911 Caller In Gates Case Gets Death Threats As ‘Racist’: But Who Are The REAL Racists?

It is genuinely sad.  The woman who tried to help by stopping a possible crime ends up receiving death threats and denounced as a racist.

The now-demonized 911 caller never even mentioned the race of the men until she was ASKED by the 911 operator:

911: Were they white, black or Hispanic?

Whalen: Umm, well there were two larger men, one looked kind of Hispanic but I’m not really sure. And the other one entered and I didn’t see what he looked like at all.

And even then she didn’t say that the men were black.

But that doesn’t stop the REAL racists from attacking her.

Lucia Whalen tearfully said, “I was called racist – I was scorned and ridiculed because of things I never said.”  And the people who made her cry, the people who attacked a woman who performed a public service by getting involved and calling the police when she witnessed a possible crime in progress, are the ones who are racist.

911 caller in Gates case hurt by racist label

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — The woman who dialed 911 to report a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Thursday she was pained to be wrongly labeled a racist based on words she never said and hoped the recently released recording of the call would put the controversy to rest.

With a trembling voice, Lucia Whalen, 40, said she was out walking to lunch in Gates’ Cambridge neighborhood near Harvard University when an elderly woman without a cell phone stopped her because she was concerned there was a possible burglary in progress.

Whalen was vilified as a racist on blogs after a police report said she described the possible burglars as “two black males with backpacks.”

Tapes of the call released earlier this week revealed that Whalen did not mention race. When pressed by a dispatcher on whether the men were white, black or Hispanic, she said one of them might have been Hispanic.

“Now that the tapes are out, I hope people can see that I tried to be careful and honest with my words,” Whalen said. “It never occurred to me that the way I reported what I saw be analyzed by an entire nation.”

Cambridge police Commissioner Robert Haas acknowledged that the police report contains a reference to race, but said the report is merely a summary of events. The arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, has said his information on the race of the suspects came during a brief encounter with Whalen outside Gates’ house; she contradicted that Thursday, saying she made no such description.

The arrest of Gates for disorderly conduct in his own home by a white police officer sparked a national debate over racial profiling and police conduct. The controversy intensified when President Obama said police “acted stupidly” when they arrested Gates, his friend.

Gates has said he was outraged and has demanded an apology from Crowley; Crowley said he followed protocol and responded to Gates’ “tumultuous behavior” appropriately.

Whalen, a Harvard alumni magazine employee who is a first-generation Portuguese-American, said she lived in fear during the immediate aftermath of the arrest when she was dogged for comment and maligned based on the information attributed to her in the police report.

“The criticism at first was so painful I was frankly afraid to say anything. People called me racist. Some even said threatening things that made me fear for my safety,” said Whalen, whose husband, Paul, put his hand on her shoulder in comfort her as she spoke. “I knew the truth, but I didn’t speak up right away because I did not want to add to the controversy.”

She said she felt more comfortable speaking publicly after the tapes were released. She refused to answer any questions about the police report or what she saw that day.

“I am proud to have been raised by two loving parents who instilled in me values including love one another, be kind to strangers and do not judge people based on race, ethnicity or any other feature than their character,” she said. […]

“I was called racist and I was a target of scorn and ridicule because of the things I never said,” she said. “The criticism hurt me as a person, but it also hurt the community of Cambridge.”

Lucia Whalen was raised by her parents to love one another, to be kind to strangers, and to not judge people based on their race, ethnicity, or any other feature but their character.  Martin Luther King would have applauded her as everything he wanted to see in an American.

But the “Civil Rights” movement was long-ago hijacked by people who actively despise Martin Luther King’s prescription:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Unfortunately, we now have men like Henry Louis Gates, Jeremiah Wright, and the close personal friend of both men, Barack Obama.  And they are men who seem to have King’s standard turned completely around.

