Does The Sonia Sotomayor Confirmation Fill A Quota?

I know many people are very pleased with the "successful" confirmation of now Justice Sotomayor. It does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Out of 111 Justices, she is the third woman and first Latino to be appointed. The Republicans continue to live up to their surly, childish ways with nearly 2/3rds voting against her. In total nine came on board so this could be wrapped up. 

Obama gets kudos while acting to CYA by immediately catering to Latino voters in nominating her in the first place. Not that she isn't immensely qualified, but let this be a lesson to black voters that if "we" don't have a cohesive coalition in place we'll get NOTHING from Obama. To suggest this to the "he's one of us" and "let's wait and see" crowd is akin to banging your head against a brick wall. After that wasted effort at defending Skippy Gates - which offered ZERO value to black women - he won't so much as stick his finger in air lest it offend some group of ready-to-be-disgruntled whites. 

I can't help but think of the Clarence Thomas appointment with ALL of the red flags presenting themselves very clearly and how he more or less sailed through. I was too young to understand what was going on then. The slight road bump was presented with Anita Hill's testimony of his sexual misconduct and contempt he expressed towards her. I've researched the transcripts now and can't believe this man got through. He was supposed to fill the Thurgood Marshall seat. So any black man was okay apparently.  

I don't care that he's married to a white woman. I don't care that he wasn't elevated through the "black community" either. His contempt and hatred for blacks was obvious though. It wasn't an expression of his free agency from a narrow definition of blackness either. Many blacks foolishly supported him simply based on shared phenotype while ignoring his history. Ever since he's been a Justice he has attempted to destroy all collective progress that other blacks were terrorized and died for. 

Which brings me to Sotomayor. If so many could get swept up in symbolism with Thomas why not with her? Yes, she is a woman but that in and of itself it NOT a guarantee that she'll vote progressively. So while many are doing the happy dance, people had better remember these appointments are FOR LIFE and they have COMPLETE AUTONOMY. Every week I think about how John Roberts was appointed and not just as a junior SCOTUS but the Chief Justice it makes me so angry. This was the man who advised Ronald Reagan to back away from publicly acknowledging AIDS at a crucial time. It set back funding for research and discouraged a change in behavior that would have saved lives. Instead of it being listed as an epidemic Reagan remained silent allowing millions more to die than what was necessary. 

So while I'm glad it's not yet another white male I can't say for sure this newest Justice will help usher in a roadblock of her own to stop the ideologues...or if it's just business as usual. We need at least two more women and one of them had better be black! Of course I'm not counting on Obama to appoint one. For the reasons listed above, but Kimberlie Crenshaw deserves to be a SCOTUS. If you will recall Souter was appointed as a Conservative and often voted socially progressive by comparison to his colleagues. Of course those Republicans (white males wanting to hold on to their privilege) are still being difficult.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, took aim at what he claimed was Sotomayor's inability to refrain from bringing her personal political opinions to bear on her rulings. 

"This is the most fundamental test for any judge and all the more so for those who would sit on our nation's highest court, where a judge's impulses and preferences are not subject to review. Because I'm not convinced that Judge Sotomayor would keep this commitment, I cannot support her nomination." - - - -  CNN

Umm...yeah whatever dude. Go call up your buddies Roberts and Scalia and ask them about separation of impulses and preferences!

You're So Lame Award of Shame - White Men Howling At the Moon

I swear if I had a dollar for every white man supporting a supremacist agenda that has cried foul, racism, had a pity party and engaged in other mealy-mouth BS over the SCOTUS nominee I'd have quite a few extra in my pocket this week! So let's clarify that President Obama's choice of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a big deal and SUPER SCARY to some people apparently. Somehow having a brain and a vagina is going to do some people in. Yeah I said it! Vagina, vagina, vagina. The fact is they'd prefer a woman who was afraid of hers or wanted to repress its capabilities, but that's a whole other slippery slope. A divorced woman with no children - oh my! What does that mean????

From Rush "Never Met A Racist/Sexist Cause He Doesn't Support" to G. Gordon Liddy quite a few of the Usual Suspects have been up to no good as per their marching orders from the great White Power Oz. Isn't it time we pull the curtain back and throw some water on this sucker? Liddy....shouldn't this man have been executed for treason after he called for the murder of American citizens because he didn't agree with their politics? Somehow graduating at the top of your class from an Ivy League makes you an Affirmative Action "lesser than". I suppose being a legacy admission with a C average means you're freaking brilliant and have done all the work COMPLETELY ON YOUR OWN MERITS, huh? Not! 

Anyway, I would have preferred Obama nominate another equally if not more qualified African-American female lawyer like Kimberle Crenshaw. In case you are not familiar with her work she coined the term "intersectionality". Read this excerpt from her Wiki page:

Crenshaw has published works on civil rights, black feminist legal theory, and race, racism, and the law. She often commentates on various aspects of law and racial politics and her scholarly interests center around race and the law. She is the founding coordinator of the intellectual movement called the Critical Race Theory Workshop. She is currently a Professor of law at UCLA and Columbia Law School and teaches Civil Rights and other courses in critical race studies and constitutional law. In 1991 and 1994, she was elected Professor of the Year. At the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she received her LL.M., Professor Crenshaw was a William H. Hastie Fellow. Later on, she clerked for Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Crenshaw has published numerous works including Critical Race Theory, Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, and Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment. She was also the coeditor of Critical Race Theory: Key Documents That Shaped the Movement and her works have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the National Black Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, and the Southern California Law Review. She has lectured nationally and internationally on race matters, addressing audiences throughout Europe, Africa, and South America as well as facilitating workshops for civil rights activists in Brazil and constitutional court judges in South Africa.

Her work on race and gender was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. In 2001, she wrote the background paper on Race and Gender Discrimination for the United Nations World Conference on Racism and helped to facilitate the addition of gender in the WCAR Conference Declaration. Crenshaw has also served as a member of the National Science Foundation's Committee to Research Violence Against Women and has assisted the legal team representing Anita Hill. She is also a founding member of the Women's Media Initiative and is a regular commentator on NPR's The Tavis Smiley Show.

Crenshaw is also co-founder, with Prof. Luke Harris, of the African American Policy Forum (AAPF). AAPF was founded in 1996. According to AAPF's mission statement: The Policy Forum is dedicated to advancing and expanding racial justice, gender equality, and the indivisibility of all human rights, both in the U.S. and internationally.

So Sotomayor has made some rulings that don't sit well with certain "progressives". She may not be the prefect candidate but she's a heck of a lot better than John Roberts "I Don't Think AIDS Is An Epidemic"...and Alito! That was Robert's stance in the 80's when he was advising Ronald Reagan at the beginning of the outbreak. It prompted the President to distance himself and ignore the future millions of people who'd die because the Republicans couched everything in "you're a dirty sinner" language instead of seeing it as a public health (and national security) threat. In case you're thinking Roberts has mellowed some guess again. He's the Chief Justice on top of it. 

I'm hoping President Obama gets to appoint at least two more Justices who will use common sense and leave their narrow religious/sexist/racist views out of the court. Yeah I know I'm asking for A LOT. But all of the things some of these men are accusing Judge Sotomayor of are the very same things they do on a regular basis. They know it - and so do we! So lay off. 

And for crying out loud - pronounce her name correctly!!