So now, a Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx is President Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court.

And already, some wingnuts are so apoplectic that they can’t even get her name right.

“The appointment of Maria Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is the clearest indication yet that President Obama’s campaign promises to be a centrist and to think in a bipartisan way were mere rhetoric,” said former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. “Sotomayor comes from the far left and will likely leave us with something akin to the ‘Extreme Court’ that could mark a major shift.”

Ahem. Somebody should have told the governor that the nominee’s first name is Sonia. Not Maria.

Not a character out of “West Side Story,” but an appellate court judge whose accomplishments transcend the stereotypes that Huckabee and other right-wingers love to wallow in.



But while Huckabee’s mistake with Sotomayor’s first name reveals the tendency of wingnuts to generalize when it comes to people with Spanish-sounding names, Rush Limbaugh’s rantings show the usual reliance on fear and prejudice, as well as stale talking points.

He called her “an affirmative action case extraordinaire.”

As with all things Limbaugh, that statement is one designed to inflame, not to inform. Because if anyone was an affirmative action pick, at least in the perverted way that he defines it, it was Limbaugh’s boy.

His boy being Clarence Thomas.

Thomas, who, in 1994, married Limbaugh to his last wife, Marta Fitzgerald, was nominated to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush after serving as a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for a year.

One year.

Thomas’ ratings from the American Bar Association were also mediocre. There were many judges that, if one was looking for experience and depth, were far more qualified than Thomas.

But the truth is that when the elder Bush went looking for a black justice to replace Thurgood Marshall, he didn’t care about experience and qualifications as much as he cared about ideology and acquiescence.

So Bush chose Thomas. And after a bruising confirmation battle, Thomas joined the high court.

And Thomas hasn’t disappointed the wingnuts. In fact, he rarely even goes through the trouble of explaining his frequent siding with the court’s conservative wing.

He’s content to be Antonin Scalia’s dittohead.

But now, Obama has nominated Sotomayor – a woman who spent six years as a federal judge and more than a decade as an appellate court judge in New York. She has ruled on two high profile cases, one which ended the 1994 major league baseball strike and one which allowed The Wall Street Journal to publish the suicide note of former Clinton aide Vince Foster.

The fact that Obama at least considered Sotomayor’s breadth of experience shows that she is no token pick. Yet people like Limbaugh have the nerve to fix their mouths to imply that she is.

That’s to be expected.

That’s to be expected because the wingnuts aren’t really concerned about Sotomayor’s qualifications. They’re concerned that she might have that thing that Obama said he is looking for in a Supreme Court justice; the thing that scares the crap out of them and the thing that would set her eons apart from Thomas.

That thing is empathy.

Empathy, of course, doesn’t mean that a justice will discard the Constitution or, for that matter, rationality to base decisions strictly on his or her personal experiences. It doesn’t mean that Sotomayor, who was reared in the Bronx projects, will discard precedence if confronted with a case that involves a constitutional question on, say, landlord and tenant rights.

Empathy is the ability to feel with someone, not to feel sorry for .....

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Something else you apparently lack is READING COMPREHENSION. I never suggested BAW is restricted to or reserved for, liberals. The fact that your KKK azz is on here everyday refutes that. I wrote NO ONE GIVES A DAMN, about your right-wing, repugnican positions, nor your LIES about not being a repugnant repugnican, nor your pretense of being a “negro uncletom” when you clearly are a Caucasian Klansman.

by   
Sevennotrump
May 28, 2009, 11:34 am
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The court should apolitical. The members should not serve the whims of any sect of the electorate, whether right wing, left wing, or center. The job of the court is to weigh issues before them based on statues ratified by the Constitution.

by   
Uncletom
May 28, 2009, 7:27 am
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Sevennotrump,
Last I checked its a public blog. And until otherwise, get used to it. I empathize with you because you so narrow minded that you cant appreciate the free exchange of ideas. Your intellect is so shallow that instead of putting forth a good argument to support your ideas, you resort to personal and vicious attacks. Its typical. I do not express my ideas for "anyone to care about them", I do it because I CARE about them.

by   
Uncletom
May 28, 2009, 7:24 am
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Uncletom:

So you have no party affiliation? WHO CARES? You also apparently have no ability to perceive things which surround you. No one on BAW gives a damn about what you think, how you feel, or even that you are a racist, pretending to be a “negro uncletom”. We don’t care.

by   
Sevennotrump
May 27, 2009, 3:31 pm
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Repugnican’s have always demonstrated, they think being a centrist means, always affirming staunch right wing BS & always SAYING you gave some thought to other avenues, but ruled them out. Because of the likes of Scalia, Thomas & those other 3 idiots, the USSC NEEDS judges with a different mind set, in order that the court might be “centrist”.

by   
Sevennotrump
May 27, 2009, 3:29 pm
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First of all I claim NO party affiliation. Just because someone is a Republican DOES NOT mean they are conservative. Case in point, both Bush's were NOT conservative. And the Republicans that LOVE Sotomayor are NOT conservative. And to prove that Satomayor IS and WILL BE and activist left wing judge, read the article concerning the reverse race discrimination case with the NH firefighters.

by   
Uncletom
May 27, 2009, 1:18 pm
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What drugs is Uncletom on? Judge Sotomayer is not a left wing liberal. How can she be when she was appointed an appelate judge by a Republican president (George H. W. Bush)? How can she be a flaming liberal when Republicans love her? I recommend that Uncletom get his nose out of Rush's behind and really smell the roses of diversity.

by   
Wellsk1959
May 27, 2009, 8:40 am
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Ms Weathersbee like most liberals, accentuate the percieved faults of their foes to cover the faults of their friends. The appointment of Justice Thomas has NOTHING TO DO with this appointment of Ms Sotomayor. But the fact is Ms. Sotomayor is NOT a centrist, she IS an extreme left wing liberal activist judge. She is a direct reflection of Obama.

by   
Uncletom
May 27, 2009, 7:17 am
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either you have respect for saying a name right or don't say it at all.wow, gop men still shows their ignornace towards race and women which they will lose more votes by their behavior.good pick by obama but i'm wondering if more justices is ready to step down.

by   
Quita32
May 27, 2009, 5:34 am
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clarence thomas said something about rights shouldn't be an issue.i read this an law journal when he made this comment.thomas still thinks that affirmative action never helped him but it did.he's still a hypocrite and i wished that george h.w. bush would have picked another black back then.but we are stuck with him.sotomayor will get bamboolzed by gop but will they do it-YES!

by   
Quita32
May 27, 2009, 5:32 am
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