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Gingrich: Sotomayor a 'Racist'
At least they didn't call her "Maria"? Attacking Sonia Sotomayor, Newt Gingrich wrote on Twitter, "Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman' new racism is no better than old racism,” and then “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.” White House Press Secretuary Robert Gibbs fired back: "I think we’re satisfied that when the people of America and the people of the Senate get a chance to look at more than just the blog of a former lawmaker that they’ll come to the same conclusion that the President did." But as more Republicans jump into the fray, they're lining up with Gingrich: Former congressman Tom Tancredo also called Sotomayor “racist.” Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) questioned Sotomayor's race and gender will "influence" her decisions, and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said Sotomayor has a "personal bias based on ethnicity and gender." He'd know, we guess. And just for giggles, here’s Mark Krikorian attacking the “Spanish” pronunciation of Sotomayor’s name: “But one of the areas where conformity is appropriate is how your new countrymen say your name, since that's not something the rest of us can just ignore, unlike what church you go to or what you eat for lunch. And there are basically two options—the newcomer adapts to us, or we adapt to him. And multiculturalism means there's a lot more of the latter going on than there should be.”
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Let's turn the page back.And ask Mr.Alito why he would protest against hispanic's at princeton.Coming from and adulter who now proudly show's off his mistress turned wife.Who claims to be catholic but in his heart is mormon and always will be is a FAKE,FRAUD,LIAR and a DECIEVER his credibility is zero.And once chosen by bush41 is saying he was wrong to chose her is a flip flopper
Don't laugh.
This is the man
Who's planning on
Saving the next election
Cycle for the GOP.
And it sounds like
He's got the magic
Doesn't it?
Take away all the white space, and not much is said above.
Banjo-
You've already
Said that twenty times.
I could use a break.
Just rearrange the words
At least.
Have mercy.
Ritarita below: The white space is free. It doesn't cost anything to fill it with thought -- if and when you have some. You are an exhibitionist with nothing to exhibit except snark. :}
Banjo! Quit attacking Ritarita. I'm getting in touch with Hockey doggy and you are going to get pucked!
Banjo, be honest. You really have nothing to say ... ever. Although I'll give you credit for not bringing gay sex into this post. That's unusual.
Really, can Newt Gingrich possibly get even more infantile or become more oblivious than he already is? I don't think so.
correction: I did not think so past tense.
How about matt, you defend her remarks instead of jumping the subject and justice. That is the problem here. I hear lots of crap but no one can defend her without striking at racism, elitism, sexism or any other ism. Liberals will defend her on the grounds she earned a right to say those things. How can someone earn the right to turn the world around in one instance for one person. When anyone says something like she said she has opened the door.
Absolutely right, Squiggy......... However, it will be a moot point during the confirmation hearings and her appointment will be based on her application of the laws according to the constitution.
We can only hope!
I assume you were on fire against Supreme Court Justice Alito, when he expressed pretty much the same thing, only from an Italian POV?
Oh, you weren't? You thought it was fine when the remarks came in the confirmation hearings of a white male?
Squiggy, the gloves are off. You're a hypocrite in my book.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
1. Who are you to say she the comments she made were undeniably racist?
2. You give yourself away in regard to any respect you may show for any other culture.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
Oh nice try sarastro. Have you heard about Tucker Carlson's hiring for his new Daily Caller? He wants you. You know, like Uncle Sam probably wants you too.
OR
How about
She never made
The comments at all.
These remarks have been
Attributed to another Judge
And were reportedly
Made about her
Not by her.
Or did you get coddled, deferred or have a different standard in regard to service to your country like former Vice President Cheney?
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
All right
You two.
No. Ooh.
Ouch. Wait.
Stop that.
Quit bickering.
Yes, I am behind President Obama. I do not have any control over the hearings in regard to his recent nomination do I? As far as Gingrich correct on that count too. His contract with for or about America left me cold.
cbeen-
I think the word
You're looking for is
On.
Newt's contract
ON America.
Ritarita that IS what I was looking for. You may have even been the one to have coined it on this site. Clever.
