Sotomayor is biased - and I for one am not going to bring up her 'wise latina' comment.No, lets talk about guns, shall we?
Gun owners are scared silly over her obvious checker flag nomination and her obvious placement on the court. In the odd chance you're watching this silly Congressional hearing, Judge Sotomayor belted out perfectly scripted responses to the Democrat questions, and rehearsed, but no where near as polished answers to the Republicans. Of course, there was no answer on abortion. That issue was dodged. But she was also evasive on the question of whether the Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right. In fact, her previous decision in United States v. Sanchez-Villar held that it was not.
Worst, in Maloney v. Cuomo, which reviewed whether owning a weapon is freedom applies to all law-abiding Americans or only to residents of Washington, D.C. If it's incorporated, the Second Amendment prevents the states from disarming honest Americans. If it's not, the Second Amendment is meaningless outside of our nation's capital.
Judge Sotomayor was on the Second Circuit panel that decided the Maloney case in a short, unsigned, and clearly incorrect opinion. The fact that the Maloney panel misread precedent in order to avoid doing the Fourteenth Amendment "incorporation" analysis required by the Supreme Court is troubling to the gun owners of America, to say the least.
Equally troubling is the fact that Judge Sotomayor said she wasn't even familiar with the Supreme Court's modern incorporation cases. There are few issues more important for a judge to understand than whether the fundamental guarantees in the Bill of Rights apply to all Americans. And before you get all huffy, the First Amendment right to free speech applies to all Americans. Our Fourth Amendment protection from illegal search and seizure applies to all Americans. It's hard to believe that a potential Supreme Court justice wouldn't be familiar with those cases? Right? You can't pick and choose which rights given to the people are 'good' or 'bad' - only if the laws have infringed upon those rights.
Despite that judicial amnesia, Judge Sotomayor co-authored an opinion -- in January of this year -- holding that the Second Amendment does not apply to the States. So that leaves two options: either she failed to follow the Supreme Court's direction in Heller that judges are required to analyze the modern incorporation cases; or she actually did review those cases, but came to an incorrect conclusion. Neither option gives gun owners much confidence in her view of the Second Amendment.
And gives me zero confidence that she's qualified for the job.
But she sure has a lot of empathy.
2 comments:
Liberal Georgetown Law Professor Mike Seidman declared himself "completely disgusted" by her testimony.
Seidman, who clerked for liberal icon Thurgood Marshall, wrote:
"If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified. How could someone who has been on the bench for seventeen years possibly believe that judging in hard cases involves no more than applying the law to the facts?"
"Legal academics who defend what she did today have no such excuse. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Seidman clearly isn’t trying to make friends with Sotomayor -- unlike so many legal experts and analysts who have so eagerly defended her performance as a nominee (knowing, incidentally, they will soon be appearing before her as a justice.)
Anyone that tries to say no to a minority female is not going to last long in our new "open-minded" government. May as well help her with her robe and hold the door open. All the opposition has lost their balls and this is the way it is now. Our guns will be seized, its only a matter of time now. This train can't be stopped.
Post a Comment