Robert Schlesinger

Is Sotomayor Too Obnoxious for the High Court? The Kennedy Angle

May 26, 2009 RSS Feed Print

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

David Frum has a post about the Sotomayor nomination that makes a point both amusing and a bit horrifying. Frum writes that there is good news for conservatives in that the SCOTUS scuttlebutt has been that Anthony Kennedy has been a left-leaning swing vote in recent years in negative reaction to the brilliant but mean Antonin Scalia.

Having lost in 2008, Republicans had no hope of a conservative or even a moderate judicial nominee. What we should therefore be hoping for, my friend continues, is the most personally obnoxious liberal, someone certain to offend and irritate Kennedy—and push him careening back rightward.

So, Frum writes, assuming that the reports are true that she is something of a dislikable bully, she is the perfect choice so far as conservatives are concerned. It's an amusing take ... but there's something genuinely disquieting about the notion that high court decisions are being made on the basis of grade schools clique-ism (I don't like Tony, so I'm going to vote against him; wow, I like Sonia even less, so maybe I'll swing back to the right.)

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Tags:
Sonia Sotomayor,
Supreme Court

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Great blog you got here. It would be great to read something more concerning that matter.

PhillDoc of AL 8:01PM October 21, 2009

Some senators will regret their nomination hearing performance is recorded--particularly the male Ban-Abortion law-makers. Roe v Wade gave us 27 years without government enforcement of church laws banning abortion. Canon Law still bans abortion and suicide, but our tax-funded courts no longer obey the pope and interfaith Pro-Lifers. I want Obama to use taxes to pay for reproduction information in fifth grade, and for free contraception and abortion and voluntary sterilization. I want every city to have enough women's clinics so everyone can reach and use them. Ban-Abortion law exists because Pro-Lifers believe each conception has the potential to become a tither who will pay the ENORMOUS TEN PER CENT LIFETIME TITHE. It's $160,000 if the person pays forty years on a steady yearly income of $40,000. Too long, churches have amassed material goods (tithes) by forcing people to have big families of tithers. Pro-Life attacks homosexuals because they are not likely to produce big families. Down with tithe-seeking churches. Up with excellent public health facilities.

auradawnveirs of CA 2:51AM July 22, 2009

And so the meme is perpetuated.

I assume this blog post is based on the much-derided TNR blog post that gleafully transcribed the anonymous, personal, nasty gossip from a few former law clerks who worked for OTHER judges in the same circuit. And so the wheel turns -

Robert, when you're someday viciously and publicly maligned by all your anonymous enemies, and then that meme is passed along by others such as yourself, I'm sure you'll have no problem with that. Because, after all, they won't be saying anything nasty about you directly, they'll be reporting on what someone else said, who in turn, is reporting what someone else said, who in turn is publishing what his unnamed anonymous sources are telling him about you. Clean hands!

Rob Killion of AZ 10:24PM May 26, 2009

Robert Schlesinger

Robert Schlesinger

Robert Schlesinger is managing editor for opinion at U.S. News and World Report, overseeing all opinion editorial content. He is the author of White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. E-mail him at rschlesinger@usnews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rschles.

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