Sounds racist to me. And perception is reality, right? A white person calls a black person "boy" and even if he didn't mean it as derogatory, that person is flogged and beaten, right, because of the Perception. So perhaps others will perceive Sotomayor's comment as racist. Using the same logic, she should be flogged and beaten too right?
Wrong tanker-
The white guy
Is flogged and beaten
For stupidity.
when one race or sex is pitted to be better than another, in personal terms it is racist, I am getting a kick out of the idea man with the third wife speaking up on this issue.
Squiggy you claim to be above the fray. I don't think so.
This is straight out of the confederate party handbook, accuse others of what you in fact are.
This is truly hilarious that they the believe that this ridiculous ploy is going to work in a nation that just chose a black man to lead this country over a white male war hero. Keep up the good work and we liberals can just sit back and watch you dig your own graves.
Its a Rove strategy, which he learned from republican strategist, Lee Atwater, who regretted all the bullshit he unleashed.
Lee Atwater; "What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul".
sarastro3; newt quotes her out of context. dreg up the entire quote read it and give us your best; ooh never mind. newt the little Machiavellian prince's blood lust is showing. gingrich is a true phogbound whose rush to judgment and willingness to obfuscate every issue reveals a profound contempt for people.
This seems so obvious to me: her remark does not reflect a belief that her race and gender make her superior to white men. She is referring to the existence of racism itself. White men have enjoyed social, economic, and political privileges in this country from day one. Women and minorities have obviously not. This fact makes for a vastly different experience, and by extension, a unique perspective. Period.
Thanks for a very level and informative comment. My BP dropped so thanks again.
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So sayeth you.
Excellent.
True. I had to laugh today when I heard Rush Limbaugh say that the Court needed people who understood the experiences of White Male bondholders re the GM fiasco. We all know that no one on the current court would ever express the views of White Males.
I would beg to differ. I don't see white males being looked out for lately. Please point to a specific example of where a white male has been taken care off because of their race and gender. Because I can name from personal experience examples of white males being pushed down in favor of some other demographic. Oh, and invoking the "white males" have dominated human history for x thousands of years, blah blah blah won't hold water. I'm talking the past 20 years.
Well, that went over somebody's head.
I guess since she can't beat them she will try to join them! chuckles
I did not read where anyone abandoned your support system, and if so why are you having -what -chuckles?
It is pretentious and ostentatious when people of Hispanic descent, make a point of pronouncing their names with proper Spanish elocution.
the United States is replete with place names that are French or Spanish (Detroit, Los Angeles, etc) but the pronunciation of these are all anglicized and have been for centuries.
It is also extremely rare for anyone with with a French surname to use the French pronunciation, unless it is already common to do so in English. (We do say "daybue" not "daybut" for "debut".)
It is multiculturalism that has foisted this new ostentatiousness and in the interest of melting the pot once again, it ought to go away.
We don't need to Balkanize ourselves. Or, Quebecize ourselves, either.
I have a name which is German and can be interpreted two ways. I have people ask me if it is correct if they doubt they are pronouncing it correctly. Not a hard thing to do and very courteous and appreciated. A lot of people have this situation. It is not ostentatious, just everyday life. After all, why do most schools offer language skills in other languages. Few become fluent in another language in school, but at least there is a familiarity. I had Latin which has been relegated to the dead language heap and French. Are we to abolish this too?
How's about Baton Rouge, or creme brule? Or if you want to stick to names, what about Sammy Souza, Stephen Colbert or Bob Villa? And oh by the way we are the world's superpower BECAUSE of our multiculturalism, not in spite of it. Doo-chay Bag.
Doo-chay Bag sounds like Creole. Cool.
Anyone who is instantly criticized by Newt the Nut Gingrich, Tom Tancredo the Ultimate Racist, and Rush The Dope Addict Limbaugh can't be all bad.
I bet you were the debate champion in high school with such persuasive abilities. Gotta love the Intertubes.
This racism tag has become meaningless. It misses the point of what racism actually means to the disenfranchised. The ideology of racism is based on institutional power to deprive others of rights using their "race" (an inherited yet fictitious 18th century pseudo-scientific taxonomic category used to justify colonial nationalism) as arbiter.
