Sonia Sotomayor Thinks [your name here] Is Stupid

Sonia Sotomayor's cavalier assessment of American intelligence appears to be: "You all are a bunch of dopes."

Is that okay with you?

Analysis Summary:

• Sonia Sotomayor(SS) has frequently scoffed at public expectations of judicial restraint. She has injudiciously mocked the faith of the public that judges will refrain from making policy. (Hear her laughing and scoffing in the video embedded below.)
• SS now denies her past statements are how she thinks today.
• SS has been evading questions that could reveal if her attitude has or has not changed.
• By evasively answering questions, SS is exploiting senate traditions because she expects Republican Senators will demand their caucus stick to the conservative rules of senatorial restraint unlike the behavior of Democratic Senators were she a Republican nominee.
• After repeated viewing of the videos, how can those who think SS is one of them, and so aid and abet SS in the evasions, be trustful of her?
  
• Democrats, Republicans or independents: How in the world can such a scoffer of faith, and exploiter of courtesies extended to her, be trusted to respect your wishes tomorrow?
• My fellow Americans: I know most of you have had your fill of politicians who hide their intentions only to go on prove their corruption. How much worse to watch our elected gatekeepers allow advancement of a power seeker who brazenly dares them to stop her despite her open contempt for the trustworthy?
• Senators: Have you become so corrupt that you can stand there and take Sonia Sotomayor's exploitation of Senate's traditions and abuse of its niceties and also expect us Americans to believe you still have spines?
• Sonia Sotomayor's cavalier assessment of American intelligence appears to be: "You all are a bunch of dopes."
• Is that okay with you?
  

Preface:
Our Constitution and traditions provide us safety nets. They are meant to keep incompetents and despots from attaining high office. Observations that the safety nets are badly frayed are too important for anyone to raise an alarm without providing details supporting the alarms. So details supporting my analysis follows.

Today's Alert:
A commenter yesterday reminds us that

Judges enforce a demand for straight answers from those testifying on the stand by threatening them with contempt of court. Well, then is not it inequitable to permit a judge to evade questions?

Traditionally, yes, we have granted that exclusion, particularly about their inclinations and beliefs that inform their judgments. Because such questions tended to be political in nature, and we wanted our judges to be freer from the political process than our lawmakers and executives. It was part of a unwritten code of conduct carried over from noble and chivalrous times:

"We won't subject you to a political third degree because we have faith that you won't permit your political inclinations to color your judgments."

When faith in judges' political neutrality was consistent with the result, judges were spared intense questioning. When a judge has demonstrated with his or her record to have kept faith with that expectation, then they have earned our trust.

In our current state of the courts there are a great many activist judges who have made their presence known. That informs us that procedures designed to prevent them gaining access have failed. Thus, we expect our elected representatives to revise the procedure. We expect them to take a harder look before acceding to a nominees promotion. We expect them to test on a case by case basis: "has this judicial nominee earned our trust?"

And so we have the case for the current nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Has she earned our trust she'll be neutral? Has she demonstrated impartiality by not permitting her personal inclinations to color her judgments?

Since she became a nominee to advance to our highest court, her political backers and our media expect us to believe that the lady sitting in the dock of the senate is the epitome of the modest jurist. We are to believe that despite her past rulings that belied the faith placed in her before, she has since undergone a miraculous conversion? Doesn't that seems an odd belief and level of faith to place in a human? (And from those who run secular institutions no less. Well, it is miraculous, or something.)

But when Judge Sotomayor was questioned even indirectly into how deeply regretful she has been of her past remarks and rulings and current beliefs, she has been deliberately evasive. Does that not rate a prolonged procedural "Hmmmm?"

In matter of fact, in addition to the activist stances she has exhibited in rulings, she has been brazenly injudicious with political statements she has made in public appearances, on tape. One of those outright mocks the presumption that judges are not permitted to make policy. She laughs at the very idea that judges don't make policy.

That video show us a woman mocking you for expecting restraint from a judge, a person to whom you have granted your trust. It should not matter if you believe she is for your cause today. How in the world can you trust such a scoffer to respect your wishes tomorrow?

This video also sends another message. The candidate is counting on the Senate procedure to lack substance even as its participants carry out its formalities using polite and sonorous voices. She expects the Senate to go through the motions and never push too hard. She is saying the current confirmation process is a joke.

Listen again to that video people!

Listen over and over again to that video Senators until its meaning penetrates your protective layers long hardened by the grind! Have you become so corrupt that you can stand there and take Sonia Sotomayor's abuse of the Senate's traditions and also believe you still have spines?

What she is essentially saying in that video is: "Those people who extend to me the faith in judicial neutrality that they grant other judges are dopes."