Rachel Maddow, stating the facts about the Satomayor GOP lies

[VT Sean Lewis]

Spin on Satamayor
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30951352

A Name Game
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30951606

Scarying up money
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30951542

The GOP lie revealed about reverse racism!!!!

WASHINGTON — In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a
speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will
make a difference in our judging.”

In her speech, Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion — often
invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court
colleague, Sandra Day O’Connor — that a wise old man and a wise old
woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her
experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a
white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor,

Her remarks, at the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural
Diversity Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley,Lecture:
‘A Latina Judge’s Voice’

The following is the text of the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture
in 2001, delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, School
of Law, by appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor. It was published in
the Spring 2002 issue of Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, a symposium
issue entitled "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the
Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation," and it is reproduced
here with permission from the journal.

"A Latina Judge's Voice"

By Sonia Sotomayor

Judge Reynoso, thank you for that lovely introduction. I am humbled to
be speaking behind a man who has contributed so much to the Hispanic
community. I am also grateful to have such kind words said about me.

I am delighted to be here. It is nice to escape my hometown for just a
little bit. It is also nice to say hello to old friends who are in the
audience, to rekindle contact with old acquaintances and to make new
friends among those of you in the audience. It is particularly heart
warming to me to be attending a conference to which I was invited by a
Latina law school friend, Rachel Moran, who is now an accomplished and
widely respected legal scholar. I warn Latinos in this room: Latinas
are making a lot of progress in the old-boy network.

I am also deeply honored to have been asked to deliver the annual
Judge Mario G. Olmos lecture. I am joining a remarkable group of prior
speakers who have given this lecture. I hope what I speak about today
continues to promote the legacy of that man whose commitment to public
service and abiding dedication to promoting equality and justice for
all people inspired this memorial lecture and the conference that will
follow. I thank Judge Olmos' widow Mary Louise's family, her son and
the judge's many friends for hosting me. And for the privilege you
have bestowed on me in honoring the memory of a very special person.
If I and the many people of this conference can accomplish a fraction
of what Judge Olmos did in his short but extraordinary life we and our
respective communities will be infinitely better.

I intend tonight to touch upon the themes that this conference will be
discussing this weekend and to talk to you about my Latina identity,
where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence
on the bench.

Who am I? I am a "Newyorkrican." For those of you on the West Coast
who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker
of Puerto Rican-born parents who came to the states during World War
II.

Like many other immigrants to this great land, my parents came because
of poverty and to attempt to find and secure a better life for
themselves and the family that they hoped to have. They largely
succeeded. For that, my brother and I are very grateful. The story of
that success is what made me and what makes me the Latina that I am.
The Latina side of my identity was forged and closely nurtured by my
family through our shared experiences and traditions.

For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de
arroz, gandoles y pernir - rice, beans and pork - that I have eaten at
countless family holidays and special events. My Latina identity also
includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla,
-- pig intestines, patitas de cerdo con garbanzo -- pigs' feet with
beans, and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito, pigs' tongue and ears. I
bet the Mexican-Americans in this room are thinking that Puerto Ricans
have unusual food tastes. Some of us, like me, do. Part of my Latina
identity is the sound of merengue at all our family parties and the
heart wrenching Spanish love songs that we enjoy. It is the memory of
Saturday afternoon at the movies with my aunt and cousins watching
Cantinflas, who is not Puerto Rican, but who was an icon Spanish
comedian on par with Abbot and Costello of my generation. My Latina
soul was nourished as I visited and played at my grandmother's house
with my cousins and extended family. They were my friends as I grew
up. Being a Latina child was watching the adults playing dominos on
Saturday night and us kids playing loteria, bingo, with my grandmother
calling out the numbers which we marked on our cards with chick peas.

Now, does any one of these things make me a Latina? Obviously not
because each of our Carribean and Latin American communities has their
own unique food and different traditions at the holidays. I only
learned about tacos in college from my Mexican-American roommate.
Being a Latina in America also does not mean speaking Spanish. I
happen to speak it fairly well. But my brother, only three years
younger, like too many of us educated here, barely speaks it. Most of
us born and bred here, speak it very poorly.

If I had pursued my career in my undergraduate history major, I would
likely provide you with a very academic description of what being a
Latino or Latina means. For example, I could define Latinos as those
peoples and cultures populated or colonized by Spain who maintained or
adopted Spanish or Spanish Creole as their language of communication.
You can tell that I have been very well educated. That antiseptic
description however, does not really explain the appeal of morcilla -
pig's intestine - to an American born child. It does not provide an
adequate explanation of why individuals like us, many of whom are born
in this completely different American culture, still identify so
strongly with those communities in which our parents were born and
raised.

America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual
tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity,
recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding
richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can
and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore
these very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension
between "the melting pot and the salad bowl" -- a recently popular
metaphor used to described New York's diversity - is being hotly
debated today in national discussions about affirmative action. Many
of us struggle with this tension and attempt to maintain and promote
our cultural and ethnic identities in a society that is often
ambivalent about how to deal with its differences. In this time of
great debate we must remember that it is not political struggles that
create a Latino or Latina identity. I became a Latina by the way I
love and the way I live my life. My family showed me by their example
how wonderful and vibrant life is and how wonderful and magical it is
to have a Latina soul. They taught me to love being a Puerto Riqueña
and to love America and value its lesson that great things could be
achieved if one works hard for it. But achieving success here is no
easy accomplishment for Latinos or Latinas, and although that struggle
did not and does not create a Latina identity, it does inspire how I
live my life.