Watch Henry Louis Gates and tell me that he isn’t consumed by race and by racism, as opposed to concentrating upon the content of anybody’s character:

Here’s another little racist gem from Henry Louis Gates:

GATES: Probably. I didn’t know until — in 1959 we were watching Mike Wallace’s documentary called “The Hate that Hate Produced.” It was about the Nation of Islam and I couldn’t believe — I mean, Malcolm X was talking about the white man was the devil and standing up in white people’s faces and telling them off. It was great. I mean, it’s what black people did behind closed doors, but they would never do it in — I mean, they were too vulnerable to do it, say, where they worked, at the paper mill or downtown, as we would call it. And here was a guy who had the nerve to do that, and I think if I had been a character in a cartoon, my eyes would have gone Doing! — like this. I couldn’t believe it. As I sat cowering in a corner of our living room, I glanced over at Mama and her face was radiant. I mean, this smile — beatific smile started to transform her face. And she said quite quietly, “Amen.” And then she said, “All right now,” and she sat up and she said, “Yes.”

Gates describes his and his mother’s experience with hard-core racism – the labeling of an entire race of people as “devils” – as a spiritual epiphany bordering on a religious experience.  And what chance did Sgt. James Crowley have when a 911 call reporting a possible break-in have when he encountered such fanatic racist zeal?

And there’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Sgt. James Crowley – who appears to be a model police officer – thinks anywhere nearly as poorly of black men as Henry Louis Gates thinks of white men.  And it has been Gates who has made the incident not only racial but racist since the moment he first laid eyes on Sgt. Crowley.  Because Gates was a racist since long before the two men ever met.

Now add another racially biased man who “acted stupidly,” Barack Obama.  From the LA Times on July 25, 2009 (page A18):

Describing Crowley as an “outstanding police officer,” the president said: “Even when you’ve got a police officer who has a fine track record on racial sensitivity, interactions between police officers and the African American community can sometimes be fraught with misunderstanding.”

That’s nice, Barry.  Are you saying that even an outstanding (white) police officer is still racially biased, or are you saying that the African American community is so trapped in racism – like Obama’s own close personal friend ‘Skip’ Gates – that it doesn’t really matter how racially sensitive a white officer is?

Obama once said of his white grandmother:

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know – there’s a reaction in her that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”

Maybe Obama is saying that Sgt. Crowley, as a “typical white person,” has his racism “bred into him”?  (Didn’t Jimmy the Greek get fired for saying something about racial “breeding”?).  Perhaps THAT is why Obama was so quick to jump to the conclusion of racial bias – even right after admitting that he didn’t know any of the facts of the case – in his now infamous press conference?

Let us not forget, in the first Jeremiah Wright sermon Barack Obama ever heard he heard Wright describe a world where “where white folks’ greed runs a world in need.“ And something clicked for Obama so powerfully that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright became his pastor, his mentor, and his spiritual leader for the next 23 years.  And Barack Obama voluntarily submitted himself and his family to plenty of sermons demonizing the white man in the years since.

I listened to the tapes of the hateful sermons that came out of Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church, and I couldn’t get past the question, “How could Obama stay there for so long?”  Obama said that none of those hateful messages impacted him, but there is little question that they in fact affected him deeply.

This isn’t about whites vs. blacks.  There are plenty of decent people of both races.  Take a black female police officer who stood by her fellow police officer, was appalled by the racist displays she saw, and said, “I voted for Obama.  I will not vote for him again.”

And there are plenty of slimebags of both races too.  A Boston police officer who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Gates arrest called Gates a disgusting racist slur which I shall not repeat in an email.

There are racist white people.  There are racist black people.  And God knows we don’t need any more of either.  The question is, who showed their racism in THIS case?  Lucia Whalen and Sgt. James Crowley, or Henry Louis Gates and Barack Obama?

This isn’t about whites vs. blacks.  Rather, it’s about a terribly bitter attitude that holds on to racism and officially institutes that racism into social policy – this time just in reverse.  It’s perfectly okay to embrace naked racism, as long as you are a member of a “minority.”  It’s okay to embrace a “wise Latina” who thinks her decisions are better than those of a “white male”; but a white male who thinks the same of a minority be destroyed.  It’s okay to have a “Black Caucus” in Congress; just don’t you DARE have a white one.  And as a result the racism of that white Boston cop is rightly damned; the racism of a black Harvard African-American Studies professor is wrongly celebrated.

