Judge Sotomayor

Read Charles Krauthammer's brilliant analysis of the Sotomayor situation. Here's the argument in a nutshell, as he presented it on the Fox Report:

This ought to be a seminar that [focuses] on two issues — number one, identity politics.... She and the president believe that her background is extremely important in her ruling as a judge. She says that she has the physiological, cultural, experiential tools as a Latina woman to be a superior judge to a white male, which is reflective perfectly of the Democratic Party's identity politics, in which free citizens are herded into groups, arranged into a hierarchy of wisdom, authority, and entitlement. That's a Democratic idea, and I think it's her idea and ought to be emphasized.

Secondly is the idea...of justice as empathy, as understanding a person's positions, their needs, their wants, their history, and how a ruling will affect their lives. That is entirely contrary to the western tradition of justice, which is blind as to the person's station in life.

Republicans ought to ask her, "How do you believe in that, and swear your oath?" If she is on the court, she has to swear an oath which says I will solemnly swear I will administer justice without respect to persons and to equal right to poor and rich. That's what Republicans ought to do, and not attack her in a personal way.

My two cents:
I am absolutely amazed by the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party in selling Judge Sotomayor to the public based on her ethnicity and inspiring personal story rather than her judicial competency. She has impeccable professional credentials for the position (despite her backward judicial philosophy) so why make her ethnicity the central issue of her confirmation? To do so completely undermines the concept of a goverment of laws, rather than of men.

No one in the history of the Supreme Court has a more inspiring personal story than Clarence Thomas - a black man born into abject poverty in the south, abandoned by his father and raised by grandparents. And yet, despite his inspiring story and astounding academic and professional success, he is almost universally reviled by the left. Why? The answer is obvious.