Sonia Sotomayor

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Obama SCOTUS Pick Sotomayor the "wise latina" picked for her identity and politics more than her accomplishments, seems to be plenty willing to politicize the court, and lower the tone. Not unlike Obama himself. Here's a few examples.

Sotomayor : 5 items


Sotomayor accusations of bias -
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While most of the Supreme Court justices know how to bite their tongue and not inject more politics into decisions (and divide the nation) that common sense doesn't apply always to RGB and Sotomayor. The latter accused Conservative Justices of a Trump bias, for not being anti-Trump biased like she is. The crime, the Court sided with Trump that immigrants could be denied a green card if the government thought that those non-citizens would rely on public assistance. It wasn't even a ruling, just that the status quo could be maintained while they waited on a ruling. For that common sense position (e.g. non-liberal one), she quipped, “the Court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others.” The alternative was to continue to let far left activist judges in lower courts create stays and override Presidential powers while deciding every case. Something Sotomayor and the left would have gone ballistic over if someone tried it on Obama.

Politicizing the Supreme Court - We can argue that the Supreme Court has always been politicized -- since 1804 when Chase was impeached for being too partisan. But you can also argue that since the Senate acquitted him, that it's always had certain independence and autonomy, no matter how bad the Justices are. But historically, it helps to remember that it's virtually ALWAYS been the Progressives/Democrats that politicize the court.

The conservatives, independents and traditionalists (and most of the Founders) saw the court as a boring and not very important branch of the government. Their job was just to interpret the laws as written, and deal with subtle nuances around the edges. Not to be some group of oligarchs, that would go to creative writing classes to invent in powers and intent that was never in the original text, for the purpose of furthering an agenda.

The progressives/left re-imagined the court (starting around the turn of the 20th century), that if they couldn't pass laws through the legislature (or they passed illegal / extraconstitutional laws through the legislature) that they could corrupt the court into being a gang of oligarchs that would push through (or defend) their activist agendas. This starts with imagining that a dead piece a wood pulp (contract) written 200 years earlier, is some "living" thing, that could be altered over time. And that precedent was more important than intent. A truly disgusting thought if you imagine what that means. You could sign a contract with someone that expressly said X, and a judge could say, "well it should have said Y, so you're guilty of failure to comply with something that I think it should have said". Where's the rights or justice in that?

Basically, the far-left's delusion is of the court being co-legislators, that could pervert the original intent of the law, one small incremental step at a time (one precedent builds on the others), until it no longer resembles what it was intended to do. And they are outraged when this imagined power has checks put on it, and you reverse a prior activists courts fevered imagination. The Constitution (and Bill of Rights) was written for the express purpose of disallowing (or making it very hard) to get scope/feature creep on our laws -- without the express consent of the governed. E.g. The legislature was beholden to the people: the Court was only supposed to be beholden to the laws original intent. So an argument that the Constitution should have allowed more flexibility in laws, or made the Supremes more powerful is fine. Wrong, but fine. But their argument that it did do that, is just a fucking lie to further their agenda, and should be treated as anti-American contempt of the Constitution. No one has ever been able to point to anything that supported this argument.

So the spectrum on the court isn't right <-> left, it is constitutionalist (originalist, textualist) <-> activist. And while there's certainly been a few cases where the right side of the court let their political bias seep into a ruling or two (and shift them towards activism), they are as rare as it is common that the left side of the court is guided by their politics/desires and agendas and will put those things above their duty and the law. Thus there is no far-right Judges on the court right now: none on the right have been consistently trying to re-imagine the Constitution to fit their political biases (as near as I can tell). But that also means there's no real moderate-left Judges on the court. Some will occasionally respect the rule of law, and sometimes they will ignore it -- or in the case of RBG and Sotomayor, there are at least 2 that will always put their agendas above the rule of law.

Cohen v. Trump -
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Context matters. While in a fraudulent lawsuit over Trump University, against a law-firm whose principals maxed out their donations to Hillary Clinton, and paid the Clinton’s hundreds of thousands more in speaking fees, Trump's lawyers proved a point that should have ended the case right there. But an Obama Appointed Judge (Gonzalo Curiel), who is involved with many latino advocacy groups/causes, and was involved with the opposing lawyer in the past, refused to recuse himself. Then decided the lawsuit should go-on anyways. Trump's lawyers are livid over the, "manifest disregard for the law", and Trump is later forced to settle (to eliminate the campaign distraction). While this is still ongoing, Trump was asked about it by Jake Tapper (CNN), and Trump mentioned the judges latino/background as possible motivation for the bias, and the left goes nuts. To the left, your heritage has nothing to do with it... unless it was Obama lawyers arguing against Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor (and they forced her to recuse herself from all Iranian immigration cases, because she was Iranian), or when Obama and the left are using race as an excuse for ignoring questionable rulings of Sonia Sotomayor. Back then they argued that of course heritage / cultural bias exists, but it is necessary to get that balance on the Supreme Court. So once again the left wants to play it both ways -- when their side is saying there's cultural bias, it's fine -- but when the other side does it for more cause, why it's racism.

American Legion v. American Humanist Assn. - 1925 Bladensburg ‘Peace Cross’ can stay on public land ruling. This was a win for freedom of religion: a cross is often a secular display and even if it wasn't, respecting a religion (and a tradition) is not the same as promoting it, nor a violation of separation of Church and State. Naturally Ginsburg and Sotomayor took the progressive/anti-Liberty position.

Masterpiece Cakeshop - Jack Phillips was approached by a gay couple that asked him to bake them a wedding cake. He politely explained that Colorado didn't recognize gay marriage (yet), and due to his religion, he wouldn't use his tradecraft to do custom work for an issue that violated his personal beliefs (he said he wouldn't bake a cake that would slur the LGBT community either), but he'd happily serve them and they could buy anything else in the store (he'd even make them birthday cakes or for any other occasion). The gay activists, which had easy access to dozens of other stores flipped him off, yelled, "Fuck You and your homophobic cake shop", and put the information on social media and sicked the Gay-Mafia (nasty activists) on Jack and the shop, who harassed him and polarized the issue (Real Hate). The media misrepresented the story (FakeNews). The accusations against Jack were disproven (Fake Hate). The Colorado Civil rights commission violated Jack's civil rights by siding with the LGBT-Fascists, and was later slapped down by the Supreme Court. So the gay-activists sued/attacked/harassed Jack again... and lost again (Real Hate). They don't seem to care that Christians have civil rights too.


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📚 References

Supremes
The Supremes is my shorthand for the Supreme Court Justices. Here's a little background on them.