Word: sotomayor
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...those issues returned with a vengeance. A doctor who specialized in the most controversial sorts of abortions was murdered in Kansas. President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, which restarted a tired debate about affirmative action. And while the blowhards have taken up their battle stations - the leadership of the Republican Party, especially, seems to have shifted from politics to infotainment - the terrain on these issues has shifted subtly in the past few years. (Indeed, gay marriage - once the hottest of hot buttons - seems to be easing toward public acceptance, as state after state approves it.) (See pictures...
...Sotomayor debate has been polluted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who claim, ridiculously, that the judge is a racist. That sort of rant is so-o-o 20th century. Beneath the pollution, however, is a serious policy question that needs to be resolved: With an African-American President and a polychromatic society moving toward racial (if not economic) equity, why do we still need preferences enshrined in law? (See pictures of Sotomayor...
Obama has suggested that Sotomayor might have chosen her words differently when, in a 2001 speech, she suggested that a Latina raised in a poor neighborhood had an advantage over a privileged white male in judging cases that involved impoverished minorities. Perhaps she should have - although we seem to have reached a quiet consensus that Sotomayor is right, that our national diversity is a splendid advantage in matters of justice and culture. You want to have powerful Latinas - and others, the full panoply of American types - helping make big decisions, not just on the Supreme Court, but in boardrooms, schools...
...middle ground, embodying a healthy marriage of curiosity and conviction. The administration’s decision to make sweeping changes to the federal budget suggested a vigorous defense of an answer he gave on the campaign trail. But other moves, such as the recent nomination of Judge Sonia M. Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, whom most legal analysts do not consider a liberal intellectual heavyweight to counter Justice Antonin G. Scalia, or the decision to delay repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, suggest Clintonian moderation. I retain great hopes for the next four (or eight...
...many pro-choice observers, Tiller's murder smacked of a sort of frontier justice that could intimidate abortion providers in the country's heartland. It was a sober reminder that, even as pundits have claimed abortion would not be a key issue in Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, it remains an incredibly divisive moral issue - and one that is still a province of extremists...