feeling pretty confident that she’ll be approved and that she has the legal experience needed for the job.
Let us hope that Sonia Sotomayor's tumble on the way to Washington doesn't become a metaphor for her journey to the Supreme Court. For the moment, at least, the broken ankle that had her navigating the Senate halls on crutches brought out the inner gentlemen in her opponents.
The New Republic’s Jeffrey Rosen took some serious heat for his first piece on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Penned in early May, before she was nominated, Rosen cited anonymous sources who called Sotomayor “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench.” The backlash was swift. On Salon, for instance, Glenn Greenwald called the way Rosen assessed her as “reckless and just journalistically corrupt.”
At Time.com, Rosen takes another stab at Sotomayor, focusing this time not on her intellect, but on her views on race.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor says she has a "Puerto Rican soul," and that says a lot about her. By her own reckoning, Sotomayor offers more than just a different complexion as the first Hispanic nominee to the high court. Rather, she's long stressed her distinctive ethnic identity, how it's been shaped and - at times - what it might mean for her jurisprudence.
"My Puerto Rican soul was nourished each weekend that I visited and played in abuelita's house," Sotomayor told a New Haven, Conn., audience in October 1998, referring to her grandmother.
Sotomayor's gruff demeanor a likely topic in hearings
The Washington Examiner
Sonia Sotomayor was in her 30s and not yet a judge when she noticed that a paralegal at the law firm where she worked broke out in hives whenever she entered Sotomayor's office. After six months, they laughed about it.
"'I don't know what was wrong with me, but it took me six months to realize that you don't bite,'" Sotomayor recalled the paralegal telling her. The encounter offered clues to the complex temperament of the Supreme Court justice-in-waiting.
In a nation still wrestling with its long history of prejudice, calling someone a "racist" is one of the most incendiary things you can say. So it has been dismaying to hear prominent conservatives throw the word around so carelessly in their campaign to discredit Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
President Obama’s choice to be the next Supreme Court justice had scarcely left the podium after being introduced to the media and the public before politicians and political pundits alike -- from Rush Limbaugh to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- had hauled out the heavy rhetorical ammunition to label her a racist.
What isn't wrong with this picture? The Oklahoman's June 2 editorial cartoon entitled "Fiesta Time at the Confirmation Hearing" shows Latina Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor hanging like a piñata with President Barack Obama in a sombrero asking GOP elephants armed with sticks, "Who wants to be first?"
Media adopt gender, racial stereotypes in characterizing Sotomayor's temperament, intellect
Media Matters
Since Sonia Sotomayor's name was raised as a possible choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, numerous media figures have adopted language reflecting gender and racial stereotypes in reporting about her temperament and intellect.
For all their exaggerated claims that Sotomayor lacks racial sensitivity, conservatives continue to tar her with allegations that she owes her own nomination to the fact that she is a racial minority. Calling her "Sonia from the block" and "Justice J-Lo," right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel claimed that Obama chose Sotomayor for the "sole reason" that "she shares the life story of J-Lo, Jennifer Lopez."
Because it is difficult to dismiss her academic credentials and her professional experience, some on the right have resorted to the politics of personal destruction. Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice said in a radio interview that Judge Sotomayor was picked because "she's a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified."
...[W]e'd welcome a confirmation process that sets aside rancid stereotypes and sexist assumptions in order to explore the record and philosophy of a woman whose work could affect the country for some time to come.
This New York Times's May 28 article "Sotomayor's Blunt Style Raises Issue of Temperament " was strongly criticized by a number of female bloggers. Taylor Marsh wrote, "The gist of the complaints in the article coming down to… drum roll… She’s tough. Oh, no, not another , er… tough woman. The men will melt. You know, because lawyers are such shrinking violets."
Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake responded to the article, "The titillating nature of junior high anonymous gossip mongering is so much more amusing and more easily understood by political reporters who don't bother trying to comprehend legal intricacies."
Justice may be blind, but not when it comes to weight. Paul Campos reports on the bizarre campaign to find a woman to replace David Souter on the High Court--as long as she’s thin.
Conservatives are doing their level best to derail the nomination of Latina Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, targeting her race and views on abortion in particular. But these culture wars appeals are having little effect on the public’s views.
In a just-released ABC News/Washington Post poll, 62 percent of the public says Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court should be confirmed by the Senate, compared to just 25 percent who think she shouldn’t be confirmed. This level of support is among the highest recorded for recent Supreme Court nominees.
Sandra Day O'Connor "Pleased" With Sotomayor Nomination, Criticizes The Term "Activist Judge"
Huffington Post
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was a guest on the "Today Show' this morning to discuss her new children's book. However, matters quickly turned to the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
When O'Connor had stepped down from the bench she was hoping to be replaced by another woman, and was disappointed when that did not happen. O'Connor explained why she was "pleased" with Sotomayor's nomination. "Of course I'm pleased that we will have another woman on the court. I do think it's important not to just have one... About half of all law graduates today are women, and we have a tremendous number of qualified women in the country who are serving as lawyers and they ought to be represented on the Court." O'Connor told Vieira that Sotomayor was in for a rough time, calling the nomination process "miserable."
