How Does Supreme Court Decision Serve The People?
The recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations unlimited spending on political ads was the right decision in the case. It is not something we should be cheering for in the larger sense of what it means for American politics.
One good thing about this decision is that it levels the playing field by granting corporations the same advantages Unions and other organizations have when it comes to political campaigns and support of candidates. Another positive twist is that the level of awareness and debate could increase significantly; specifically by exposing a segment of the population who would otherwise be ill-informed in general about politics because what they know is only what they see in TV advertisements in their respective markets.
But this case is an isolated one, which does not address the real problem…the fact that too much money in politics not only adds to corruption but also makes it virtually impossible for the average citizen to campaign and compete in elections.
Many people on the right argue that this is about the First Amendment right to free speech. I don’t agree with that. The corporation is not an individual that can participate in rights. For example, does a corporation (remember it’s a piece of paper) have the right to keep and bear arms? How about the right to a speedy trial, why would it need that if it is never put in a jail cell? How about the right to the pursuit of happiness? Is a piece of paper capable of being happy or sad?
We have structures in place to allow individuals of a political opinion or ideology to band together and fund the propagation of their ideas. That is a healthy way of getting the opinion of the people into the public view. But I doubt very seriously that Nike will be concerned with individual tax rates if they can find a politician who will grant them special privileges for their business.
I think most Americans would agree that special interests, corporations and lobbyists already have way too much influence over politics and the legislative process. The Court’s decision opens the floodgates for corporations to increase their influence without limits. How does that serve the people? How does that help the people make their voices heard? Will this ratchet up the polarization of debate, further fueling the divisions in the electorate?
Insurance companies are corporations. How on earth will letting them spend freely on politics increase competition in the marketplace allowing us to negotiate lower prices and policies that fit our lifestyles and budgets. What about multinational corporations, which have no allegiance to America but will now have the opportunity to influence our political process through unlimited funding to promote ideologies that serve their particular interests? Think about the potential hazards this could lead to…special interests on steroids. Corporations will be able to fund the people who are friendly to them regardless of what it means to this society and our freedom.
The case I would like the Supreme Court to decide is if the current campaign finance laws are constitutional and actually serve the people. I would argue that we need significant limits on campaign financing activities. We should have a system that encourages average individuals to serve in public office. Today we have a system that encourages wealthy lawyers who can rarely avoid scandal as their power and influence is auctioned to the highest bidder(s).
In short, the money should be funneled through individuals, have low limits and be tax-free. Corporate profits should be directed to equity growth, dividends and R&D; allowing individual investors the opportunity to participate in the wealth generating machine that corporations are capable of being.
Sonia, Sonia, Sonia… You Have Lotsa Splainin’ To Do
Sonia Sotomayor has another interesting court case that involved a teen blogger, a reputation as a bully among her peers, declaring the 2nd amendment is not a constitutional right, and after posting yesterday about La Raza, (in which I made no mention of a connection), we find out that she is in fact a member. La Raza in Spanish means The Race. The very essence of the group is racist.
The teen blogger case is very disturbing, mainly because it was a high school student who was denied the opportunity to run as class president because of a statement she made on the Internet about her teachers and the school administration calling them D* bags. What child doesn’t say nasty things from time to time when they get emotional or upset? Sotomayor’s ruling stated that the female student, who used the term after the school’s battle of the bands was canceled by faculty, would cause a possible disruption, and therefore was unable to run – hello?? Basic 1st amendment? It’s not like she yelled fire in a crowded movie theatre – we are talking about an angry Internet post of a term that is commonly used nowadays when people are upset. Being from Connecticut myself, I’m surprised I didn’t already know about this woman, granted she did not preside over my jurisdiction/county.
Sonia Sotomayor’s peers and co-workers have also made statements after her nomination claiming that she is a bully and quite abrasive in the work environment. Compared to other court justices on both sides of the aisle, most are very well respected and amiable. It’s important in any working environment to feel comfortable and not harassed – it would be very upsetting to learn that she tried to pressure or bully other SCOTUS members in the future, to make a decision to her liking.
Sonia has also ruled that the 2nd amendment was not a constitutional right in the past. I’m not sure why it would be an amendment in the constitution, and the 2nd one at that, if it wasn’t constitutional, but what do I know? It’s also my understanding that our constitution was established based on Jefferson’s Federalist Papers? Federalism did reign supreme in those days and that meant more state power…?
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayorruled in January 2009 that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment’s commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments.
