At 10 AM,
Washington time, Obama will announce the selection of Sonia Sotomayor
as his first choice for the Supreme Court.
Fox News, Judge
Napolitano describes Sotomayor as an "ideologue."
Remembere, this
video, where Sotomayor makes a joke about the courts establishing
policy?
I guess Sotomayor was out of class the day her professors
discussed the separation of powers.
There are also many
reservations about Sotomayor.
The most consistent concern was
that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was "not that smart and kind of
a bully on the bench," as one former Second Circuit clerk for another
judge put it. "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is
domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating
and don't get to the heart of the issue." (During one argument, an
elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, "Will
you please stop talking and let them talk?")
Her opinions,
although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially
clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. It's
customary, for example, for Second Circuit judges to circulate their
draft opinions to invite a robust exchange of views. Sotomayor,
several former clerks complained, rankled her colleagues by sending long
memos that didn't distinguish between substantive and trivial points,
with petty editing suggestions -- fixing typos and the like -- rather
than focusing on the core analytical issues.
Some former clerks
and prosecutors expressed concerns about her command of technical legal
details: In 2001, for example, a conservative colleague, Ralph Winter,
included an unusual footnote in a case suggesting that an earlier
opinion by Sotomayor might have inadvertently misstated the law in a way
that misled litigants. The most controversial case in which
Sotomayor participated is Ricci v. DeStefano, the explosive case
involving affirmative action in the New Haven fire department, which is
now being reviewed by the Supreme Court. A panel including
Sotomayor ruled against the firefighters in a perfunctory unpublished
opinion. This provoked Judge Cabranes, a fellow Clinton appointee,
to object to the panel's opinion that contained "no reference whatsoever
to the constitutional issues at the core of this case." (The
extent of Sotomayor's involvement in the opinion itself is not publicly
known.)
The No.2
Republican in the Senate took President Obama to task Sunday for
claiming Guantanamo Bay created more terrorists than it ever detained by
serving as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.
Sen. Jon Kyl,
R-Ariz., called the charge "palpably false" and said the White House has
not provided any evidence to back up the claim.
"He meant to say
that 770 people or more became terrorists because we have a prison at
Guantanamo?" Kyl
said on "FOX News Sunday."
"9/11 hijackers
didn't do their deeds because of Gitmo. The people who ... blew up the
(U.S.S.) Cole or the Kolbar Towers or the first World Trade Center
didn't say, 'There's Gitmo down there,' because it didn't exist. And
even after that I don't think you saw guys sitting around in some coffee
shop in Saudi Arabia, saying, 'You know, those Americans have this
prison called Gitmo, I think I'll become a terrorist,'" he said. "I
mean, it's palpably false to suggest that the existence of Gitmo created
terrorism, and yet the president gets away with that."
"We
haven't done anything wrong there," Kyl said. "We haven't lost our
values and Dick Cheney's exactly right in what he said in his speech."
"Whether it's closed or not, we have to have a plan in place that
outlines how we deal with the people who are incarcerated there," he
told "FOX News Sunday."
Related:
One in 7 who leave Guantanamo involved in terrorism.
The Obama Effect
It's more than a
honeymoon at this point. Forgiving press coverage and public adulation of Obama and his
emerging policies is a given. Few dispute the fact that Obama is a
likable "brand," and the historic nature of his election has true
staying power. Even Republicans caution one another not to wish failure
on Obama.
But about that, uh-h-h, money.
"Just how much
government debt does he have to endorse before he's labeled
'irresponsible'? Well, apparently much more than the massive amounts
envisioned by Obama," says Washington Post columnist Robert J.
Samuelson.
Like projected annual deficits totaling $7.1 trillion
and future federal spending up by 75 percent.
"Except from
crabby Republicans, these astonishing numbers have received little
attention -- a tribute to Obama's Zen-like capacity to discourage
serious criticism. Everyone's fixated on the present economic crisis,
which explains and justifies big deficits (lost revenue, anti-recession
spending) for a few years. Hardly anyone notes that huge deficits
continue indefinitely," Mr. Samuelson observes.
