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starshine1763 |
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As I said, I'm still researching her. But for a someone who has rendered 380 majority opinions, only having 3 (of 5) overturned by the SCOTUS seems like a
pretty solid record. And at least one of the overturned decisions (Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp) seems like it could have easily gone either way.
She had the Bivens law as precedent for her ruling and the Supreme Court disagreed on it's application by a vote of 5-4. In fact, in 2 of her 3 reversals,
Souter voted in her favor - which would indicate that their processes are potentially relatively in line with one another. In addition, her reversal rate is
lower than the standard reversal rate of the Supreme Court for the last 5 years. In 2008 SCOTUS reversed 75.3% of the cases it heard. Alito also had a number
of his 3rd Circuit decisions reversed by SCOTUS prior to his appointment (I'm researching an exact number on this one).
Paige
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TheMarcNU |
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"Rush added: "If ever a civil rights movement was needed in America, it is for the Republican Party. If ever we needed to start marching for freedom and constitutional rights, it's for the Republican Party. The Republican Party is today's oppressed minority, and it know how to behave as one." The GOP, Rush continued, know to go to the "back of the bus" and drink from the right water fountain. Rush then assured us that he is an "intellectual," whereas Obama is a "narcissist." And just in case you're not sure what that means, Rush elaborated: "He's like Narcissus." Washington, D.C., Rush concluded, is the "Old South" for Republicans, and they are comfortable being an "oppressed minority."The Limbaugh Wire for 05/27/2009 call for help! i think i just oppressed you! it's exactly as if i made your grandparents slaves and then prohibited you from learning to read or exercising your right to vote!
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Esmter |
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somebody better check old Rushie's pill bottles again - and make sure they're his and not some back alley oxycontin.
-Em
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ClarityForNoOne83 |
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asspoo wrote: Uh...no. I'm Catholic, but I'm also pro-choice and pretty liberal. You say this like every time you go up to receive communion, they go "Are you pro-life?" and only after you say "yes" do they say "The Body of Christ." I definitely receive communion whenever I go to mass. |
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asspoo |
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It's just one of things you have to believe to be a member of the Catholic church. If you are pro-life you have to talk to a priest about it because the
church is dead set against abortion. That's committing murder. You should talk to a priest. We are also against the death penalty. I don't know of
any church who is pro-choice. Is there one out there?
Most Hispanics are very involved with the Catholic church. I'd have a very hard time believing she was pro-choice. ETA: I'm probably getting too religious on you. Sorry. If your priest knows you feel that way and still gives you communion then great. Found her ruling on abortion from wiki: I could not be happier about this nominee. Seriously, Obama did something I like!
Lucy
Last Edited By: asspoo
05/28/2009 10:34 AM.
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TheMarcNU |
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three things taught me conservative love: jesus, ronald reagan, and atlas shrugged
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkeZ2P4SiY8 lolz (word to your mother: ayn rand was an atheist) |
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irisheyes |
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seriously. I thought a nice alternative title would have been "Stuff White People Like". Superman that socialism, waterboard that terrorism! Yeah!
"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." - Rudyard Kipling
"While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." - Sarah Vowell |
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supposeisaid7 |
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Even though some of you refuse to read actual arguments of both logic & reason because it flies directly in the face of your liberal-hearted
"feel-goodiness"...