The opinion said that the Second Amendment only restricted the federal government from infringing on an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. As justification for this position, the opinion cited the 1886 Supreme Court case of Presser v. Illinois.
“It is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right,” said the opinion. Quoting Presser, the court said, “it is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.”
The final and most extreme issue coming to the forefront is her association with the radically liberal La Raza. I posted yesterday on other details about the SCOTUS nomination and in so doing, also mentioned the organization and provided a link with facts.
There are many immigrant groups joined in the overall “La Raza” movement. The most prominent and mainstream organization is the National Council de La Raza — the Council of “The Race”.
To most of the mainstream media, most members of Congress, and even many of their own members, the National Council of La Raza is no more than a Hispanic Rotary Club.
But the National Council of La Raza succeeded in raking in over $15.2 million in federal grants last year alone, of which $7.9 million was in U.S. Department of Education grants for Charter Schools, and undisclosed amounts were for get-out-the-vote efforts supporting La Raza political positions.
The Council of La Raza succeeded in having itself added to congressional hearings by Republican House and Senate leaders. And an anonymous senator even gave the Council of La Raza an extra $4 million in earmarked taxpayer money, supposedly for “housing reform,” while La Raza continues to lobby the Senate for virtual open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.
La Raza lies the real agenda of the La Raza movement, the agenda that led to those thousands of illegal immigrants in the streets of American cities, waving Mexican flags, brazenly defying our laws, and demanding concessions.
Key among the secondary organizations is the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West.
Eeeegads we better watch it here!
More About Sotomayor (So-Toe-My-Or)
Conservatives are discovering more details on Sotomayor as the days tick on. She is quite an accomplished woman and had been on the fast track to becoming a leading national judge (at least by the pace at which she was moving up the ranks). However, she already had various critics back in 1997 like Rush Limbaugh who saw her coming a mile away and knew she could one day be nominated for SCOTUS. Limbaugh, in 1997, warned listeners that this woman was extremely progressive and liberal in her judgments and leanings.
The president of the National Organization of Women (NOW) has even made an official statement that Sonia is in fact “very progressive.”
The Republicans in the senate are focusing on Sotomayor’s speech that she gave at the University of California, Berkeley (School of Law) back in 2001. Her lecture at Berkeley was published in La Raza Journal, which made a blatant racist remark when comparing one race over another as to which of those races would make better decisions. 29 Republicans in 1998, when Sotomayor was nominated for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, voted against her for this very reason, as well as her tendency to legislate and be an activist from the bench.
For a little more information on the extremism of La Raza go here.
Newt Gingrich has been on the attack with this one nomination and it is something he apparently feels very strongly about – it may have to do with the history of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals when she was nominated back in 1998 while Newt was still Speaker of the House. Newt has called Sonia Sotomayor an outright racist and has asked for her to withdraw her name from the SCOTUS nod.
I personally think that when it comes to measuring somebody’s merit and ability – personal feelings aside, what really matters is their record - and this final detail that has come to fruition is incredibly important. Her opinions have a 60% reversal rate…
Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to the high court.
“Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record. Frankly, it is the Senates duty to do so,” said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.
The most frustrating aspect of this entire nomination is the media playing it up to be the first ever Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court – which just isn’t true. We could go back in history and technically find that Cardozo per the article yesterday, was the first, but even if that is questionable there is Miguel Estrada, who was nominated by a Republican and was a Conservative. Democrats did not care about his remarkable history, growing up in Honduras and legally immigrating to the United States without being able to speak English and breaking through barriers to go to Columbia University and then onto Harvard Law School. The Democrats demoralized this man because he was a Conservative and didn’t fit the Conservative mold – he had to be destroyed – the same thing happened to Clarence Thomas – another from humble beginnings, who was a black man and a Conservative. We could go back through time, but why? We had an example of this very thing with the past election; Sarah Palin. A female who came from the lower middle class, if that, who had to pay her way through college, lived in a state that truly is the last frontier, and still isn’t all that developed, worked her way up politically by working hard and never giving up. But to liberals, a Female, a Black, and a Hispanic should only be democrats, not republicans – those who go against the mold need to be destroyed before anyone else; they are the biggest threats. The liberals want to make this nomination into this historically wonderful thing, bamboozling the dumbed down masses, attempting to brainwash them into thinking that Sonia truly is the first of her kind to be nominated, when that is an out and out lie. Ann Coulter talks about this in greater detail on Good Morning America.
Empathy and Identity Politics; The Dems’ Gravy Train
The Democrats really know how to play the identity politics card and it would appear that Obama does it better than any leader of the liberal party has in a long time!
