In Obama Nominee Sotomayor, a Supreme Opportunity for Republicans

Pro-life does not equal Pro-vengeance

I do believe that a person can support the death penalty and be pro-life. The death penalty is for people that have caused heinous crimes. Abortion kills innocent babies. I am so tired of people saying that if a person is pro-life they can't get behind capital punishment.

Mary Cate

Why not come right out and tell us that you are a Republican from the far right, the Rush kind. You stink.

MY ADVICE TO REPUBLICANS....

Shut up, swallow hard, and except Sotomayor. Yea, she's a progressive, green-socialist, judicial activist - I know it's hard to believe, but Obama could have found an even less honorable and moral judge - Which he will do next time if you scream and kick too much!

My second piece of advise is to return the party to honest, traditional, conservatism - not a redo of "Bushdumb". I think Bush had good intentions - but you know where they say that road leads (and it did). So, when the green-socialist Obamatrons finally muck the country up totally, and the pendulum swings back - be ready to offer a real alternative to "left-green wackodom" - not just "wacko lite".

Respectful treatment .. not if your a conservative Latino

Here we go...

I recall the polite treatment afforded Judge Estrada. A latino man with an even more compelling personal life story then Sotomayor.

The Democrats were told by their special (masters)interest groups he had to be stopped BECAUSE he was Latino. Strangly I don't recall the media's articles warning the Democrats to treat him with respect and only look at his judical record.

Liberals, their supporters and the media are the biggest liars and HYPOCRITES on the planet.

I agree the GOP is a joke

Republicans are strongly against "acivist judges", unless they happen to be named Thomas, Alito, or Scalia....

Bork

Any mention of Bork's hearing that does not also mention Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" is disingenuous at best.

Republicans would have people believe that Democrats opposed Bork because he was "conservative." This is a lie - rather, Democrats remembered all too well that it was Bork who fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox at Nixon's insistence - after two Attorneys General (Richardson & Ruckelshaus) resigned rather than carry out Nixon's dirty work. Bork did the dirty deed, and that came back to haunt him at his confirmation.

As for Kennedy's speech: Bork himself had said that Americans only had such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation (this is the basic tenet of Bork's "originalism"). As such, any freedoms Americans enjoyed as a result of decisions premised upon privacy rights were likely to be endangered by Bork. I don't think Kennedy was far from the mark there.

Bork even had problems with the 9th Amendment. He felt there could not be an enumeration of all unenumerated rights - so none of them could be protected! Never mind that the founders included this amendment precisely because unenumerated rights were unprotected in a Bill of Rights without such an amendment. Talk about twisted logic!

In other words, Bork was rejected for being an extremist nut. Since he actually was both an extremist and a nut, the confirmation hearings worked exactly as designed.

Thanks, Dorfy (below)

Meanwhile, my original post that started all this seems to have disappeared. Oh, well.

I still hope the hearings will be more a forum for hearing from Judge Sotomayor, herself, than from her opponents.

Sorry Muser-my mistake

My comment earlier was intended to respond to RL Schaefer's posting. I referred to Schaefer's title line in error, so it looked like I was responding to you. My apologies.

Muser - I agree with your thoughts, so I just wanted to make that clear here.

Yes, R.L. Schaeffer, (below)

I am quite aware that black people had to be stripped, whipped and considered mere property for more than eighty additional years while waiting for a constitutional amendment, instead of a landmark Supreme Court case, to overturn slavery.

My point, for thick-headed and woefully rude people like you, is that we did not have "activist" judges that were NEEDED in those days for that purpose (and many others), but WE SHOULD HAVE HAD THEM. Anybody with even a modicum of real Christianity can now see that in retrospect---but, oddly, not you.

Muser - also doesn't get it...

Slavery was outlawed by Amendment, but nothing was done to enforce it until almost 100 years later - when Presidents like Eisenhower and Kennedy sent federal troops to the South to enforce the rights of minorities in those states Also - Brown vs. Board of Ed did change the paradigm - something the legislation never had.

Sometimes the courts have to mandate what is right - particularly when society is too slow to change for the good on its own. Women got the vote that way. So did Blacks. You don't do something because it is popular. You do it because it is right.

The US legal system is based on precedent - no absolute definitions that are unchangeable. If you want code law, you'll have to move to the continent in Europe. They have the Napoleanic system there.

Being based on precedent means constant reinterpretation and enhancement of the understanding of the law. This allows the law to evolve and remain relevant to current times and ideas. It is not about being "progressive" or "liberal" or "relativistic".

When will folks stop tossing these labels around??? An intelligent person has broad knowledge and does not march down one line of thought guided by talk show hosts, ex-cons, religious fanatics and machiavellian old ex-VP's. A person can agree with the Right on some issues, the Left on others. Is that so hard to grasp?