During his campaign, Barack Obama presented himself as a man who transcended race, and stood as the man who could heal any and all divides.  He spent 23 years in a racist church that demonized ‘white America,’ but we believed him because he gave a nice speech.  He selected a racially biased “wise Latina woman” who trampled on the rights of white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut.  But that doesn’t appear to matter, either.  And now he’s demonstrating that he holds the same racially biased attitutudes as his “friends.”  And he doesn’t transcend anything.

That shows in a CNN survey of African-Americans and how they feel about race relations.

“During the 2008 election, 38 percent of blacks surveyed thought racial discrimination was a serious problem. In the new survey, 55 percent of blacks surveyed believed it was a serious problem, which is about the same level as it was in 2000.”

It is frankly amazing to consider that Barack Obama – the first black president of the United States – hasn’t done ANYTHING to change the racial attitude of African-Americans.  And the only possible conclusion is that this president has utterly squandered a truly historic opportunity due to his own increasingly apparent personal inadequacies.

I most certainly think race relations has become a serious problem due to Barack Obama.  Because he could not help but drag the ghosts of too many men like Jeremiah Wright and Henry Louis Gates with him.  And Barack Obama may have the political intelligence to say the “right” things in the future, but – to quote one of his speeches – they will be “just words.”

When Obama, Gates, and Crowley (who is reportedly bringing a lawyer and a union representative to the meeting) get together for a “beer,” you can bet that there will be a lot of empty and hollow “just words” floating around.  This entire meeting is nothing more than a political attempt by Obama to fix his own major screw-up.

Barbara Boxer Caught In The Act Exhibiting Classic Liberal Racism

As we reflect upon the profound racial bias exhibited by Sonia Sotomayor in both her speeches (a wise Latina woman can reach a better conclusion than a white male) and her rulings (the New Haven firefighters case), stop and think that she is well within the liberal mainstream in her racism.

It’s liberal racism.  And liberal racism is multiculturalism, pluralism, identity politics, moral relativism, a profound hostility to American exceptionalism, and the most cynical kind of demagoguery for partisan political benefit all rolled into one incredibly self righteous package.

Reflect for a moment on a situation that was going on simultaneouosly to Sonia Sotomayor’s hearing:

Black Business Leader Charges Sen. Boxer With Racial Condescension
The president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce accused Sen. Barbara Boxer Thursday of racially condescending to him during an Environment and Public Works hearing.

FOXNews.com

Thursday, July 16, 2009
Recommendations by Loomia

The president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce accused Sen. Barbara Boxer on Thursday of racially condescending to him during an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.

Republican members of the committee had sought the testimony of Harry C. Alford, an opponent of a climate change bill that narrowly passed in the House.

Alford said in his opening statement that he spoke on behalf of his organization when he argued that the bill would have devastating consequences for small and minority-owned businesses.

But he took offense when Boxer countered his statement by quoting an NAACP resolution that approved the climate change bill and putting it on the record.

Clearly agitated, Alford asked why Boxer would cite that group’s resolution.

“Sir, they passed it. They passed it,” Boxer responded. “Now, also, if that isn’t interesting to you, we’ll quote John Grant, who is the CEO of 100 Black Men of Atlanta.”

Alford protested that Boxer was condescending to him.

“I’m the National Black Chamber of Commerce and you’re trying to put up some other black group to pit against me,” he said angrily.

Boxer claimed that if Grant was there, he would be proud she was quoting him.

“He should have been invited,” Alford exclaimed. “All that’s condescending and I don’t like it. It’s racial. I don’t like it. I take offense to it. As an African-American and a veteran of this country, I take offense to that.”

When Boxer asked if he was offended that she would quote Grant, Alford said, “You’re quoting some other black man. Why don’t you quote some other Asian. You are being racial here. And I think you’re getting to a path here that’s going to explode.”

Boxer defended herself by saying she believes statements by the NAACP and 100 Black Men, who acknowledge the threat of global warming, are relevant.

“There is definitely differing opinions in the black community, just as there are in my community,” she said, adding that she was trying to show the diversity of support behind the climate change bill.

But that didn’t satisfy Alford.

“We are referring to the experts regardless of their color,” he said. “And for someone to tell me, an African-American, college-educated veteran of the United States Army that I must contend with some other black group and put aside everything else in there. This has nothing to do with the NAACP and really has nothing to do with the National Black Chamber of Commerce. We’re talking energy and that road the chair went down, I think, is god-awful.”

