Friends, read that headline again. It is worth pointing out that Senator Mitch McConnell has been most excellent on the issue of Sotomayor. And I, given my frequent criticisms of him, want to this out there.

This morning, the NRA is announcing that it is going to score the Sotomayor nomination. This is a great thing. And I have no doubt that while outside groups have applied much pressure, Mitch McConnell leading so effectively on this front was a deciding factor. No group wants to come out and be left hanging by a failure of leadership.

McConnell has mitchslapped the Democrats through this entire process and while I may have qualms about him on several fronts, there is no doubt this morning that he has been extremely effective on this front.

Well done.

During Judge Sotomayor’s public Senate confirmation, she was asked if she would use foreign laws to interpret American laws. The question, asked by Senator Coburn, arose from Judge Sotomayor having repeated stated in the past that she approved of the use of foreign laws to interpret the American constitution, particularly the fifth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments.

Judge Sotomayor’s answer to Senator Coburn was

“I will not use foreign law to interpret the Constitution or American statutes. I will use American law, constitutional law to interpret those laws except in the situations where American law directs the court.”

Unfortunately, no one is paying attention to her written follow up answers, a copy of which I have obtained. You can find it here (PDF).

In the written follow up, Senate Republicans asked this:

What did you mean by the word “use”? Did you mean that you would not consider foreign law at all in interpreting the Constitution or statutes, or merely that you would not cite foreign law as the basis for your legal conclusions?

b. Would foreign laws regarding gun ownership be relevant to you in your efforts as a judge to interpret the Second Amendment?

c. If foreign laws are not relevant, how do you distinguish when it is appropriate to use foreign law to assist in the interpretation of the Constitution and when it is not? Isn’t foreign law then simply a vehicle by which judges indulge their own policy preferences?

d. If foreign laws are relevant, are the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments the only places in your mind where foreign law is relevant in interpreting the Constitution?

Judge Sotomayor is now totally reversing her public, oral testimony outside of the public spotlight. Her response to this question, in full, is:

In my view, American courts should not “use” foreign law, in the sense of relying on decisions of foreign courts as binding or controlling precedent, except when American law requires a court to do so. In some limited circumstances, decisions of foreign courts can be a source of ideas, just as law review articles or treatises can be sources of ideas. Reading the decisions of foreign courts for ideas, however, does not constitute “using” those decisions to decide cases.

Sonia Sotomayor was not asked about the use of foreign law in applying the Constitution and American laws. She was not asked about treating foreign law as “binding or controlling precedent.” Judge Sotomayor was asked about using foreign law to interpret the constitution and laws of the United States of America.

She told the Senate while the cameras were on that she would not use foreign laws as interpretive tools. Now she says she absolutely would.

If Senate Republicans vote for her, they will be establishing as a baseline for future nominees that using foreign law to interpret the American constitution and our body of laws is perfectly acceptable. They will also establish that it is perfectly acceptable for Obama’s nominees to say one thing in public, then retract that statement in private when no one is looking.

It took me blogging at RedState pointing out that the NRA was missing in action on Sotomayor for the NRA to do anything about her nomination.

And when the NRA engaged, it did so by sending out a letter publicly telling Sotomayor what she needed to say so the NRA would not score her vote.

Apparently, it worked.

The NRA knows it cannot support Sotomayor’s confirmation. After all, Sotomayor actually said she did not know if there was such a thing as a “right to self defense” in the United States Constitution — don’t worry, she knows for sure there is an abortion right there.

Sotomayor believes that states can ban ownership of nunchucks by individuals who don’t want to own a handgun for self-defense.

In fact, Sotomayor is to the left of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the issue of self-defense.

But while the NRA knows it cannot support Sotomayor and must oppose her, the NRA also knows that Senators will not pay attention unless the NRA “scores” the vote, i.e. negatively impacts a Senator’s gun rating if the Senator votes for Sotomayor.

The NRA, if you will recall, fell all over itself to avoid saying anything negative about Eric Holder, the most anti-gun Attorney General to ever reside at the DOJ. The NRA did not want to put Democrat Senators in awkward positions against their newly elected President.