"Out of Context" Thomas Sowell Tuesday, June 02, 2009 In Washington, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification" when people realize what was said. The clearly racist comments made by Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the Berkeley campus in 2001 have forced the spinmasters to resort to their last-ditch excuse, that it was "taken out of context." If that line is used during Judge Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearings, someone should ask her to explain just what those words mean when taken in context. What could such statements possibly mean-- in any context-- other than the new and fashionable racism of our time, rather than the old-fashioned racism of earlier times? Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups. Looked at in the context of Judge Sotomayor's voting to dismiss the appeal of white firefighters who were denied the promotions they had earned by passing an exam, because not enough minorities passed that exam to create "diversity," her words in Berkeley seem to match her actions on the judicial bench in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals all too well. The Supreme Court of the United States thought that case was important enough to hear it, even though the three-judge panel on which Judge Sotomayor served gave it short shrift in less than a page. Apparently the famous "empathy" that President Obama says a judge should have does not apply to white males in Judge Sotomayor's court. The very idea that a judge's "life experiences" should influence judicial decisions is as absurd as it is dangerous. It is dangerous because citizens are supposed to obey the law, which means they must know what the law is in advance-- and nobody can know in advance what the "life experiences" of whatever judge they might appear before will happen to be. It is absurd because it flies in the face of the facts. It was a fellow Puerto Rican judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals-- Jose Cabranes-- who rebuked his judicial colleagues for the cavalier way they dismissed the white firefighters' case. On the Supreme Court, the justice whose life story is most like that of Sonia Sotomayor-- Clarence Thomas-- has a very different judicial philosophy from hers. The clever people in the media and elsewhere are saying that "inevitably" one's background influences how one feels about issues. Even if that were true, judges are not supposed to decide cases based on their personal feelings. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that he "loathed" many of the people in whose favor he voted on the Supreme Court. Obviously, he had feelings. But he also had the good sense and integrity to rule on the basis of the law, not his feelings. Laws are made for the benefit of the citizens, not for the self-indulgences of judges. Making excuses for such self-indulgences and calling them "inevitable" is part of the cleverness that has eroded the rule of law and undermined respect for the law. Something else is said to be "inevitable" by the clever people. That is the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. But it was only a year and a half ago that Hillary Clinton's winning the Democratic Party's nomination for president was considered "inevitable." The Republicans certainly do not have the votes to stop Judge Sotomayor from being confirmed-- if all the Democrats vote for her. But that depends on what the people say. It looked like a done deal a couple of years ago when an amnesty bill for illegal aliens was sailing through the Senate with bipartisan support. But public outrage brought that political steamroller to a screeching halt. Nothing is inevitable in a democracy unless the public lets the political spinmasters and media talking heads lead them around by the nose. The real question is whether the Republican Senators have the guts to alert the public to the dangers of putting this kind of judge on the highest court in the land, so that they will at least have some chance of stopping the next one that comes along. It would be considered a disgrace if an umpire in a baseball game let his "empathy" determine whether a pitch was called a ball or strike. Surely we should accept nothing less from a judge.
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supposeisaid7 |
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rocknrollqueen |
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U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Judge Samuel Alito's Nomination to the Supreme Court U.S. SENATOR TOM COBURN (R-OK): Can you comment just about Sam Alito, and what he cares about, and let us see a little bit of your heart and what's important to you in life? ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point. ALITO: I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up. And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame. But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives. And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position. And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result. But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country." When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me. And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them. So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person. |
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rocknrollqueen |
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The Howls of a Fading Species
One can only hope that the hysterical howling of right-wingers against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is something approaching a death rattle for this profoundly destructive force in American life. It's hard to fathom the heights of hypocrisy currently being scaled by the foaming-in-the-mouth crazies who are leading the charge against the nomination. Newt Gingrich, who never needed a factual basis for his ravings, rants on Twitter that Judge Sotomayor is a "Latina woman racist," apparently unaware of his incoherence in the "Latina-woman" redundancy in this defamatory characterization. Karl Rove sneered that Ms. Sotomayor was "not necessarily" smart, thus managing to get the toxic issue of intelligence into play in the case of a woman who graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, went on to get a law degree from Yale and has more experience as a judge than any of the current justices had at the time of their nominations to the court. It turns the stomach. There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry. It is impossible to be smart enough or accomplished enough. The amount of disrespect that has spattered the nomination of Judge Sotomayor is disgusting. She is spoken of, in some circles, as if she were the lowest of the low. Rush Limbaugh - now there's a genius! - has compared her nomination to a hypothetical nomination of David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. "How can a president nominate such a candidate?" Limbaugh asked. Ms. Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic civil rights organization. In the crazy perspective of some right-wingers, the mere existence of La Raza should make decent people run for cover. La Raza is "a Latino K.K.K. without the hoods and the nooses," said Tom Tancredo, a Republican former congressman from Colorado. Here's the thing. Suddenly these hideously pompous and self-righteous white males of the right are all concerned about racism. They're so concerned that they're fully capable of finding it in places where it doesn't for a moment exist. Not just finding it, but being outraged by it to the point of apoplexy. Oh, they tell us, this racism is a bad thing! Are we supposed to not notice that these are the tribunes of a party that rose to power on the filthy waves of racial demagoguery. I don't remember hearing their voices or the voices of their intellectual heroes when the Republican Party, as part of its Southern strategy, aggressively courted the bigots who fled the Democratic Party because the Democrats had become insufficiently hostile to blacks. Where were the howls of outrage at this strategy that was articulated by Lee Atwater as follows: "By 1968, you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff." Never a peep did you hear. Where were the right-wing protests when Ronald Reagan went out of his way to kick off his general election campaign in 1980 with a salute to states' rights in, of all places, Philadelphia, Miss., not far from the site where three young civil rights workers had been snatched and murdered by real-life, rabid, blood-thirsty racists? We've heard ad nauseam Ms. Sotomayor's comments - awkwardly stated but hardly racist - about what she brings to the bench as a Latina. But how often have we ever heard the awful, hateful position on race offered up by William F. Buckley, the right's ultimate intellectual champion? He felt comfortable declaring, in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision ordering the desegregation of public schools, that whites had every right to discriminate against blacks because whites belonged to "the advanced race." Right-wing howls of protest? I think not. Ms. Sotomayor's nomination is a big deal because never before in the history of the United States has any president nominated a Latina to the highest court. Only two blacks have ever been on the court, and the one selected by a Republican has been like a thumb in the eye to most African-Americans. The court is a living monument to America's long history of exclusion based on race, ethnic background and gender. Where is the right-wing protest against that? It was always silly to pretend that the election of Barack Obama was evidence that the U.S. was moving into some sort of post-racial, post-ethnic, post-gender nirvana. But it did offer a basis for optimism. There is every reason to hope that we've improved as a society to the point where the racial and ethnic craziness of the Gingriches and Limbaughs will finally have a tough time finding any sort of foothold. Those types can still cause a lot of trouble, but the ridiculousness of their posture is pretty widely recognized. Thus the desperate howling. |
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starshine1763 |
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supposeisaid7 wrote: You do a lot of chastising here, but I'd love to see you post an original thought or two once in a while rather than resorting to Thomas Sowell's inane arguments. I never did see a response from you the last time I deconstructed one of his articles. Also, the howling from the right over this racism thing is one of the more hilariously stupid arguments they've tried to push forward in recent months. In addition, if Sotomayor is a racist, care to explain this analysis of her decisions on 96 discrimination claims in her time on the Second Circuit: http://www.scotusblog.com...-from-the-full-data-set/
Paige
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randyfromDe |
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Ha! After her trip to China, Nancy Pelosi says that the U.S. is NOW going to focus on deficit reduction.
Don't pee on my shoe and tell me it's raining. There's no fucking way that Barack will start focusing on deficit reduction, because there's no power to be had by spending less money and having fewer government hooks in "private" enterprise. |
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supposeisaid7 |
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I feel there is little to no need for me to interject my own thoughts when they are very eloquently expressed already by someone only the clearly misguided
would call "inane".
As the mainstream media circles the wagons around Judge Sonia Sotomayor, to protect her from the consequences of her own words and deeds, its main arguments are distractions from the issue at hand. A CNN reporter, for example, got all worked up because Rush Limbaugh had used the word "racist" to describe the judge's words. Whatever you may think about his choice of words, those words and the ideas behind them do not change the law of the land. The words and actions of Supreme Court justices do. Anyone who doesn't like what Rush Limbaugh says can simply turn off the radio or change the station. But you cannot escape the consequences of Supreme Court decisions. Nor will your children or grandchildren. What does it say about a nominee to the Supreme Court that the most that her defenders can say in her defense is that her critics used words that her defenders don't like? What does it say about her qualifications to be on the Supreme Court when her supporters' biggest talking points are that she had to struggle to rise in the world? Bonnie and Clyde had to struggle. Al Capone had to struggle. The only President of the United States who was forced to resign for his misdeeds-- Richard Nixon-- had to struggle. For that matter, Adolf