It is not 'racism' that those of conscience are against. It is oppression by the vehicle of racism. If one's opinion has no effect then it's just that, an opinion. If one's opinion, however, has the force to take away liberties or property, then it crosses the line of tolerance.
When speaking of racism it is critical to designate which parties are in power and which parties lack the power to enforce their will. To ignore it is to ignore the difference between a man with a gun and a man with a spear.
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Gingrich is an opportunist and exploiter, a manipulator and usurper of the first order...
A pathetic little man who has no loyalty to anyone not even his own wives...why does our media foist this reprobate upon our nation as someone from whom others should take counsel..?
He is gliding off the "reprobates are OK" from the Clinton years but I don't think he has enough support to make any waves. He surely will take the mic if someone hands it to him but that can be said for any politician. It remains to be seen if he is chosen by the GOP as a leader. Newt got voted out and Clinton lost his law license for 5 years for lying to the court but both were hard at work destroying each other and themselves and their marriages in the process.
isn't newt a genius ? so impressive.
why , he is the smartest man in the universe.
he should be a good dancer, cause he is a master of shuck and jive.
way smarter than the 30,000 PHD's out there.
when he attempts to be manipulative and condescending,
we don't even see it. it's pure clever magic.
like watching Penn and Teller, or Inherit the Wind.
oh...that viscous rasict Sonia, with her guard dogs,
water hoses, "verbal lynchings", segregated restaurants !
Question is: do tax dollars pay for his Viagra?
"A judge must submit themselves to the law and be faithful to the law and to serve under the law. They are not above the law. And I think it's further exacerbated by President Clinton's (sic) promise to find someone who will use empathy in making decisions. And I think that is a non-legal standard." - Sen. Jeff Sessions
And when Bush appointed Clarence to the bench he described him as having "empathy". Tald about HYPOCRISY!
He described Thomas as having empathy, the man himself, not the law he writes. There is a difference. We are certainly not interested in what politicians say. We are interested in the law the justices write. Obama, wants to see empathy applied either by the law or written into the law, both bad forms of law.
Please provide a link.
Great find prickly,great research. Empathy: Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives. See synonyms at pity. 2. The attribution of one's own feelings to an object. dictionary.com------Nothing here sounds legal to me. We must meet the law or stand above it. No one is beyond the law and the law is not to be crafted to serve us. I had read Obama does not like the constitution as it stands now. Did he really think he could change it?
Squiggy, Justices do NOT WRITE LAW.
And do not forget that the law also states that you can be charged with intent to commit a crime. Now how would a judge decide the intent of a person unless he used empathy and tried to put himself in the defendents shoes.
premeditation can be proved by action, not empathy and I sometimes think faster than I type and meant write opinions on law, I will have to slow it down, insanity is hard to prove when a person plans and hides their criminal act, passion is a spur of the moment thing so premeditation can't be proved, the law is not concerned with intent as much as it puts together events which reflect intent, if there is a shadow of doubt of these events then the person can't be found guilty but justices hear contract law, decide ambiguous cases and must extrapolate what the law dictates, not the person or the action, that is the difference between criminal and civil law.
Squiggy: Take a Xanax and get some sleep.
Ok. Here is a very simple example of empathy. Today I read about a young lady who was engaged to marry a soldier. The soldier was killed in action in Afghanistan. The personal effects were given to the soldiers family. Since she was not the man's wife she was not legally his immediate family. She feels she should have been considered as the soldier's immediate family and received some of his personal effects. I can EMPATHIZE with the young woman, but she and the soldier were not husband and wife officially, so the military cannot hand the stuff over to her. Whadda ya do? Circumvent the rules so's not to hurt the young woman's feeeeeelings? Sorry, that is up to these folks to work out on their own time. Come on, empathy has not place in legal matters. Empathy is a private matter for the common folk to manage.
She is not a legal genius but she will be a good judge. A welcome addition. She will easily out talk Clarence Thomas.
But will she truly have something to say?
Who the heck are you to say she is not a legal genius? I sure as hell hope she is a legal genius. It is the SUPREME court, after all.
