Posted on 07/14/2009 7:13:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention is urging conservatives to contact their senators to oppose the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is on the verge of replacing Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
“After carefully examining her record as a lower court judge, we believe that Sotomayor should not be confirmed to serve on the nation’s highest court,” the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission stated Monday as the U.S. Senate opened hearings on Sotomayor’s nomination.
“Sonia Sotomayor’s record reveals that she is perfectly willing to lift the blindfold of justice to achieve her desired result. She is a judge with a terribly flawed view of the judicial system at best or a judge who simply doesn’t care what the law says at worst,” the SBC entity added.
Furthermore, the ERLC continued, Sotomayor “has constantly shown her lack of deference to the Constitution.”
“She is the type of justice who instead of applying the law neutrally will redefine the law to conform to her policy preferences,” the group stated. “The bottom line is that Sonia Sotomayor is an unpredictable wildcard.”
Since President Obama announced Sotomayor as his first high court nominee late May, there have been a number of concerns that have come out, including a 2001 speech in which she said she hoped the rulings of a "wise Latina" would be better than those of a white male without similar experiences.
Sotomayor has also received criticism for her more recent rejection of claims filed by mostly white fire fighters who said they were not promoted because the city council feared being sued for racial discrimination.
Republicans point to Sotomayor's 2008 decision on the Second Circuit appeals court panel as evidence she might let her personal and political views - particularly a belief in racial preferences for minorities - influence her decisions.
Notably, the Supreme Court ruled late last month 5-4 in favor of the 17 white and one Hispanic firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said city officials violated their rights when it threw out the results of a promotions test on which few minorities scored well.
Aside from that case, the ERLC said Sotomayor’s record – across the issues – were “either far too thin or hidden behind non-published orders and per curium opinions.”
“Simply put, placing Sonia Sotomayor on the highest court in the land jeopardizes our nation’s commitment to equal treatment under the law,” the group stated.
Other groups that have questioned Sotomayor’s ability to be impartial include the Women’s Coalition for Justice, which includes some of the top ranking female leaders in the Susan B. Anthony List, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and Americans United for Life.
"It's important for the American people to understand that the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court will dramatically shift the dynamics of the Court,” commented Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life. “Her record of activism in support of a radical pro-abortion agenda is clear and documented.”
Conservative groups that have expressed their support, meanwhile, include the two largest networks of Hispanic and Latino evangelicals in America, which often are at odds with one another.
Last month, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) rejected the “far left” and “radical pro-choice” label that some critics have slapped on the “strong” Puerto Rican Catholic.
The National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders (CONLAMIC), meanwhile, said it is “confident that she has a restrained approach to the law.”
CONLAMIC said they had carefully reviewed Sotomayor’s numerous decisions and statements and found that the judge “follows well-established precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.”
“In strictly adhering to precedent, regardless of result, Judge Sotomayor demonstrated that she is not a judicial activist who seeks to impose a particular outcome based on her beliefs, but rather a judicious jurist who applies established law to the cases before her,” the group argued.
On Monday, Sotomayor pledged to serve the "larger interest of impartial justice" rather than any narrow cause if she becomes the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court.
"My personal and professional experiences help me listen and understand, with the law always commanding the result in every case," Sotomayor told senators at the nationally televised confirmation hearing.
The 55-year-old appeals court judge, who spoke for only about five minutes Monday, will return on Tuesday to begin hours of questioning from committee members who will cast the first votes on her appointment.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Monday told Sotomayor, "Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed."
"And I don't think you will" have a meltdown, he added.
I don’t really mind even if she looks like the Phantom of the Opera or the Elephant Man, I just want her to interprete the constitution FAITHFULLY without favoring one ethnic group over the other.
Unfortunately, such isn’t forthcoming.
By Ann Coulter
HUMAN EVENTS---Vol. 53 Issue 39, p 11,
17 OCTOBER 1997
PROBABLE CAUSE FOR REJECTING JUDGE SOTOMAYOR (Sotomayor was then on the Clinton's fast track to the Supreme Court)
SOTOMAYOR'S ACTUAL WORDS FROM THE BENCH, SENTENCING ADMITTED DRUG DEALER Louis Gomez (a noncitizen), who pleaded guilty to dealing cocaine:
“[I]t is in some respects a great tragedy for our country that instead of permitting you to serve a lesser sentence and rejoin your family at an earlier time I am required by law to give you the statutory minimum. ... [W]e all understand that you were in part a victim of the economic necessities of our society, unfortunately there are laws that I must impose. “Louis Gomez, yours is the tragedy of our laws and the greatest one that I know. ... the one our congressmen never thought about and don’t think about. ... “It is no comfort to you for me to say that I am deeply, personally sorry about the sentence that I must impose, because the law requires me to do so. The only statement I can make is this is one more example of an abomination being committed before our sight. You do not deserve this, sir.”
