Sotomayor: Obama Does It Again

So here she is, the big pick, the firebrand liberal to offset Scalia.  Right?  Eh… not so much.   Sorry NPR, UCLA,  Amnesty International, etc, but you don’t have a new flag bearer.

But she’s probably not going to see many cocktail dinners with the Bush family either.  Truth is, neither wing is particularly enamoured with her.  True, Fox anchors despise her and MSNBC commentators fall over their own compliments for Obama’s newest choice.  But the people who have a choice in the matter aren’t so strongly poised.

Sotomayor has several notable ruling under her belt:

• She ruled against a group of white firefighters claiming reverse discrimination.
• She ruled against corporations weighing the cost of organisms killed against the cost of improved technology designed to reduce pollution.  She was overturned in the Supreme Court but Ginsburg and Souter agreed with Sotomayor stating that such practices were “pernicious.”
• She upheld a Bush policy which precluded foreign aid agencies from receiving federal money if they performed or supported abortions.

Those are somewhat telling and worthy of informed debate.  So read them while you can because here comes the media railroading.  Here is what you will see on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN for the next week.  It is a video of Sotomayor stating that the “Court of Appeals is where policy is made.”

Is this the harmless musing of a local official?  Or is this the inner preview of Sotomayor’s dangerous legislating from the bench intent?  Ah, but why settle for such something so tame as that?  Youtube user kirktrombone writes:

“Ok…that is scary. Might as well come out with it though. Democrats don’t respect the Constitution…pretty soon we’ll be having a president say, “Oh,..I make policy, decide what it means, AND execute it….chuckle, chuckle, chuckle.” Newsflash: that’s a dictatorship. Wake up Americans!!”

I’m just going to let that Youtube author represent the over reactive right.  From the same video, we have KayInMaine for the brash liberal view:

“The problem is….the right wingers are pointing fingers saying it’s the liberals who make policy from the bench, when in actuality, it’s the right wingers who do and who want the SCOTUS to be the mountain where Moses takes their commandments to report to the little people. And we all know what that means! No civil rights for anyone but pasty white christians! Spit.”

I would expect nothing less.  But then we come into different territory.  The quasi-intellectual yet completely distorted argument presented by those on both sides.  We have that represented by jaimymoore.

“I guess this sounds controversial, but only to people who are too stupid to know what “precedent” means.

Rulings at the appeals level set precedents. At the district level, they don’t.”

This is simply untrue.  Do not let anyone tell you that.  Mandatory precedent applies to every court, within the same geographical area, at the same or lower appellate level.  In other words, all courts set precedent.  District courts set precedent unto themselves for future reference.

Obama has done it again.  He made a decision which was generally pleasing to his base but not extreme enough to spawn legitimate outrage from the Right.  People who are still expecting different haven’t been paying attention because that’s been about 95% of the show so far.

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