Dear squiggy sorry to inform you but I am not a liberal or conservative just american and i am not a democrat or republican .So everybody is fair game.
hey matt, thanks, they write opinions on law, I think faster than I type sometimes, I have always considered you one of a kind and never a conformist, I just think those things should have been brought up when Alito was being questioned and now it is Sotomayors turn. I didn't want the two confused. We all have to stand on our own merit.
I am a conservative Republican so everybody is fair game. No one has fared well by me lately.
Is Alito a bad Judge? Or is he a bad judge just to Liberals? Sotomayor is going to get confirmed. So just let it be.
Let it be?! What are you a Beatles' fan? This is where the Repubs are missing the point in not attacking the obvious failings of Sotomayor . (it would not be the same for the Dems) By bringing out all the facts (not contrived dirt like the Dems did with Bork which created a new slang term, Borked) on her legal decisions, opinions, and public comments they can draw a more complete picture of not only her but Mr. O' as well. This nation, needs to see just what a full-bore uber-Marxist-Liberal will do to this country. Then, and only then will the zombie-electorate begin to shake the scales off their eyes.
However, her ethnic decent should not be an issue for anyone. Unfortunately, she has done this herself with less-than-professional comments. Does anyone here remember George Allen of VA and his one-off comment using the word makacka (sorry for the spelling)? Yet, the Libs and their partners in crime the media, dismiss an obviously racist toned remark. Even though I do not think her to actually make decisions based purely on race, the facts are that she will get away with remarks far more egregious than what most whites have made and lost their jobs and careers over.
I'm afraid we are heading for either a joke confirmation where there is little substantive debate over constitutional interpretive philosophy (which is the ONLY thing the Supreme Court is supposed to do) or a full bore media circus designed to propagate manufactured racist debate.
I like her. I like diversity. She is correct that people of different background and experience have very different outlooks on life. So the experience of a "old white guy" are going to be very different then those of a "middle aged latin woman." I see her point.
I've only seen one of two of the comments the Republicans are bringing up. I am in France at the moment. I'll look them up next week.
Her life and her work seem impressive. The GOP is notorious for creating such hoopla with little to back it up.
The GOP needs new messengers... not Cheney, Rove, or Gingrich.
"The GOP is notorious for creating such hoopla with little to back it up." Hawnzz... dude, the whole man-made global warming hoax is contrived by Al Gore and his loony leftist armada!
Each side is guilty of conjuring hoopla in order to pander to the mindless electorate we have in the US today. The issues with Sotomayer are being intentionally muddied by the right and left because the electorate cannot grasp the Supreme Court's mandate . Most really do believe that, as Sotomayer said, the court system ultimately makes policy. So while the pandering idiots on both sides speak about nonsense like race the mass media, that can control debate better than party propagandists could ever dream, fails once again to use their collective cerebral capacities to educate and inform the public. After all that is the mass news media mantra.
"Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position."
"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."
The above remarks are a different way of saying what Sotomayor is being raked over the coals for. They come from the mouth of Supreme Court Justice Alito and were considered by Republicans to be one of his selling points.
Hypocrisy.
connie47, Alito's comments are a far cry from being tinged with racism as were Sotomayer's. Assuming your quotes are accurate (sorry no links on quotes is an academic no-no) it is plain to see that he is using reflective association to ground his perspective. From which he can look at law, interpret meaning and then apply (or not) it to the case at hand. We all do this because we are from somewhere and have a cultural or ethnic framework that can constrain or guide. How Sotomayer framed her comment implied she saw all Hispanics/Latinos as having a superior insight into their issues than white men. If a white male had said this the press would have lynched him.
Sotomayer's comments were tinged with racist verbiage and it will not be an issue with the media the way it was with other Republicans or Republican nominations. Listen, politicians in general are hypocrites that is how they manipulate the ignorant or maintain ideological bases from which to weave their policy tentacles into society. However, the same cannot be said of the mass media. They are supposed to be neutral and fact seeking not co-ideologues assisting in the manipulation of society with a political party.
Thank you.
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