Boxer’s office later declined to comment about the exchange.

Harry C. Alford is a great American patriot.  And may God bless him for his integrity and his courage.

Why was he so outraged?

It bothered him that a liberal white elitist like Barbara Boxer would cite other blacks to dismiss and undermine him.  Like race is a card you can deal in a game and say, “I’ve got the Ace of Spades in my hand.  I win.”

What you say really doesn’t matter, Harry, because I’ve got blacks on my side, giving me political cover.  My blacks are better than your kind of black, Harry.  Just like Sonia Sotomayor’s conclusions are better than a white man’s – at least as long as both continue to oppose traditional or conservative principles.

What was Alford’s argument?  Let’s see that opening statement again:

Alford said in his opening statement that he spoke on behalf of his organization when he argued that the bill would have devastating consequences for small and minority-owned businesses.

It wasn’t, “Look how black I am.  Look how black my group is.”  He said, “You’re going to hurt small businesses, including minority-owned small businesses.”  And there are facts galore to back up the devastation Democrats are going to reap among small businesses.  And red or yellow, black or white, small business owners are going to get nailed by these massive tax increases.  They are going to experience a double whammy, seeing the taxes on their earnings shoot up with higher rates and surcharges even as they get nailed with an 8% payroll tax to fund health care.

And Barbara Boxer’s response was none of that matters, because she’s got even BETTER blacks (liberals universally agree the NAACP raises the best blacks, after all) on her side.  Her blacks cancel out Harry’s blackness and make it so it doesn’t even matter that Harry C. Alford happens to be black.

We’ve seen what liberals think of the “other kind” of black.  Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Thomas Sowell, and others: they’re “House negroes.”  They’re “Uncle Toms or Aunt Jemimahs.”  They’re “Oreo cookies.”  Or as Janeane Garofalo contemptuously dismisses them, they are stupid negroes with Stockholm Syndrome, slobberingly kissing the feet of their massahs.  Nothing to see here, folks.  These black people don’t count.  It’s okay to demonize conservative blacks in the most racist fashion imaginable because we’ve got our own blacks.

Colin Powell and Bill Cosby seem to leap in and out of their “house negro” status, depending on what they say on any given day.  Today, as long as they spout the language of global warming alarmism, they are not house negroes.  But they had damn well better tow the liberal line.

Barbara Boxer wants “her kind” of house negro.  And that nasty Harry C. Alford doesn’t want to be her house negro.  My gosh.  That uppity black man doesn’t want to be anybody’s house negro.  He wants to be his own man, if you can believe it, and stand up for legitimate business principles that will benefit anybody of any color.  That kind of attitude will get him in trouble.  Because liberalism is the new “bus.”  And conservative blacks had better get in the back and stay quiet if they know what’s good for them.

Barbara Boxer’s “kind” of house negro is Al Sharpton.  Think of Al when confronted by the fact that the Tawana Brawley “assault” was the worst kind of racist hoax:

‘The Brawley story do (sic) sound like bullshit, but it don’t matter. We’re building a movement. This is the perfect issue. Because you’ve got whites on blacks. That’s an easy way to stir up all the deprived people, who would want to believe and who would believe—and all [you’ve] got to do is convince them—that all white people are bad. Then you’ve got a movement…It don’t matter whether any whites did it or not. Something happened to her…even if Tawana don’t (sic) it to herself.’

Ah, now THIS is the kind of negro white liberal elitist like Boxer wants.  She can use them like laborers in the liberal plantation to spread the message of Marxist class warfare turned identity politics.  Bourgeoisie versus proletariat, white versus black, it’s all the same to us: We can exploit both versions in our big government narrative just the same.  “You’re a helpless victim!  Let us help you!  Let us grow government to encompass your entire world to create a cocoon of safety for you!”

Some years back, philosopher Francis Beckwith related a story of participating in a radio talk program with the subject under discussion being rape.  A woman calling in said Francis had no right to an opinion because he was a man.  And Francis asked her, “How do you know I’m a man?  My name is Francis.”  The woman said, “You have a deep voice.”  And Francis said, “So does Bea Arthur.”  Francis continued to object to being called a man, until finally the woman was resorted to shouting, “You’re a man!  You’re a man!” over and over again.