In the same way, the NRA does not want to put Senators in awkward positions when it comes to Sonia Sotomayor. The NRA values its bipartisan reputation more than it values the second amendment.

For the first time in the NRA’s history, the NRA will oppose a nomination to the United States Supreme Court without scoring the vote.* In other words, Senators can vote for Sotomayor — the most anti-gun and anti-self defense nominee ever — and face no repercussions from the NRA.

David Keene of ACU, who has been in some hot water lately, is on the board of the NRA. If he wanted to really make amends quickly with conservatives troubled by the FedEx flap, he should push the issue with the NRA.

Let’s not hold our breath, however. We must keep our perspective. The National Rifle Association actively opposed legislation that would allow individuals to carry rifles into national parks. Perhaps it is time to become life members of Gun Owners of America instead of the NRA.

Charleston Heston rolls over in his grave today.

*I regret the error. I’ve found I cannot defend the claim and must retract it. My apologies. Notwithstanding that, the overall point remains — the NRA has capitulated on Sotomayor and has totally refused to put up a fight, just like with Eric Holder. If the NRA is not going to aggressively combat anti-2nd Amendment judges, why should we give them money?

Every lawyer who has had any experience in litigation has had to prepare a client for a deposition, to be taken under oath. The thing about depositions is that the judge is not there to referee and keep the other side from getting into too much irrelevant and embarrassing stuff, so most lawyers take the opportunity to go hunting for any embarrassing or harmful material they can find about the witness while they are under oath.

As a lawyer, if you ever have to prepare a client who has some embarrassing stuff in their past (e.g. arrests, drug use), you always tell them, “Don’t worry about this stuff coming out at trial. It’s all irrelevant and we’ll get it excluded. The only way it becomes relevant is if you lie about it under oath. Then the other side can use it to show that you are the sort of person who would lie under oath, and therefore nothing you say can be trusted.”

I have always thought that Judge Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comment, which she repeated on at least several occasions, was politically irrelevant. There was simply no way it was going to keep her off the bench, whatever it revealed about her biases and beliefs.

However, by now it has become obvious to almost everyone watching her confirmation hearings - including ardent Sotomayor supporter Maureen Dowd - that Judge Sotomayor is deliberately lying about her remarks under oath. And in so doing, Sotomayor has made the comments relevant.

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Not even Solomon, Cicero, and Daniel Webster all rolled into one could hope to equal the towering edifice, the virtual Mount Everest of discretion, discernment, judicial restraint and acumen, the champion of the law, the sister of stare decisis, the faithful servant of the Constitution that is Sonia Sotomayor.

At least as she describes herself in front of the Judiciary committee. My, my, we couldn’t even get Roberts and Alito to speak so approvingly of the text of the Constitution.

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First it was the messianic depictions of Obama’s head surrounded by a halo or pasted onto pictures of Jesus or depicted in a white, glowing robe…a quick search of “Obama Jesus” on Google Images finds numerous examples of this (of course some of these are mocking the messianic complex the Left has about their hero).  Now a prominent Democrat has decided that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor deserves the same treatment.

Felix Sanchez, the Chief Executive Officer of TerraCom, a government and public relations firm in Washington, DC and Chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts has decided that Sotomayor is the second coming of the Virgin Mary. Sanchez has updated his Twitter feed (screencap here, in case it disappears from Twitter) to use a Photoshopped image of Mary with Sotomayor’s face.

As I mentioned in a diary earlier today, I’m not a Catholic. But I’m pretty sure that the Catholics and several other churches would have a serious problem with someone defacing an icon of the mother of Jesus Christ. According to Wikipedia, Our Lady of Guadalupe is a “celebrated 16th-century icon of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ.” It also states that the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe “is a symbol of significant importance to Mexican Catholics.” The use of “Virgen de Guadalupe” may not even make sense, considering Sotomayor is Puerto Rican - not Mexican.