Hitler had to struggle! There is no evidence that struggle automatically makes you a better person. Sometimes, instead of making you appreciative of a society in which someone born at the bottom can rise to the top, it leaves you embittered that you had to spend years struggling, and resentful of those who were born into circumstances where the easy way to the top was open to them. Much in the past of Sonia Sotomayor, and of the president who nominated her, suggests such resentments. Both have a history of connections with people who promoted resentments against American society. La Raza ("the race") was Judge Sotomayor's Jeremiah Wright. If context is important, then look at that context. Sonia Sotomayor has, in both her words and in her decision as a judge to dismiss out of hand the appeal of white firefighters who had been discriminated against, betrayed a racism that is no less racism because it is directed against different people than the old racism of the past. The code word for the new racism is "diversity." The Constitution of the United States says nothing about diversity and the Constitution is what a judge is supposed to pay attention to, not the prevailing buzzwords of the times. What the Constitution says is "equal protection of the laws" for all Americans-- and that is not taken out of context. People have put their lives on the line to make those words a reality. Now all of that is to be made to vanish into thin air by saying the magic word "diversity." The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, like the Constitution, proclaimed equal rights for all, not special rights for those for whom judges have "empathy." When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was being debated in Congress, its opponents claimed that it would lead to discrimination against white people. Its supporters declared that it meant no such thing and added new provisions to make sure that it meant no such thing. That was the law that was passed. It was not the law, but the judges, who changed equal rights into special rights and thereby set the stage for the new mantra of "diversity" that trumps equal rights. Diversity was Judge Sotomayor's rationale for going along with the denial of equal rights for white firefighters in Connecticut. When all else fails, supporters of Judge Sotomayor say that she is Hispanic and a woman, and that it would be politically dangerous to deny her a place on the Supreme Court. This is as much an insult to the intelligence of Hispanic and female voters as it is to the Constitution of the United States and to those who put their lives on the line for equal rights.
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TheMarcNU |
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uh, yo, conservatives, the reason everybody is focusing on those 32 words from a speech a few years ago is because THEY CAN'T FIND ANYTHING ELSE BAD IN HER
RECORD. it's like how you guys pretended al gore said he invented the internet, or how democrats pretended john mccain really wanted to be in iraq for 100
years, 10,000 years, whatever. it's much easier to argue based on the craziest possible interpretation of an offhand comment than to argue on the merits.
moreover, it's interesting that people calling her a "racist" are the same people who don't care about actual racism. the same people who would be holding the hoses if this were Mississippi in the 1960s. the same people who would be leading the lynch mobs if that was still socially acceptable. a few facts:
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TheMarcNU |
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also, from the same speech where Sotomayor said the 32 words that have Republicans like Tom Tancredo-- a guy who favors putting up a wall, East Germany-style,
to keep out Mexicans!-- calling her a "racist":
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TheMarcNU |
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basically, never trust somebody who tells you not to look at something in context. it's like the wizard saying, "pay no attention to that man behind
the curtain!" they're playing you for a fool.
rush limbaugh and thomas sowell do not respect your intelligence, republicans. they're laughing all the way to the bank. as p.t. barnum said...
Last Edited By: TheMarcNU
06/03/2009 11:11 AM.
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starshine1763 |
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supposeisaid7 wrote:You think that copying and pasting these articles eloquently expresses your positions, I think that it does nothing but prove that you're incapable of rationalizing any of your arguments on your own. I'm all for presenting an argument and backing it up with quotes, facts, articles, etc. What I don't respect is someone coming on here and going "you're all sheep, bahhhh" over and over while never once demonstrating an original thought. There are certainly valid arguments that are in opposition with my own personal opinions, Thomas Sowell doesn't seem to ever present them. I'm still waiting to hear from you why Sotomayor's judicial record doesn't seem to bear out the "racist" title she's been given.
Paige
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randyfromDe |
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I see that Dear Leader thinks that the U.S. is now a "Muslim nation". 38th place in the world, according to the CIA factbook, so we're almost
there!
The are more Mormons in the U.S. than Muslims. Hell, there are almost more Mormons in Utah than there are Muslims in the entire U.S! Barack Obama is at least as dumb as George W. Bush, and twice as dangerous. |
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starshine1763 |
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randyfromDe wrote:He didn't say we were a Muslim nation. His point was that the US has a significant Muslim population and that there should be efforts made to have a better and more open dialogue between Muslim Americans and non-Muslim Americans. His statistics, however are wrong - you're correct in that. The Muslim population in the US is around 6 million and the US Mormon population was about 5.5 million in 2006 (I'm sure it's increased, I'm searching for a more recent number). Both minority religions, absolutely. Oh, and the CIA World Factbook places the US as 34th in the world in terms of Muslim population.
Paige
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