As Francis later related, actually that felt pretty good.

Francis Beckwith IS a man.  But his point was that arguments don’t have testicles.  An argument is true of false by virtue of whether it corresponds with logic and reality; it is not dependent upon the gender of the one making the argument.

Arguments don’t have melatonin, either.

Unless of course, you are a liberal.  If you are a liberal, nothing counts as being “true” unless it is said by a member of an official, certified victim group.  And then it becomes irrefutable whether it has anything to do with logic or reality.

Truth doesn’t matter.  Facts don’t matter.  The quality of the arguments being presented don’t matter.  Only the status of being a minority or a victim matters.  I am victim.  Hear me whine.

And if the fact is that a white male would have without question been crucified upside down for saying, “I would hope that a wise white male with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life,” so much the worse for the facts.  Blatant discrimination is fine, as long as the one being discriminated against isn’t a member of a liberal victimhood group.  Or as long as you have your very own blacks to draw upon.

Harry Alfred, thank you.  And not, “Thank you as a white man to a black man,” but rather, “Thank you as a man for standing up for values that transcend race because they equally apply to all men and women of all colors.

Allow me to say one final thing.  And if someone wants to tell me, “You’re just like Barbara Boxer, playing the ‘My black is better than your black’ game,” so be it:

Martin Luther King was a Republican who stood for the content of peoples’ character and the quality of their ideas being far more important than the color of their skin.  Does anyone believe that Dr. King would have been anything other than appalled that a man like Al Sharpton would be a leading figure in the movement he gave his life to advance?  Does anyone believe that he would have been anything other than outraged that a Latina woman could utter such profoundly racially biased words with such aplomb?  Tragically, Martin Luther King embodied transcendent principles that have largely been dismissed and even reviled by the left in favor of their near polar opposites.

Sotomayor: ‘Let’s Put a Judge Who Has Been Constantly Overruled By SCOTUS Where She Can’t Possibly Be Overruled’

Empathy.  Who doesn’t want some?

I mean, I suppose that some part of me, as a conservative, would love for some judge to come along and say, “There, there, I’ll make sure those mean Democrats don’t do stuff you don’t want.  I’ll overturn the election.”

Only that isn’t the direction the “empathy” crap flows.  It only seems to flow from the far left.  It is a river of molten manure that springs and flows from the radical left and routinely runs its banks over conservatives and ordinary Americans.

In the case of Sonia Sotomayor, that crap river flowed right over New Haven, Connecticut firefighters who made the mistake of playing by the rules against a system increasingly geared toward running all over them as white males.  But it is a river that would have ran over every single American to the tune of billions of dollars had the Supreme Court not reversed her decision.

Here’s that story:

Sotomayor Ruling Could Have Cost Consumers Billions

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 10:56 PM

By: Phil Brennan

A decision rendered by Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, fortunately reversed by the Supreme Court on April 1, 2009, could have been extravagantly costly to American consumers, according to the Steve Milloy’s authoritative Junkscience.Com.

Charging that her nomination represents a potential threat to U.S. Consumers and to the economy in terms of energy and the environment, Milloy reported on her 2007 Second Circuit decision in Riverkeeper, Inc. V. EPA 475 F. 3d 83′

Milloy wrote that in her ruling Judge Sotomayor sided with “extreme green groups” who had sued the Environmental Protection Agency because the agency permitted cost-benefit analysis to be used in the determination of environmental protection technology for power plant cooling water intake structures.

Cost benefit analysis involves the balancing of the total expected costs of a proposal or project against its total expected benefits in order to determine its economic feasibility. Do the benefits outweigh or justify the cost?

According to Milloy, had the EPA been required to abide by Judge Sotomayor’s decision, U.S. Consumers would have been forced to pay billions of dollars more in energy costs every year as power plants producing more than one-half of the nation’s electricity would have had to undertake expensive retrofits.”

Noting that President Obama said he wanted somebody “who has the intellectual firepower but also a little bit of a common touch and a practical sense of how the world works,” Milloy said that in the Riverkeeper case Sotomayor didn’t display too much of a “common touch” and “practical sense” when it came to the cost-benefit analysis.