He ultimately
concludes, "The wonder is that these issues have been so ignored. Imagine hypothetically that a President McCain had submitted a budget
plan identical to Obama's. There would almost certainly have been a loud
outcry: 'McCain's Mortgaging Our Future.' Obama should be held to no
less exacting a standard."
Obama Punishes Opponents
Doug Ross
reports
that a tipster alerted him to an interesting assertion. A cursory review
by that person showed that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing
list were heavy Republican donors.
To quickly review the
situation, he took all dealer owners whose names appeared more than once
in the list, and, of those who contributed to political campaigns, every
single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates. While this
isn't an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if it
can be verified.
However, I also found
additional research online
at Scribd (author unknown), which also appears to point to a highly
partisan decision-making process.
Consider the partial list of
Chrysler dealership owners, listed below. You'll notice that all were
opponents of Barack Obama, most through sponsorship of GOP candidates
and organizations, but a handful through Barack's Democrat rivals
(Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in 2008, for example).
Update: Joey Smith says in my analysis of the Chrysler dealers
that will remain open, I came across one dealer group that stood out to
me.
The company is called RLJ-McLarty-Landers, and it operates
six Chrysler dealerships throughout the South. All six dealerships
are safe from closing. The dealer locations are:
1.
Bentonville, AR (northwest Arkansas) 2. Lee’s Summit, MO (south of
Kansas City, MO) 3. Branson, MO 4. Olathe, KS (near Kansas City)
5. Bossier City, LA (near Shreveport) 6. Huntsville, AL
The
interesting part is who the three main owners of the company are.
The owners are Steve Landers (long-time car dealer, 4th-generation
dealer), Thomas "Mack" McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President
Clinton), and Robert Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television
and co-owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats).
Coercion
Obama's Transportation Secretary Ray
Lahood
told a group of reporters at the National Press Club on Thursday
that he wants to "coerce people out of their cars."
Ray Lahood
says he has joined a transformational administration: "I think we can
change people's behavior."
Lahood has become a champion of using
the Department of Transportation and federal transportation spending to
get people to take trains, busses, and ride bikes instead of driving
cars.
"We want to really...the idea of creating opportunities for
people to get out of their cars -- and we're working with the secretary
of HUD, Shaun Donovan, on opportunities for housing, walking paths,
biking paths," said Lahood. "If somebody wants to ride their bike,
if -- to work or to the place of employment or to other places -- mass
transit, light rail -- creating opportunities for what we call livable
communities."
The moderator of the press club event asked Lahood:
"Some in the highway-supporters motorist groups have been concerned by
your livability initiative. Is this an effort to make driving more
torturous and to coerce people out of their cars?"
Lahood
answered: "It is a way to coerce people out of their cars."
Lahood then made a joke about the fact that some conservatives believe
that the way he wants to use the Department of Transportation represents
an increased government intrusion in people’s lives.
"Some
conservative groups are wary of the livable communities program, saying
it's an example of government intrusion into people's lives," said the
moderator. "How do you respond?"
"About everything we do around
here is government intrusion in people's lives," said Lahood.
The Queen Of Arts
Michelle Obama, has added a new string to her
bow as "minister of culture" in her husband’s administration.
The heads of New York’s most prestigious cultural institutions are in no
doubt that she intends to play an active policy-making role in the arts
world after they were summoned to meet her last week.
"She was
speaking in a way the minister of culture would speak, even though such
a position doesn’t exist in America," said Peter Gelb, the manager of
the Metropolitan Opera in New York. "It was as if she was almost
an arts policy-maker on behalf of the White House and the president.
It was highly unusual."
Obama dazzled arts leaders when she attended
the opening of the renovated American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York last Monday in a purple V-neck dress designed by Isaac
Mizrahi.
