Posted by
Defend America on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 7:05:36 PM
This story recaps yesterday's hearing and first day of questioning:
The Nominee’s Evil Twin
Why does the Sonia Sotomayor of 2009 sound so different from that of previous years?
By Jim Geraghty
If
you knew absolutely nothing about Sonia Sotomayor before Tuesday’s
confirmation hearing and judged her entirely on her answers, you could
easily come to the conclusion that she had been nominated by Pres.
George W. Bush and was likely to sail through confirmation with the
strong support of conservatives in the legal community.
Of
course, she was nominated by President Obama, and conservative legal
eagles are doing their best to lay out the case against her
confirmation. But in her first day of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee
,
Sotomayor sounded nothing like the judge who caused controversy via her
remarks about the superior legal judgment of a “wise Latina,” her
comments about judges’ role in setting policy, and her rulings about
the Second Amendment.
If you asked Americans which two words
they most closely associate with Sotomayor, those words would probably
be “wise Latina.” The phrase was included in multiple speeches she
delivered between 1994 and 2003 and was most often expressed in the
line, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her
experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.”
This line was often delivered as a response to a remark often
attributed (possibly falsely) to Sandra Day O’Connor. In one instance,
Sotomayor put her disagreement with the O’Connor quote pretty clearly:
“Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that ‘a wise old man
and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion’ in deciding
cases. . . . I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement.”
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTE1ODczOTc5NGVkNjI4MjM4YTM4OTA0ZmIyMTU1M2U=