Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Sonia Sotomayor Endorsements on NPR

National Public Radio covered Sotomayor endorsements this morning. There were endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police and the announcement of a formal endorsement by former FBI director Louis Freeh later this week.

First, the FOP spokesman said that every policeman should and would support Sotomayor. This was obviously just hyperbole, but, seriously, how can every single policeman in America support her. Isn't it possible that one of them doesn't like her? Did she never run a stop sign? Isn't even one cop in America racist?

Second, Louis Freeh is going to endorse her before the Senate Judiciary committee next week. Is that really an endorsement anyone should want? Is that an endorsement she should accept? Should any liberals be happy about this endorsement? Here's an opinion piece that makes a good case against Freeh's basic honesty and competence. I also would have linked the This Modern World describing some of the weirder ideas in Freeh's book criticizing the Clintons but I couldn't find it (so it might be my imagination).

Third, Freeh points out that Sotomayor would be the only member of the court with experience as a trial judge, and that this experience would bring a valuable perspective to the court. I now am waiting for Mitch McConnell to say that this experience would make her unacceptably biased in favor of trial judges and that she would be an empathetic, activist judge who would legislate in their favor from the bench. (By the way, has anyone else noted that in the Ricci case that the Supreme Court recently overturned--from what I can tell in a purely empathetic, legislating from the bench kind of way--she found against an Hispanic firefighter who was to get a promotion from the system she [and the rest of the unanimous panel] ruled to be in violation of the Civil Rights Act. If she really were basing her judgments on her ethnicity, wouldn't she have found in favor of Ricci?)


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