No longer does it matter to liberals whether or not you are technically qualified for a position based on past job experience, intelligence, background knowledge of the constitution, etc. – nope, what matters now is that you can empathize with races, genders, religions, or any multitude of things that would otherwise be characterized as superficial traits.
Sonia Sotomayor was nominated as Obama’s first choice to replace Chief Justice Souter as a Supreme Court judge. Sonia, however, has not issued an opinion of importance in over 10 years and she has quite a reputation. One tends to lean towards the fact that the only reason she was even nominated was due to her Hispanic background and her gender. This is affirmative action at its finest, and then people wonder why those who are promoted really aren’t qualified and mistakes are made at organizations and companies… Let’s get back to the merit of a candidate rather than the color of their skin/ethnicity (quotas).
What upsets me is not the fact that this woman came from very humble beginnings, really worked her way up to become more successful than most, even with a head start, but the fact that Democrats exploit these facts and use these things about people to gain constituents and voters. This is a ploy used to win the Hispanic vote, which is becoming increasingly important when deciding future elections.
In a presentation that will likely lean heavily on style over substance, Sotomayor’s background will allow the administration to again play class warfare with their presentation of her biography. The daughter of Puerto Rican parents growing up in the South Bronx, her father was a manual laborer and her mother a nurse. Her father died when she was 9.
Sotomayor went on to attend Princeton and then Yale Law School before working as a New York assistant district attorney. Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan worked a confirmation deal with the first President Bush to nominate Sotomayor to the Second Circuit.
In one of the biggest sources of the coming Sotomayor controversy, is her conduct in the New Haven, Connecticut firefighter case that’s now on appeal to the Supreme Court.
And I’m sure many reading this are curious to find out what the controversy of the case really was – well here is the long and short of it:
In Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor sided with the City of New Haven that was alleged to have used racially discriminatory practices to deny promotions to firefighters. Sotomayor joined a per curiam opinion that went so far as to bury the white firefighters’ crucial claims of unfair treatment. Judge Jose Cabranes, a Clinton appointee, chastised her in writing for apparently missing the entire host of Constitutional issues that were before the court.
According to Judge Cabranes, Sotomayor’s opinion “contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case” and its “perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal.”
(To judge just how bad the Ricci opinion is, even liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, wrote of his dissatisfaction with the case, stating, “Ricci is not just a legal case but a man who has been deprived of the pursuit of happiness on account of race.”
Ironically, Sotomayor’s dreadful decision in Ricci is under review at this time by the Supreme Court with an opinion expected by the end of June when David Souter, the justice Sotomayor is nominated to replace, has announced his retirement.
So the official decision is still technically pending… It would be nice to know what the outcome of that case is before nominating this person as a SCOTUS justice.
This was not the first episode of judicial extremism or liberal activism from this individual…
In another example of her radical judicial philosophy, Sotomayor stated in a 2002 speech at Berkeley that she believes it is appropriate for a judge to consider their “experiences as women and people of color,” which she believes should “affect our decisions.” In the same speech, Sotomayor went on to say, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” She restated her commitment to that unlawful judicial philosophy at a speech she gave in 2005 at Duke Law School when she reiterated that the “Court of Appeals is where policy is made.”
The Obama administration has made claims in the media that Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic on the court, which is not entirely accurate. Benjamin Cardozo, a Sephardic Jew of Hispanic ancestry, served on the Supreme Court from 1932-1937. Cardozo traced his ancestry to Portugal, yet there is a mixed bag of which government agencies consider Portugal to fall under the Hispanic umbrella. It is accurate to say Sotomayor, should she be confirmed, would be the first Hispanic woman on the court.
Heaven forbid conservatives or anyone else who questions this woman’s qualifications to really uphold the law of the land, will be labeled a bigot. This is the new campaign of the left, which is entirely ironic/humorous if it wasn’t so sad at the same time. So many of color and gender play into this nonsense and believe that the liberals are the party of the common man and that of the minority – when in history, and even to this day, they are anything but. One would think that when race, ethnicity, religion, and gender are used as a means to an end, that would be considered racist, however, the indoctrinated or brain-washed masses do not understand that. The simple fact is the party who advocates individual freedoms and liberties is the party of freedom, the party that associates and segregates by race, gender, religion, etc., is the party of oppression and “plantation” politics. Keep people down so you have voters – it’s the carrot and stick philosophy that you give a little bit to entice the voter, but then you pull it away to keep them coming back for more, never letting them get the entire carrot, because they will no longer be hungry. At that point they will want their own personal liberties and freedoms – if they ever become successful they won’t require affirmative action, welfare, or government in their lives to help them… therefore Democrats will no longer have a voting bloc.