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Nelson Castellanos was arrested in NYC outside his Harlem apartment, charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He was holding his keys and a white shopping bag containing about $10,000, mostly in $1 and $20 bills. That evening, pursuant to a warrant, DEA personnel searched his apartment and found over 1,200 grams of cocaine, six live rounds of ammunition, a .44 caliber revolver and incriminating notebooks. All this evidence was thrown out by District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds that the DEA agents had not provided the magistrate with probable cause to search Castellanos's apartment.
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Sotomayor served on the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund's board of directors from 1980-1992. The organization publicly defended members of a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group---the FALN.
QUESTION Did Soto have anything to do with Pres Clinton pardoning jailed members of the FALN----violent Puerto Rican terrorists who bombed US installations? Pardoned----so that then-Senate candidate Hillary could harvest the NY latino vote.
Is that what the WH is trying to hide by refusing to handover Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund's official records?
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ACT NOW Call 202-225-3121 (Congress switchboard). Every senator should get 10-15,000 calls from Americans. Even with Dems in control, that many calls could make a difference.
MESSAGE TO SENATORS: Americans are sending the word across the land: "Sotomayor's rulings shows she would make policy through the court. The US Constitution precludes judges from making policy and laws. It is understandable that Americans are apprehensive: Sotomayor and her crowd are colluding to exert raw power over the majority---to turn the US into a failed Third World satrap. These racialists do not understand a sophisticated superpower----a democracy governed by the rule of law, based on three co-equal branches of government." END MESSAGE Any Senator who votes to confirm Sotomayor risks his/her reelection chances.
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REFERENCE Sotomayor's secret files: What don't the Democrats want us to see?
Washington Times | Friday, July 10, 2009 | Editorial
FR Posted by JohnRLott
We wonder what Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has to hide. Her confirmation hearing starts Monday, but the White House refuses to turn over boxes of documents for review about her past. Republican senators requested board meeting minutes of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, where Ms. Sotomayor served on the board of directors from 1980-1992.
White House Counsel Greg Craig contends that all documents deemed "responsive" already were sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Contrary to White House dodging, these board meetings may be important in evaluating Ms. Sotomayor's legal and policy reasoning because the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund was involved in a wide range of controversial legal cases.
For instance, the fund fought to abolish the death penalty. It pushed discrimination cases very similar to the New Haven firefighter case in which Ms. Sotomayor's quota reasoning was unanimously quashed by the Supreme Court. The organization publicly defended members of a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group The organization publicly defended members of a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group (the FALN, pardoned by Clinton to get then-candidate Hillary NY's latino vote)........ . . . . (Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com .....
Just fired off a version of this to Isakson and Chambliss. Suggest you let YOUR guys hear from YOU ASAP!!!!
db
Senator,
A vote AGAINST Sonia Sotomayor will be a vote FOR principle.
Regardless of her testimony and responses, she is a dangerous leftist. And the argument by the increasingly silly and irrelevant Lindsey Graham that she is no worse than Souter is akin to a doctor telling you that your lung cancer is cured – but you have leukemia. I heard Graham remark that “The President has a right to get the people he wants.” That “logic” says that if Obama WANTS to abolish an elected legislature for a politbureau of his fellow Chicago thugs – which he is in the process of doing with his “czars,” — you should simply roll over, move on and let him have it. Good grief!!
Should you be tempted to vote FOR her to curry favor with Georgia’s large Hispanic population, you will be making a HUGE error in judgment. Thousands of them are non-citizens, here in violation of immigration laws and, in light of the recent idiotic Justice Department ruling that Georgia may NOT require voters to show ID, ACORN (or whatever they are calling themselves today) will drag them to the polls on election day anyway. And if you think they will vote for you because you supported Sotomayor, you had better think again: ACORN WILL INSTRUCT THEM VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRAT OR THEY WON’T GET THE PROMISED 20 BUCKS, PACK OF SMOKES OR WHATEVER.
VOTE “NO” ON SOTOMAYOR!
Dick & Sharon Bachert
Not when on the bench next to Ruth Bader-Meinhof, she isn’t.
HEAR! HEAR ! ! !
Finally, a religious & ethical group denounces the La Raza Marsupial Magistrate.
She's like a backward school kid held back from promotion to the next grade.
She is clearly sitting in a chair well above her pay grade. She's having trouble with Sessions questions because she's trying real hard to be something else than what she is - judicially bereft of the understanding of the Constitution.
Repubs should tell her---being seated as an Associate Justice does not include on-the-job training.
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