From a purely selfish point of view, Sotomayor may realize she will (probably) way outlast Obama’s presidency, barring no premature departure from the world, and I wonder if she was thinking if she lets a president get away with bullying the court like Obama’s been doing, and further arguing with extremely lame arguments, that it may set a precedent and ultimately she will be facing a republican/conservative administration, expecting the same precedent ability.
Who wants a potentially long career on SCOTUS where POTUS rolls them over and uses them as a rubber stamp - liberal ally or conservative adversary? Precedent will be set and will be expected by future administrations.
Or is it really more that the Obama admin’s arguments are SO LAME that even she can’t lower herself to try to support them? As it would severely tarnish her profile as independent and just a non-thinking vote for Obama?
I suppose it could more likely be the latter.
I cannot help but note that Spain turned into a valued ally during the Revolution, so certainly the threat had not been from Spain, so who?
Let me suggest the enemy who might invade were the 4 Iroquois nations that in the end made war against the United States, or maybe their Shawnee adversaries.
Regarding that 14th Colony, many imagine that England had clear title to the Ohio Valley having won that territory in the French and Indian War. That territory, also being claimed in part by Virginia, had never actually been deeded over to France by Spain in the Treaty of London (1604), nor through later codicils, so England could not have acquired it from France ~ indeed, Nouvelle Canada, according to the French Cartographer D'Isles extended no further South than the St. Joseph River, and specifically along 42 degrees between Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.
The complaint was that England had extended the Quebec Acts on land the colonies claimed that actually had never before been under French rules (such as were part of the Quebec Acts) ~ notwithstanding the existence of such French colonial outposts as Vincinnes and Terre Haute ~ which were probably there at the sufferance of the local Spanish colonial magistrate at the closest La Villa Real ~ located somewhere in East Central "modern' Indiana.
Not to suggest that some of the colonies were engaged in foreign intrigue outside of the knowledge of the Crown, but the Declaration itself suggests strongly that some of them had sealed some deals with Spain!
Regarding their concern for borders, Connecticut and Massachusetts continued to move their border back and forth for the next 50 years, and South Carolina and North Carolina never bothered to find a border until Tennessee (Not a state until well after the Revolution) pressed the issue (in I believe the 1830s). They also found and surveyed their border with Georgia at roughly the same time.
Eventually the US obtained both British and Spanish West Florida, as well as Louisiana East of the Mississippi. Later, when Napoleon conquered Spain he sold their Louisiana colony to the US (albeit with borders extended far and away beyond what any Spaniard had ever imagined ~ or surveyed).
Now, back to the issue of the US being initially very concerned with borders ~ I think not! This was a big place ~ immense ~ and although surveys were required to protect land titles, there were no foreign enemies lurking here and there ready to pour in over the borders!
Even today we have only two other nations on our land borders!