As someone who represents the interests of Latin Americans, one would think that Sanchez would be a little more sensitive to the interests of his community. But I suppose political expediency and the success of Sotomayor is more important to Sanchez than respecting the reverence for the mother of our Savior.  After all, to Dems like Sanchez, the real savior is at the All-Star game tonight.

(Oh, and note that one of our brethren, Joshua Treviño, is schooling Sanchez on Twitter right now, and has also called him out on his blog.)

President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has been deservedly criticized for her stated belief that minority judges make better decisions than “white males” because of their race, gender, ethnicity, and life experiences. The remark, repeated by Sotomayor in near identical form in speech after speech, has raised questions about her ability to be fair and impartial on the bench.

Surprisingly less criticized has been Sotomayor’s defense of her membership in an exclusive women’s club, The Belizean Grove.  A little over two weeks ago, Sotomayor responded to questions from Senators about the group with an answer that made even her champions at the New York Times blush.  Sotomayor said that her membership in the all-female group was appropriate because the group did not “invidiously discriminate” against men.

“I am a member of the Belizean Grove, a private organization of female professionals from the profit, nonprofit and social sectors.  The organization does not invidiously discriminate on the basis of sex. Men are involved in its activities — they participate in trips, host events and speak at functions — but to the best of my knowledge, a man has never asked to be considered for membership.”

The Times pointed out that the group’s own website does not agree with Sotomayor’s characterization, describing the group as a, “constellation of influential women,” and seemingly containing no mention of any roles for men.  Like her explanation of her racial comments, Sotomayor’s defense of her membership raises more questions than answers.

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I’m not particularly sold on Sonia Sotomayor one way or the other, other than to believe that nothing good could ever come from Obama.  My lawyer colleagues here on Redstate are much better versed on the merits of her rulings and arguments in the courtroom, but they are not necessarily free to pass judgment on them, as there could be conflicts of interest in the future.  It does seem that while she is certainly not a nominee that would come from a Republican president, she could be less harmful than some of the alternatives.

Despite what one thinks of her potential benefit or damage to the rule of law in the United States, it seems that Ms. Sotomayor’s journey to the Supreme Court bench has hit a couple of speed bumps.  First it was her borderline-racist statements implying that a “wise Latina” judge would reach better conclusions than a “white male who hasn’t lived that life,” and the fact that her comments were not an isolated incident, contrary to the spin of the Obama administration.  That particular episode seemed to be defused by th administration, as it seems to (at the time) have had little impact on her popularity.  But it appears the latest, more significant courtroom events have had an impact on the public’s perception of Ms. Sotomayor.

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The National Rifle Association, whose oft stated aim is to protect our Second Amendment rights, is missing in action in the confirmation battle over Sonia Sotomayor, the most anti-gun nominee that President Obama could have nominated to the Supreme Court. In the two cases to come before her on the Second Circuit (an unpublished opinion and the more recent Maloney v. Cuomo case), she made clear her “fundamental” view that unlike all of the other amendments contained in the Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms “is clearly not a fundamental right” and a restrictive New York weapons law did not “interfere[] with a fundamental right. Even the infamously liberal Ninth Circuit disagreed with her.

In the Maloney case, Sotomayor’s ruling would allow the states to completely ban the possession of guns, a radical view that should scare the living daylights out of the NRA and its membership. After all, the Heller decision by the Supreme Court striking down the District of Columbia’s gun ban was decided by only one vote. In other words, the Court came within one vote of completely writing the Second Amendment out of the Constitution.

This matter is likely to come up before the Supreme Court in its very next term. The NRA is appealing the decision of the Seventh Circuit in NRA v. Chicago, a case over the City of Chicago’s restrictions on handguns. This case will decide whether the individual right to bear arms that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller as applying to the federal government in the District of Columbia also applies to the states through the incorporation doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment. If this case is lost through a close vote on the Supreme Court, the constitutional gun rights of Americans will vanish in the foreseeable future – except in the District of Columbia.

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Senate Republicans to ramp up opposition, in a respectful and fair manner, against Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, will  lead this week’s charge against President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee

In a series of speeches Republican Senators will focus on “Sotomayor’s involvement with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the New Haven firefighters case, as well as role ‘empathy’ and the influence of international law has had on her decisions.”