Corker impatiently blows off meeting with Sotomayor because she was slowed by temporary disability
Think Progress
Last Thursday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) was scheduled to meet with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Yet when Sotomayor was delayed because of her recent injury, Corker decided that he had more important things to do than to wait around for a potential lifetime appointee who is temporarily disabled.
"Sen. Bob Corker blew off his meeting with Sonia Sotomayor last week. Hobbling along with her leg in a cast, she was 10 minutes late and he said he didn’t feel like waiting. “I decided to proceed on to the next meeting,” he told a Tennessee Press Association breakfast in Chattanooga.."
With the Senate Democratic caucus enjoying a sizable majority, even some of the administration's staunchest critics realized from the outset that Sonia Sotomayor was very likely to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. The goal, conservatives thought, was to use the nomination to bolster their larger goals.
If the right could effectively demonize Sotomayor, conservative groups could, for example, see a boost in fundraising, and a newly energized far-right base. Having the first real fight over a Democratic president's high court nominee in four decades could, the idea went, be a shot in the arm to the conservative movement and Republican activists.
A month later, how's that working out? Not particularly well.
But more important is the fact that Sotomayor is an extremely well qualified, experienced, mainstream judge who deserves to be confirmed. The right hasn't been successful in exploiting this nomination because there's just not much to exploit.
Limbaugh: I'll send Sotomayor, Belizean Grove "a bunch of vacuum cleaners to help them clean up after their meetings"
Media Matters
On his June 17 radio show, Rush Limbaugh discussed Judge Sotomayor's association with Belizean Grove, saying he would "send Sotomayor, and her club, a bunch of vacuum cleaners to help them clean up after their meetings."
Court Watch: Sotomayor's Dissents -- and Temperament
The Washington Post
The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen leaves behind questions of courthouse manners for an article that examines the "Sonia Sotomayor you don't know" through a study of her judicial dissents.
"It's often in dissents that appellate judges can express their true selves--their passions, judicial philosophies, and unique views of the law. And Sotomayor's little-noticed dissents are clearly the opinions in which she has the greatest personal investment. Unlike her majority opinions, her dissents sometimes show flashes of civil-libertarian passion or indignation, even as they remain closely grounded in facts and precedents."
Ginsburg praises Sotomayor nomination: She will bring ‘a wealth of experience in law and in life.’
Think Progress
Speaking at the annual conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit on Friday, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg praised the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the court. “As much as I will miss Justice Souter’s company,” said Ginsburg, “I was cheered by the next banner headline,” which was Sotomayor’s nomination. Ginsburg added that she would be “glad” to no longer be the only woman on the court.
Buchanan argues against affirmative action: ‘One prefers the old bigotry.’
Think Progress
Today, in a Human Events column titled “Miss Affirmative Action,2009,” MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan continued his attack on Judge Sotomayor. He declared that affirmative action is worse than the “old bigotry” against African Americans:
"Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review — all because she was a Hispanic woman."
But in the most recent evaluation, interviews with eight to 10 unnamed lawyers also produced some less flattering comments: "a terror on the bench," "nasty," "overly aggressive," "a bit of a bully."
To get a better idea of how Sotomayor operates, we listened to two tape-recorded oral arguments in important cases.
Remember when Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was considered a racist? That’s so last month.
This month -- at least the first week of this month -- two of Sotomayor’s most outspoken critics have reconsidered their views about the federal appeals court judge who is a native of New York, but whose parents are Puerto Rican.
Yesterday on his radio show, conservative host G. Gordon Liddy continued the right wing’s all-out assault on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. First, just like Tom Tancredo, Liddy slammed Sotomayor’s affiliation with the civil rights group La Raza -- and referred to the Spanish language as “illegal alien."
Finished with the race-based attack, Liddy moved on to denigrate Sotomayor’s gender: "Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."
Rush Limbaugh compares Sotomayor nomination to nominating David Duke
Air America
Rush Limbaugh claimed that Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, had not only set back the civil rights movement but compared her to David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Karl Rove has made clear that he doesn’t think Sonia Sotomayor is smart enough to be a justice on the Supreme Court. Last night on Fox News, Rove offered another demeaning and subtly-sexist putdown of Sotomayor. Rove complained to Greta Van Sustern that Sotomayor pays too much attention to grammar and claimed that she’s 'sort of a schoolmarm.'
Media Matters: O'Reilly says "The left sees white men as a problem"
Media Matters
During his talk show on Fox News, host Bill O'Reilly said he believes progressives support women and minorities because white men are viewed as "a problem."
Today on MSNBC, right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan attacked Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as an 'affirmative action candidate.' He was unable to cite any evidence that she was unqualified, instead pointing to the fact that President Obama’s top four candidates for the spot were women. Because there were no white men in the final round, Buchanan was convinced that the whole selection process was rigged.
Mike Huckabee comes out hard against the Sonia Sotomayor appointment, with a bit of a misfire as concerns her name: "The appointment of Maria Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is the clearest indication yet that President Obama's campaign promises to be a centrist and think in a bipartisan way were mere rhetoric."
