Posted by
John Dendahl on Saturday, May 30, 2009 11:33:34 PM
U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) will apparently be among those shepherding Judge Sonia Sotomayor through the confirmation process. Michelle Malkin included this McCaskill statement in a recent op-ed:
"If you look at what this woman has been through, and the obstacles that she has had to overcome, I think she does have a richly, uniquely American experience that makes her incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country. Overcoming incredible odds, and I think that is an experience that is new to the courts. There have been a lot of privileged people that have landed on the Supreme Court. The fact that she has lived the life of the common American, trying to grow up in public housing, reaching for scholarships, reaching for the courtroom as a courtroom prosecutor, all of those things will make her a better and wiser judge. And I don’t think that is identity politics. I think that is the American experience.”
The ironies here are magnificent. First, it was another, certainly more distinguished, Missouri U.S. senator, John Danforth, who managed Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation. That was the one Thomas called a "high-tech lynching" while he was still in the witness chair and yet to receive a vote from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Second, when stacked up against Thomas's accomplishments and life story, Sotomayor looks like a midget born with a silver spoon in her mouth. For any U.S. senator, let alone one from John Danforth's Missouri, to call Sotomayor's "an experience that is new to the courts" speaks volumes as to her pathetic sense of this country's recent political history.
Third, McCaskill's party has a disgraceful record in dealing with race as to those nominated and selected to serve in important positions in our Nation's courts. In its collective view, a black or Latino dare not take a step off Left Farm. Thomas would be the premiere example if he hadn't finally achieved confirmation. Another Latino beside whose life story Sotomayor's also pales in comparison, Miguel Estrada, was strung out for years after having been nominated by Bush 43 to serve on the D.C. Court of Appeals. He finally threw in the towel and went back to his highly successful private law practice.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) had on his website for many months the red herring he read into the Senate record as an apologia for his refusal to help shut down the Democrats' filibuster and give Estrada an up-or-down vote. He took it down, but
we have it here.
Yes, of course, Sotomayor should have her hearings. One hopes all involved will treat those with more respect than was shown, say, Clarence Thomas. But lefties in the U.S. Senate and their proxies all through the mainstream media long ago forfeited any right to shake their crooked fingers at the rest of us and unctuously claim that poor, pitiable Sonia Sotomayor, who has overcome so much in her "uniquely American experience" as Sen. McCaskill calls it, doesn't need to stand tall and tell us how and why she, as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, will insist on color-blind upholding of the rule of law.