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The minute Judge Sonia Sotomayor rose from President Obama's shortlist for the Supreme Court to become his official nominee, the conservative smear campaign against her went from simmer to full boil. Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice repeated unsourced accusations, of the kind first made in an article by Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic, that Sotomayor is "an intellectual lightweight" who was "picked because she was a woman and Hispanic." National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru dubbed her "Obama's Harriet Miers," while his colleague Mark Krikorian whined that "putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English." Politico reported that Republicans were weighing how to attack a "Latina single mother," and Mike Huckabee claimed that "Maria Sotomayor" comes from the "far left" and would unduly let her "feelings" influence her decisions.
Every element of this right-wing assault is false. Judge Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal (as did Justice Samuel Alito). Her seventeen years of experience on federal courts vastly outstrips the combined years of experience John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas had when they were nominated--seven in total. As the author of more than 700 opinions, she has proven herself to be a pragmatic centrist cut from the same cloth as Obama. Indeed, unlike Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Justice Thurgood Marshall, she was not a central member of the legal movements to advance women's and minorities' rights. For example, she once voted down a constitutional challenge to the global gag rule on abortion. Moreover, she has on occasion disappointed progressives with rulings in favor of corporations.
Finally, it should be noted that Judge Sotomayor's first name is, in fact, Sonia and that she has no children. Of course, to a conservative movement bent on running a character assassination based on ugly racist stereotypes, these are inconvenient details.[...]
Have the conservative pundits looked in the mirror lately...?
It was apparent even before President Obama named a Supreme Court replacement for Justice Souter that the GOP would oppose his choice. It really didn't matter who the nominee was. What mattered to the GOP was that Obama, a "screaming socialist liberal," was the one who would choose the nominee.Judge Sonia Sotomayer has presented the GOP with a conundrum. How will they oppose her? She was of course nominated in 1991, by President George H. W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
In 1968 she was confirmed, with solid Democratic support, and support from 25 Republican Senators, for the seat she presently holds as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The GOP's answer is to call Sonia Sotomayer ‘not the smartest’ and an ‘intellectual lightweight’.
The Booman Tribune responds to these allegations with a witty article which is on point, BrainPower: Karl Rove v. Sonia Sotomayor.
Karl Rove is just one of several Republicans that have chosen to call Sonia Sotomayor stoopid in a transparent effort to make her selection look like an affirmative action pick.
This morning on Fox News, Karl Rove questioned whether she was smart enough to be on the Supreme Court. “I’m not really certain how intellectually strong she would be, she has not been very strong on the second circuit,” he said.
Let's take a look at Karl Rove's academic accomplishments:
In the fall of 1969, Rove entered the University of Utah, on a $1,000 scholarship, as a political science major and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity......In December 1969, the Selective Service System held its first lottery drawing. Those born on December 25, like Rove, received number 84. That number placed him in the middle of those (with numbers 1 [first priority] through 195) who would eventually be drafted. On February 17, 1970, Rove was reclassified as 2-S, a deferment from the draft because of his enrollment at the University of Utah in the fall of 1969. He maintained this deferment until December 14, 1971, despite being only a part-time student in the autumn and spring quarters of 1971 (registered for between six and 12 credit hours) and dropping out of the university in June 1971. Rove was a student at the University of Maryland, College Park in the fall of 1971; as such, he would have been eligible for 2-S status, but registrar's records show that he withdrew from classes during the first half of the semester. In December 1971 he was reclassified as 1-A. On April 27, 1972, he was reclassified as 1-H, or "not currently subject to processing for induction". The draft ended on June 30, 1973.
Sonia Sotomayor's academic accomplishments appear to suggest a more robust intellect (not to mention, superior character):
She earned her A.B. from Princeton University, summa cum laude, in 1976, where she won the Pyne Prize, the highest general award given to Princeton undergraduates. Sotomayor obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Any questions?