I was born in the year 1954. That year was the fateful year in which
Brown v. Board of Education was decided. When I was eight, in 1961,
the first Latino, the wonderful Judge Reynaldo Garza, was appointed to
the federal bench, an event we are celebrating at this conference.
When I finished law school in 1979, there were no women judges on the
Supreme Court or on the highest court of my home state, New York.
There was then only one Afro-American Supreme Court Justice and then
and now no Latino or Latina justices on our highest court. Now in the
last twenty plus years of my professional life, I have seen a quantum
leap in the representation of women and Latinos in the legal
profession and particularly in the judiciary. In addition to the
appointment of the first female United States Attorney General, Janet
Reno, we have seen the appointment of two female justices to the
Supreme Court and two female justices to the New York Court of
Appeals, the highest court of my home state. One of those judges is
the Chief Judge and the other is a Puerto Riqueña, like I am. As of
today, women sit on the highest courts of almost all of the states and
of the territories, including Puerto Rico. One Supreme Court, that of
Minnesota, had a majority of women justices for a period of time.

As of September 1, 2001, the federal judiciary consisting of Supreme,
Circuit and District Court Judges was about 22% women. In 1992, nearly
ten years ago, when I was first appointed a District Court Judge, the
percentage of women in the total federal judiciary was only 13%. Now,
the growth of Latino representation is somewhat less favorable. As of
today we have, as I noted earlier, no Supreme Court justices, and we
have only 10 out of 147 active Circuit Court judges and 30 out of 587
active district court judges. Those numbers are grossly below our
proportion of the population. As recently as 1965, however, the
federal bench had only three women serving and only one Latino judge.
So changes are happening, although in some areas, very slowly. These
figures and appointments are heartwarming. Nevertheless, much still
remains to happen.

Let us not forget that between the appointments of Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor in 1981 and Justice Ginsburg in 1992, eleven years passed.
Similarly, between Justice Kaye's initial appointment as an Associate
Judge to the New York Court of Appeals in 1983, and Justice Ciparick's
appointment in 1993, ten years elapsed. Almost nine years later, we
are waiting for a third appointment of a woman to both the Supreme
Court and the New York Court of Appeals and of a second minority, male
or female, preferably Hispanic, to the Supreme Court. In 1992 when I
joined the bench, there were still two out of 13 circuit courts and
about 53 out of 92 district courts in which no women sat. At the
beginning of September of 2001, there are women sitting in all 13
circuit courts. The First, Fifth, Eighth and Federal Circuits each
have only one female judge, however, out of a combined total number of
48 judges. There are still nearly 37 district courts with no women
judges at all. For women of color the statistics are more sobering. As
of September 20, 1998, of the then 195 circuit court judges only two
were African-American women and two Hispanic women. Of the 641
district court judges only twelve were African-American women and
eleven Hispanic women. African-American women comprise only 1.56% of
the federal judiciary and Hispanic-American women comprise only 1%. No
African-American, male or female, sits today on the Fourth or Federal
circuits. And no Hispanics, male or female, sit on the Fourth, Sixth,
Seventh, Eighth, District of Columbia or Federal Circuits.

Sort of shocking, isn't it? This is the year 2002. We have a long way
to go. Unfortunately, there are some very deep storm warnings we must
keep in mind. In at least the last five years the majority of
nominated judges the Senate delayed more than one year before
confirming or never confirming were women or minorities. I need not
remind this audience that Judge Paez of your home Circuit, the Ninth
Circuit, has had the dubious distinction of having had his
confirmation delayed the longest in Senate history. These figures
demonstrate that there is a real and continuing need for Latino and
Latina organizations and community groups throughout the country to
exist and to continue their efforts of promoting women and men of all
colors in their pursuit for equality in the judicial system.

This weekend's conference, illustrated by its name, is bound to
examine issues that I hope will identify the efforts and solutions
that will assist our communities. The focus of my speech tonight,
however, is not about the struggle to get us where we are and where we
need to go but instead to discuss with you what it all will mean to
have more women and people of color on the bench. The statistics I
have been talking about provide a base from which to discuss a
question which one of my former colleagues on the Southern District
bench, Judge Miriam Cederbaum, raised when speaking about women on the
federal bench. Her question was: What do the history and statistics
mean? In her speech, Judge Cederbaum expressed her belief that the
number of women and by direct inference people of color on the bench,
was still statistically insignificant and that therefore we could not
draw valid scientific conclusions from the acts of so few people over
such a short period of time. Yet, we do have women and people of color
in more significant numbers on the bench and no one can or should
ignore pondering what that will mean or not mean in the development of
the law. Now, I cannot and do not claim this issue as personally my
own. In recent years there has been an explosion of research and
writing in this area. On one of the panels tomorrow, you will hear the
Latino perspective in this debate.