Respectful and fair opposition doesn’t have to mean nothing substantive.

This is just ridiculous. Funny, but ridiculous.

Joe Biden today told law enforcement officials that Judge Sotomayor “gets what it takes to keep our communities safe and our streets clean.”

Joe, she is not applying to be either a policeman or janitor.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has come under fire for the following controversial comment that she made in prepared remarks at the University of California-Berkeley.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Both the Obama Administration and the nominee herself have said that the comments would have been better “restated.”  If by “restated” the Administration meant “repeated,” then the revelation that Sotomayor made nearly the exact same remark twice before and twice after the 2001 Berkeley speech would not be a surprise.  As it is, however, Sotomayor’s views on the role of gender and ethnicity in her judicial decision making process has never been in more doubt.

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As you have no doubt heard by now, much has been made about Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s 2001 speech during which she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

I haven’t thought much of the allegations that Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s wise Latina comment might be evidence that she is racist and therefore, haven’t bothered to write about the issue.

Among the materials Judge Sotomayor delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee were more speeches in which she said something very similar to her “wise Latina” remark.

We now know that Judge Sotomayor made remarks suggesting race and gender should affect a judge’s decisions on least five separate occasions:

• A 1994 speech, in which Judge Sotomayor said: “I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion. What is better? I … hope that better will mean a more compassionate and caring conclusion.”

• A 1999 speech to the Women’s Bar Association of New York State, in which Sotomayor invoked “sister power,” called for the selection of a third woman Supreme Court justice — which she would now be — and used phrasing similar to that in the Berkeley speech. “I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.”

• The infamous 2001 “wise Latina” speech.

• A 2002 speech to the Princeton Club.

• A 2003 speech to Seton Hall law school.

So much for President Obama’s claim that Judge Sotomayor simply misspoke.

One might still be skeptical as to whether Judge Sotomayor’s speeches suggest she might be racist. But if you take her speeches and substitute the word “white” for the words “Latino/a,” “Hispanic,” “Puerto Rican” and “people of color” you might have second thoughts. At Sweetness & Light they made those substitutions to Judge Sotomayor’s 2001 “wise Latina” speech and the result is devastating.

Here are the first four pargraphs:

I intend tonight to touch upon the themes that this conference will be discussing this weekend and to talk to you about my WHITE identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench.

Who am I? I am a “Newyork-Caucasian.” For those of you on the West Coast who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker of WHITE-born parents who came to the states during World War II…

The story of that success is what made me and what makes me the WHITE person that I am. The WHITE side of my identity was forged and closely nurtured by my family through our shared experiences and traditions…

My family showed me by their example how wonderful and vibrant life is and how wonderful and magical it is to have a WHITE soul. They taught me to love being a WHITE person and to love America and value its lesson that great things could be achieved if one works hard for it. But achieving success here is no easy accomplishment for WHITES, and although that struggle did not and does not create a WHITE identity, it does inspire how I live my life…

You can read the rest here, but I think you get the idea.

That’s Ben Domenech’s two-word assessment of Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice:

This is worth noting: given the chance to select Diane Wood, a brilliant legal voice and a hardened defender of unrestricted abortion rights, Obama went for the personal story that would appeal to the media instead, disappointing once again some of his supporters. It is possible, yes, that Sotomayor is personally an abortion centrist. But the pro- and anti-abortion groups should fall in normal lines on this nominee — her decisions in favor of anti-abortion policies weren’t based on opposition to Roe, and in viewing the entirety of her background, Sotomayor gives no signs of being a stealth nominee for the pro-life cause.

This is what it all comes down to, in fact. As John Yoo notes, Sotomayor gives no signs of being a threat or an asset to any particular cause. It’s unlikely that she’ll be further left than the man she’s replacing, and if she has the gift for motivating or shifting her fellow justices, she hasn’t displayed it on the Second Circuit, where even after 17 years, no one regards her as a leader. She is, in other words, unlikely to shift the Supreme Court in any direction, to any significant degree, from where it was before her arrival.

