In a few days Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be brought before the US Senate to go through her confirmation hearing. I have no problem with a female Supreme Court Justice. I have no problem with a Latino(a) Supreme Court Justice. What I have a problem with is the danger that the Senate approving Sotomayor's nomination will bring to the U.S. Constitution as well as the danger few others have thought of.

 

Hasn't anything and everything that could be used against this woman already been aired and talked about by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others?

 

Maybe. Maybe not.

 

My problem is with the (now infamous) statement of Sotomayor's that she "would hope that a wise Latina woman would reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

 

Now, that's a problem!

 

Why that is such a problem to my way of thinking is that, even if not confirmed, Sotomayor's admission that she makes her judicial decisions based upon her race (and confirmed by some of her Supreme Court now-overturned decisions) and her gender? Because, by this admission, Sotomayor has now opened herself up to having every single ruling she has ever made from the bench open to appeal. Every decision that has had two different genders, races, ethnicities, or socio-economic plaintiffs/defendants in them can now be appealed and brought before the higher courts. In fact, they almost must be appealed due to the fact that every plaintiff or defendant who was ruled against can now say, "I was discriminated against by one of the judges due to my being 'X'." Fill in the "X" with whatever anyone wishes to claim as a reason for discrimination. If a white person was ruled against by the Sotomayor decision, then they have the right to appeal. If the black person, or Latino(a) person was ruled against, they have the right to appeal. If a male was ruled against (especially in a case in which there was a female plaintiff), he has the right to appeal because Sotomayor has clearly stated — not once, not twice, but many times — that she uses her own gender as part of her decision making process.

 

The problem: Gender, race, ethnicity, and income are not law. Any good cop, paralegal, attorney, or judge (and even some very bad ones) will tell you that judges should be making their decisions based on law; established, precedence, constitutional, exclusively —the law. Sotomayor's admission that she takes other things into consideration — her being Latina and female — is grounds for appealing every ruling. The only exception may be if the ruling was in favor of a Latina woman against almost anyone else (well, no; even the loser of that case has the appeal right: so every ruling). 

In every case in which Sotomayor ruled, the methodology of her ruling can be brought into question. Not an easy thing to do for there are hundreds of cases she has heard during her more than ten years on the appellate court bench. She wrote the majority opinion in 226 of those cases; and the dissenting opinion in 21 cases. This does not limit the possibility to appeal only those cases. She is open to appeal in each and every case she ruled upon throughout her career because she has publicly admitted that she uses a basis other than the law for her decisions.

 

Consider having a Supreme Court Justice who must plead "Conflict of Interest" every time one of those cases comes before the US Supreme Court. That — considering Sotomayor's ten-plus years on the appellate court bench — would add up to no less than a part-time US Supreme Court Justice being paid full-time wages to recuse herself from all of the appeals of her own rulings! That, to me, is a ridiculous situation. It's like hiring a full-time employee and then finding out that, through their own idiocy, they can only work part-time (or less) and that you must continue to pay that person as though they were doing the whole job they were hired to do!

 

Absurd as it may sound, that is what B. Hussein O. and the Democrats in the US Senate want us to do: ignore Sotomayor's public words and ignore the fact that every ruling she has ever taken part in is now open to appeal and review and to go ahead and accept her nomination as something that is a good thing. After all, she's Latina and she's got years of experience (allbeit bad experience; experience nonetheless).

 

Already two-thirds of the rulings Sotomayor has taken part in that have come before the US Supreme Court have been overturned by the US Supreme Court. That's four of six Sotomayor rulings that have been taken all the way to the top that have been overturned by the US Supreme Court. That's not a good record. If you were a student in high school and you only got one third of the answers to a test correct, that would give you an "F" on each test. That's an astonishingly bad record. That's worse than most high school kids do on their FCATs!

 

Do you really want a US Supreme Court Justice with such a bad record? Do you want a US Supreme Court Justice who can't even get a grade as good as your kids' grades on their FCATs? Isn't that telling?

 

Considering the fact that Sotomayor has such a bad record in her "tests" (for an appeal to the US Supreme Court really is a test of the rulings of the lower courts), and the fact that in any upcoming appeals — and there shall be many — of her previous rulings for which Sotomayor shall have to recuse herself and become a part time US Supreme Court Justice (something never done before in the history of the US Supreme Court), and that we would be paying her a full-time salary, don't you think it's a bad idea to confirm such a disaster in the making?

 

I think that Sotomayor has opened for herself a can of worms and is ready to deny those worms as loudly and strongly as she can to any and all who will listen. She is ready, willing and able to rely on the majority of Senate Democrats who support the ideas of affirmative action and progressivism (liberalism, communism, socialism: call it what you will, it is all boiling down to the same thing: destroying traditional America), who support whomever B. Hussein O. wants as US Supreme Court Justice (no matter how bad the train wreck their confirmation will create), who defy the wishes of the American people ("We, the People, are the Senate's bosses, although few if any Democrats admit to that currently) and she will accept the help of those Democrats and gleefully accept their confirmation.

 

It is not the U.S. Constitution she will be drawing upon to make her US Supreme Court rulings. It is not the laws written by our Congress and signed into law by the past presidents. It is not precedent Sotomayor will be using to make her rulings while she sits on the highest bench of the land. Sotomayor will rule based upon her experience as a "wise Latina woman" and consider herself more capable of doing so than some of the other Justices, because after all, they may be just a "white male who hasn’t lived that life." Considering the self-flattering nature of the statement, and the racist/sexist nature of the statement, you can look forward to America and American law going into a whole new realm that has not been part of our system since the 1960s. Instead of Sotomayor's nomination to the US Supreme Court taking America another step closer to being color/gender/ethnicity/whatever-blind, it will take America back to the 60's and back to the idea that you must be "X" in order to fit in and to be considered equal under the law.

 

I think America deserves better than that. I call upon our elected representatives in the US Senate to do the right thing and to deny Sotomayor's confirmation. Tell Sotomayor that the law is the law and it isn't her ideas, her experience as a "wise Latina woman" or her apparent dislike of "white male[s]" that makes US law. Tell Sotomayor that the US Constitution is the right of the American people and we will not be denied the opportunity to have judicial rulings based upon that instead of her "Latina woman" wisdom.

 

Ask yourself this question: How wise is any judge who goes out and makes public speaches that impugn every ruling she has ever been part of and opens them all up to appeal?