For those of you interested in the gender perspective on this issue, I
commend to you a wonderful compilation of articles published on the
subject in Vol. 77 of the Judicature, the Journal of the American
Judicature Society of November-December 1993. It is on Westlaw/Lexis
and I assume the students and academics in this room can find it.

Now Judge Cedarbaum expresses concern with any analysis of women and
presumably again people of color on the bench, which begins and
presumably ends with the conclusion that women or minorities are
different from men generally. She sees danger in presuming that
judging should be gender or anything else based. She rightly points
out that the perception of the differences between men and women is
what led to many paternalistic laws and to the denial to women of the
right to vote because we were described then "as not capable of
reasoning or thinking logically" but instead of "acting intuitively."
I am quoting adjectives that were bandied around famously during the
suffragettes' movement.

While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on
perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must
transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to
achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason
of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge
Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is
possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by
ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice
both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons why we may have
different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of
our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic
differences in logic and reasoning, are in many respects a small part
of a larger practical question we as women and minority judges in
society in general must address. I accept the thesis of a law school
classmate, Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School, in his
affirmative action book that in any group of human beings there is a
diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences
and of thought. Thus, as noted by another Yale Law School Professor --
I did graduate from there and I am not really biased except that they
seem to be doing a lot of writing in that area - Professor Judith
Resnik says that there is not a single voice of feminism, not a
feminist approach but many who are exploring the possible ways of
being that are distinct from those structured in a world dominated by
the power and words of men. Thus, feminist theories of judging are in
the midst of creation and are not and perhaps will never aspire to be
as solidified as the established legal doctrines of judging can
sometimes appear to be.

That same point can be made with respect to people of color. No one
person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color
voice. I need not remind you that Justice Clarence Thomas represents a
part but not the whole of African-American thought on many subjects.
Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes
it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former
law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School,
states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives
- no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept
that our experiences as women and people of color affect our
decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that--it's an
aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences
making different choices than others. Not all women or people of
color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case
or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make
a difference in the process of judging. The Minnesota Supreme Court
has given an example of this. As reported by Judge Patricia Wald
formerly of the D.C. Circuit Court, three women on the Minnesota Court
with two men dissenting agreed to grant a protective order against a
father's visitation rights when the father abused his child. The
Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on
the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more
often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex
discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and
seizure cases. As recognized by legal scholars, whatever the reason,
not one woman or person of color in any one position but as a group we
will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me
that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come
from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that
this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who
argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal
landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall
that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first
black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP
argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with
other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing
the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and
conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural
differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my
colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and
will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been
cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the
same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor
is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line
to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree
with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there
can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that
a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more
often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't
lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice
Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination
in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the
claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor
Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that
others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of
understanding the values and needs of people from a different group.
Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white
men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions
and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all
people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their
ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not
care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there
will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench.
Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My
hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate
them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not
know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept
there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference
having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your
own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and
should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men
lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to
work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of
enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been
able to reach. For all of us, how do change the facts that in every
task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and
people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly
higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has
shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a
statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and
judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?

Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process
and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes
looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render
decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant
and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and
perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities
and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as
circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be
greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my
limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the
differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the
Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions,
sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since
judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to
make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions
I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering. We, I mean all of
us in this room, must continue individually and in voices united in
organizations that have supported this conference, to think about
these questions and to figure out how we go about creating the
opportunity for there to be more women and people of color on the
bench so we can finally have statistically significant numbers to
measure the differences we will and are making.

I am delighted to have been here tonight and extend once again my
deepest gratitude to all of you for listening and letting me share my
reflections on being a Latina voice on the bench. Thank you.

Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law professor and an adviser to Mr.
Obama, said Judge Sotomayor’s remarks were appropriate. Professor
Ogletree said it was “obvious that people’s life experiences will
inform their judgments in life as lawyers and judges” because law is
more than “a technical exercise,” citing Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr.’s famous aphorism: “The life of the law has not been logic; it has
been experience.”

In a forward to a 2007 book, “The International Judge” (U.P.N.E.),
Judge Sotomayor seemed to put a greater emphasis on a need for judges
to seek to transcend their identities, writing that “all judges have
cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly
with remaining impartial” and letting reason rule. Courts, she added,
“are in large part the product of their membership and their judges’
ability to think through and across their own intellectual and
professional backgrounds” to find common ground.

[VT VirtualTruth]

The quote that I was looking for about Alito....

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/27/sotomayor/index.html

Via Glenn Greenwald (and one of his readers) comes a moment from
Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings that will either silence Sonia
Sotomayor's conservative critics or expose their hypocrisy for what it
is.

In an exchange with Sen. Tom Coburn, who had asked Alito to discuss
how his personal experiences shows that "he cared for the little guy,"
Alito said that his family's experience as immigrants influenced his
outlook on immigration cases.

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when
a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an
immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and
naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors,
because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position...

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people
in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic
background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take
that into account.

On May 27, 7:17 pm, VT Sean Lewis <TheVirtualTr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Spin on Satamayorhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30951352
>
> A Name Gamehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30951606
>
> Scarying up moneyhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30951542