THOU hast challenged the pick of the Obama! NO health care for YOU!
Posted on 07/15/2009 1:27:35 PM PDT by disraeligears
Sessions just finished his second round of questions to Sotomayor in which he disclosed that Sotomayor served on the litigation committee while on the Board of the Puerto Rico Legal Defense Fund and that she reported on the litigation efforts by the Fund.
He in essence stated that she didn’t disclose this to L. Graham when Graham was questioning her about her involvement and knowledge of litigation efforts, including language from specific legal briefs filed by the Fund equating the denial of Medicaid funded abortions with slavery. Yesterday Sotomayor in essence said that she didn’t represent them legally but was just a Board Member.
In response to Sessions, she said that in her testimony to Graham she didn’t have a chance to divulge her participation in the litigation committee.
Does anybody have a transcript from her testimony yesterday with Graham? I don’t remember it as she is stating, so therefore, is there a chance that she committed double perjury regarding her:
testimony to Graham yesterday which may have misrepresented her participation with the Fund’s litigation efforts, and
testimony to Sessions today stating that she just didn’t have a chance to testify about her participation with the litigation committee?
Lou Dobbs just announced a lawyer will be on soon to talk about this.
THOU hast challenged the pick of the Obama! NO health care for YOU!
For example, in response to questioning from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sotomayor denied involvement in PRLDEF litigation which argued that the denial of taxpayer-funded abortions amounted to a form of slavery. One brief, in 1980, compared the withholding of taxpayer abortion funding to the Dred Scott decision, and another, in 1992, argued that for poor women, especially blacks, denying taxpayer-funded abortion violated “the right to privacy in matters of body and reproduction — a right that was trammeled with state sanction during centuries of slavery.”
Sotomayor testified that she “never reviewed” and “wasn’t aware of what was said” in the abortion briefs. Yet Sotomayor served on PRLDEF’s litigation committee at the time, and a report last May in the New York Times, citing several former board members, said that, among the PRLDEF board, Sotomayor “stood out, frequently meeting with the legal staff to review the status of cases.” The paper reported that for Sotomayor’s entire 12 years on the board, “she played an active role as the defense fund staked out aggressive stances on issues like police brutality, the death penalty and voting rights.”
No, she started her testimony 2 day ago. The perjury started with her first answer.
SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you. Let’s talk about your time as a lawyer. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund — is that right? Is that the name of the organization?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: It was then. I think it — I know it has changed names recently.
SEN. GRAHAM: Okay. How long were you a member of that organization?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Nearly 12 years.
SEN. GRAHAM: Okay.
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: If not 12 years.
SEN. GRAHAM: All right. During that time, you were involved in litigation matters; is that correct?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: The fund was involved in litigations. I was a board member of the fund.
SEN. GRAHAM: Okay. Are you familiar with the position that the fund took regarding taxpayer-funded abortion? The briefs they filed?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: No, I never reviewed those briefs.
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, in their briefs they argued — and I will submit the quotes to you — that if you deny a low-income woman Medicaid funding, taxpayer funds, to have an abortion, if you deny her that, that’s a form of slavery. And I can get the quotes. Do you agree with that?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: I wasn’t aware of what was said in those briefs. Perhaps it might be helpful if I explain what the function of a board member is and what the function of the staff would be in an organization like the fund.
SEN. GRAHAM: Okay.
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: In a small organization, as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund was back then, it wasn’t the size of other legal defense funds, like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund —
SEN. GRAHAM: Right.
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: — or the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, which are organizations that undertook very similar work to PRLDEF. In an organization like PRLDEF, a board member’s main responsibility is to fundraise. And I’m sure that a review of the board meetings would show that that’s what we spent most of our time on. To the extent that we looked at the organization’s legal work, it was to ensure that it was consistent with the broad mission statement of the fund.
SEN. GRAHAM: Is the mission statement of the fund to include taxpayer-funded abortion?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Our mission —
SEN. GRAHAM: Was that one of the goals?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Our mission statement was broad, like the Constitution — (chuckles) —
SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah.
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: — which meant that its focus was on promoting the equal opportunities of Hispanics in the United States.
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, Judge, I’ve got — and I’ll share them with you, and we’ll talk about this more — a host of briefs for a 12-year period where the fund is advocating to the state court and the federal courts that to deny a woman taxpayer funds — low-income woman taxpayer assistance in having an abortion is a form of slavery, it’s an unspeakable cruel — cruelty to the life and health of a poor woman. Was it — was it or was it not the position of the fund to advocate taxpayer-funded abortions for low-income women?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: I wasn’t and I didn’t, as a board member, review those briefs. Our lawyers were charged with —
SEN. GRAHAM: Would it bother you if that’s what they did?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Well, I know that the fund, during the years I was there, was involved in public-health issues as it affected the Latino community. It was involved —
SEN. GRAHAM: Is abortion a public-health issue?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Well, it was certainly viewed that way generally by a number of civil-rights organizations at the time.
SEN. GRAHAM: Do you personally view it that way?
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: It wasn’t a question of whether I personally viewed it that way or not. The issue was whether the law was settled on what issues the fund was advocating on behalf of the community it represented. And —
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, the fund — I’m sorry, go ahead.
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: And so the question would become, was there a good-faith basis for whatever arguments they were making? As the fund’s lawyers were lawyers —
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, yeah —
JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: — they had an ethical obligation.
I seem to remember her testimony in essence implying that she was not aware particular language in their legal briefs because she was just a Board member.... she wasn’t just a Board member, but one who served on the litigation committee... in my opinion this is a material difference.
I’m not that computer savvy when it comes to photoshop, any chance someone can put Obama’s head on the soup nazi with the phrase No Healthcare For You? Thanks if anyone can LOL.
Shouldn’t they stop the hearing and commence an action regarding the perjury. Something like what happened to Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men”?
Isn’t stupidity and ignorance an absolute defense against perjury?
WEll Lindsay already assured the Latina she’ll be confirmed, so perjury is out of the question. Doesn’t count as a “total meltdown” does it? One can hope, I suppose.
She will be easily confirmed...almost all SCOTUS justices are.
But, still sucks.
She’s a liberal. Is this a rhetorical question?
Did she ever answer the question?
great work...saw your earlier comment where you caught her and YES she lied on purpose
It doesn’t matter. She could swear an oath that Martians kidnapped her and made her make those speeches and Democrats in the Senate would praise her for her honesty and then vote for her.
Mission statement!!??? Mission statement. Madam, go back to high school and take a damn civics course. HOLY COW! Send this woman back home pronto!
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