Senators, Milloy advised, should probe whether Judge Sotomayor “lacks the common-sense realization that the benefits of environmental regulation ought to outweigh its costs — a worldview with ominous implications given the nation’s present rush toward cap-and-tax global warming regulation and other green mindlessness.”

Indeed, writing for the majority decision that overturned Sotomayor’s ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia:

noted that forcing compliance under Sotomayor’s reasoning would make companies spend nine times the amount necessary to accomplish “nearly the same benefit to the environment that cheaper technologies would achieve.”

Spend nine times more for very nearly the same benefit.  And liberals wonder why conservatives call them “insane.”

Now, it just so happens that “common touch” and “practical sense” didn’t matter very much when we voted for our president, either.  So why should it matter to us when we put yet another black-robed master over us for the rest of her life?

Let’s hear what Obama said he wanted:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

The guy we voted for as our president said he planned to bankrupt fully half of our source of electricity.

“Empathy” means millions of Americans freezing to death in the dark.

Get ready for it.  Because Obama’s and Sotomayor’s crap river is going to flood right down your family’s throat.

Looking over Sotomayor’s record indicates that she doesn’t have a whole lot of legal sense, either.  She has had her cases overruled six out of seven of the times that they have come before the Supreme Court.  That is how radical, and how incompetent as a judge, she truly is.

Cases Reviewed by the Supreme Court

• Ricci v. DeStefano 530 F.3d 87 (2008) —decision pending as of 5/26/2009 [update as of 6/29/09: reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer)].

• Riverkeeper, Inc. vs. EPA, 475 F.3d 83 (2007) — reversed 6-3 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg)

• Knight vs. Commissioner, 467 F.3d 149 (2006) — upheld, but reasoning was unanimously faulted

• Dabit vs. Merrill Lynch, 395 F.3d 25 (2005) — reversed 8-0

• Empire Healthchoice Assurance, Inc. vs. McVeigh, 396 F.3d 136 (2005) — reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Breyer, Kennedy, Souter, Alito)

• Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp., 299 F.3d 374 (2000) — reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer)

• Tasini vs. New York Times, et al, 972 F. Supp. 804 (1997) — reversed 7-2 (Dissenting: Stevens, Breyer)

Sonia Sotomayor is a judge who has been humiliated with an 8-0 smackdown of her judicial reasoning.  She has been overruled – meaning her legal judgment was contradicted as wrong – six out of seven times.  And if that isn’t bad enough, the ONLY time her decision was actually upheld (Knight vs. Commissioner), her reasoning for the decision was faulted by every single judge on the panel.

In the recent Hew Haven Firefighter case (a.k.a. Ricci v. DeStefano), Sotomayor was not only overruled on the close 5-4 as was reported;  her underlying legal reasoning that compliance with Title VII justified “race-based preferences” as a matter of summary judgment was tossed aside by all nine justices.

So what do you do when you have a judge who has displayed such a shocking lack of common sense that she would have imposed billions of dollars on the American taxpayer to accomplish virtually nothing had her decision not been overruled by the Supreme Court?  What do you do when you have a judge who has been overruled six out of seven times by the Supreme Court?

You put such a judge on the supreme court, where she cannot possibly be overruled, that’s what.

Sonia Sotomayor has said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”  And she said it not once, as was earlier maintained by liberals, but seven times.  There’s no defense of such a remark made even once, let alone seven separate times.  All one has to do to see how racist it is is to replace the words “Latina woman” with “white male” and the words “white male” with “Latina woman.”

And where do you put a judge who is clearly influenced by racial – and frankly racist – thinking?  On the Supreme Court, where her racial bias can become a fixed part of the institution for a generation to come.

Sonia Sotomayor: Another Radical In Robes

In a nutshell: Sonia Sotomayor is an activist judge whose decisions have nearly always been overturned by the very Court to which she aspires, as well as a judge who has expressed racist views.

Let us begin with her racist views.

Have you ever seen the statue representing justice?  Ever notice that “Lady Justice” is wearing a blindfold?

Lady Justice wears the blindfold so that she will NOT be biased by what her eyes see.  She will not notice the race, the gender, the religion, or any other such factor.  Instead, she will balance each case before her with the scales of justice, as determined by the law.