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor made the rounds on Capitol Hill today, meeting with Senators of both parties. According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), Sotomayor addressed her controversial “wise Latina” remarks from 2001 during their meeting. Leahy would not say whether the nominee acknowledged that she misspoke when she made the comments, but her attempt to explain them only adds more confusion.

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is an advocate of allowing felons to vote. “Advocate” is a loaded word when referring to a judge, and with good reason. Judges are not supposed to allow their personal preferences influence their interpretation of the law and the facts at issue in a given case. But their really is no other way to describe Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in Hayden v. Pataki, a case brought by inmates in New York State under the federal Voting Rights Act.

The inmates were suing the State of New York for the right to vote, alleging New York’s prohibition of felon voting was discriminatory based on race and ethnicity. Sotomayor sided with the inmates in a four-paragraph long opinion, holding that the Voting Rights Act prohibited states from disenfranchising felons because the majority are black, Hispanic, and other minorities.

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Senator Lindsey Graham goes there:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told “FOX News Sunday” he wasn’t buying President Obama’s attempt to walk back his Supreme Court nominee’s controversial statement from 2001. Obama said Friday that given the chance Sotomayor would have “restated” that comment, and that she was merely trying to express how her experiences give her perspective on others’ hardships.

“She didn’t say that at all,” Graham countered Sunday, suggesting Sotomayor’s statement raises questions about her objectivity.

“What she said is that based on her life experiences is that she thought a Latina woman, somebody with her background, would be a better judge than a guy like me — a white guy from South Carolina,” Graham said. “It is troubling, and it’s inappropriate and I hope she’ll apologize.”

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During the 1970 Senate debate over Richard Nixon’s nomination of G. Harold Carswell to the US Supreme Court, Mr. Carswell was characterized by his opponents as a mediocrity. (Now, admittedly, considering who Obama has foisted off on us mediocrity looks pretty good.) Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska took to the floor of the Senate to defend the nominee:

“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”

What was sort of funny at the time has actually happened, in spades. David Souter and Anthony Kennedy have been valiant and indefatigable champions of mediocrity since joining the court.

At one time, the Supreme Court was divvied up by race and ethnicity. We had a Jewish seat, then a black seat (this seat also served as a representative of the lazy and the mediocre when Thurgood Marshall held it, but it is now vacant because Clarence Thomas is not a liberal), and a woman’s seat. For a short while there was a Catholic seat, but now it is hinted that there are just too many Catholics on the court.

The nomination of Judge Sotomayor represents a natural evolution in parceling out Supreme Court seats. Rather than the so 1970s criteria of race and ethnicity, her role on the court will be to ensure that bigots and racial supremacists have adequate representation.

She’s off to a rousing start. She’s a member of a racialist group, the Council of La Raza, she has extolled her own ability to render “better” judgment because of her sex and ethnicity than a white male (aka, the guys who brought you Western Civilization), and she has ruled that race not trumps competence in civil service promotions. The future of bigotry seems to be in safe hands and Senator Hruska, unbeknownst to himself or anyone else at the time, has been revealed as a prophet.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday began the Obama Administration’s walkback of controversial comments made by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. At the daily press briefing, the perpetually over matched Gibbs attempted to explain away Sotomayor’s comment that a “wise Latina” would necessarily make better judicial decisions than a “white male” judge because of her gender, ethnicity, and life experience. But Gibbs never learned the first rule of being in a hole, and his explanation raises more uncomfortable questions for the nominee.

“I think she’d say her word choice in 2001 was poor. She was simply making the point that experiences are relevant to the process of judging. Your personal experiences have a tendency to make you more aware of certain facts and certain cases, that your experiences impact your understanding.”

The only facts that a judge has any business considering, of course, are the facts at issue in the case before the court. Gibbs’ assertion is an admission that the Administration wants judges who will decide cases not based upon the facts and the law, but on their personal preferences.

But Gibbs wasn’t done digging, and used a quote from Justice Samuel Alito to try and bolster his position.

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