To use an example of this SCOTUS candidate, as to what I just discussed above, we can look at one of her quotes she provided in a public forum.
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
So accustomed have we become to identity politics that it barely causes a ripple when a highly touted Supreme Court candidate, who sits on the federal Appeals Court in New York, has seriously suggested that Latina women like her make better judges than white males.
Indeed, unless Sotomayor believes that Latina women also make better judges than Latino men, and also better than African-American men and women, her basic proposition seems to be that white males (with some exceptions, she noted) are inferior to all other groups in the qualities that make for a good jurist.Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.
Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: “I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life” — and had proceeded to speak of “inherent physiological or cultural differences.”
But the crux of the matter has more to do with the battles in which the GOP should choose. The opposition of this nomination may unfortunately cause quite a hiccup for republicans in future elections with Hispanics. I do not believe that Sotomayor should be confirmed, that’s my opinion, based on the activism portrayed in several of her decisions and speeches, as well as some off-the-cuff comments made that, by any objective reader, would be considered racist in nature – or at least holding some type of antipathy/grudge towards white males in particular. However, I’m not so sure this is one of those battles that the GOP should choose to commit to.
The liberals know how to instigate a crisis or a distraction on the other side of the aisle, meanwhile passing/creating other, and more substantive legislation and policies. Some of the items that may be more useful than arguing over Sotomayor are the upcoming decision in California regarding gay marriage, where democracy and votes no longer count and a state supreme court could trump the will of the people, cap-and-trade is still on the table, health care reform, immigration reform (which has been tabled until the fall), and Obama’s horrible foreign policy experience, as evidenced in the recent North Korea nuke tests. Obama leans on the United Nations and the rest of the world, because he does not have a backbone of his own to condemn another nation or stand up to it as, for example, Reagan did. The philosophy of the liberals is “look over there, not over here.”
Sotomayor is an intelligent woman, but she is a radical who does not believe in the constitution. She would not be on my shortlist of judicial picks, but this appointment will not be much different than the justice she would be replacing; Souter. The next SCOTUS pick will most likely tend to be more critical than this one…
Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Bush Officials
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of senior Bush officials who helped draft the policies for EITs. They state that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller cannot be held accountable for an incident with a Pakistani Muslim that occurred back in 2002.
Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani Muslim who spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002, had argued that while Ashcroft and Mueller did not single him out for mistreatment, they were responsible for a policy of confining Muslim prisoners in highly restrictive conditions and subjecting them to strip searches and brutal beatings. He has since been deported to Pakistan.
The Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, said there was nothing linking the two Bush officials to Iqbal’s treatment. The court’s liberal justices — David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens — dissented, so even a liberal pick by President Obama to replace Souter would not change the mix.
But as we all know, the liberals won’t stop there. They are planning, if not already, bringing up charges against various Bush administration officials that were also party to the documents, legal memos, and policies used on Gitmo detainees. Earlier on C-Span radio and the Washington Journal, Mr. Kessler who is a journalist for Newsmax, and an author of various books regarding the CIA, Secret Service, and Intelligence Community, gave his take on the CIA memos, waterboarding, EITs, what the true technical definition of torture is, and why terrorists and pirates do not fall under the Geneva Convention. The hate and vitriol from liberal callers was astounding. Just when I think that people couldn’t get more vile and hateful they always seem to surprise me!
A coalition of left-leaning advocacy groups filed complaints today with five state bar associations, accusing a dozen former Bush administration lawyers — including Ashcroft and ….
…former attorneys general Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey — of violating professional standards by approving the use of torture on terrorism suspects. The punishment: They want the lawyers disbarred in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and the District of Columbia.
Also on the list: John Yoo, now a law professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law, Jay Bybee, a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Pentagon lawyer Douglas Feith, and David Addington, legal guru for former Vice President Dick Cheney.
If we are going to have these truth commissions, maybe we should have had one for Vietnam and lined up LBJ or we should have interrogated FDR for his concentration camps in the United States during World War II. We should also interrogate all the Democrats who were part of the financial melt down and make them take lie detector tests to get at the bottom of who is honest in the government. I would say we should also go back to the Clinton administration and go back over the Kosovo conflict and the fact that his foreign policies lead to much of the 9/11 attacks in the first place… But it’s always the hate on the left that feels the need to act like the new McCarthyites and go on these despicable witch hunts.