We immediately discover that Judge Sonia Sotomayor has no resemblance whatsoever to Lady Justice.  As CNN provides:

At a 2001 U.C. Berkeley symposium marking the 40th anniversary of the first Latino named to the federal district court, Sotomayor said that the gender and ethnicity of judges does and should affect their judicial decision-making. From her speech:

“I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society….

“I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that – it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others….

“Our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor [Martha] Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” [U.C. Berkeley School of Law, 10/26/2001]

Judge Sotomayor has ripped the blindfold off, and makes race and gender major focal points of her view of “justice.”  That she feels that a Latina woman is able to reach a “better conclusion” than a white male is simply racist.

Imagine for a single nanosecond that a white man said, “I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life.” Imagine the OUTRAGE.  Her statement is every bit as racist; but it is radically leftist, and so it is ignored for any purpose of criticism.

What about the scales of justice that Lady Justice uses to weigh cases?

Sonia Sotomayor lacks proper scales, as well.  She certainly lacks impartiality, by her own acknowledgment.

First of all, let us see how she views the law:

In a 2005 panel discussion at Duke University, Sotomayor told students that the federal Court of Appeals is where “policy is made.” She and other panelists had been asked by a student to describe the differences between clerking in the District Court versus in the Circuit Court of Appeals. Sotomayor said that traditionally, those interested in academia, policy, and public interest law tend to seek circuit court clerkships. She said, “All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is — Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don’t ‘make law,’ I know. [audience laughter] Okay, I know. I know. I’m not promoting it, and I’m not advocating it. I’m, you know. [audience laughter] Having said that, the Court of Appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating. Its interpretation, its application.” [Duke University School of Law, 2/25/2005, 43:19, http://realserver.law.duke.edu/ramgen/spring05/lawschool/02252005clerk.rm%5D

Should judges legislate from the bench?  Should they make policy?  Sotomayor clearly acknowledges her view, even as she recognizes how radical and wrong it is, and therefore says the pro forma things to cover her arse.

She uses her position on the bench to impose her views upon the law, to make policy rather than allow the legislative branch to make policy and issue verdicts on the basis of the laws that are written.

Chief Justice John Roberts once put it this way:

“Judges are like umpires.  Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.”

Amazingly, this statement has been attacked by the left.  That is because they want a judge to be able to change the color or shape of the baseballs, or change the size or length of the bats, or subjectively alter the way the game is called.  And they believe that a judge should be able to call the game in a way that favors one chosen side over another (using their “empathy” or their preference for a particular race, for example).  Because THEY are the side that features the activists judges who will do those things to favor leftists causes and arguments.

Justice Scalia, in his response to ACLU president Nadine Strossen’s favoring judicial activism and finding opinions in foreign law that corresponded with the verdicts they wanted to impose, said:

“Someday, Nadine, you’re going to get a very conservative Supreme Court… And you’re going to regret what you’ve done.”

Because the left would howl in unholy outrage if rightwing justices abandoned the Constitution the way the left have and imposed their own views and sought their own sources to justify their subjective rulings.  If you’re on the left, imagine how you would feel if a far right judge invoked sharia law to suppress the homosexual agenda, and you’ll understand how conservatives feel about judicial activists invoking European law to promote it.  We didn’t place ourselves under the authority of European law; we placed ourselves under our very own Constitution.

Justice Roberts made another relevant and powerful statement:

“I had someone ask me in this process — I don’t remember who it was, but somebody asked me, you know, ‘Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?’ And you obviously want to give an immediate answer, but as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then, the big guy is going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution. That’s the oath.”

But this ISN’T the oath that Sonia Sotomayor will hold herself to.  Rather, she will pull off the blindfold, and judge cases by race and by gender.  And she will “make policy” rather than follow the law.

What did Thomas Jefferson say about the threat of Supreme Court Justices imposing their own will upon the Constitution and imposing laws on the nation based on nothing but their own wills?

“This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt.” —Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:114“The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.” —Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51

“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.” —Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277

I don’t hear Jefferson praising “empathy” as the defining quality of of our Supreme Court Justices. I don’t hear him lamenting that a Latina woman isn’t on the bench due to her superior wisdom over his own (as a white man).  I don’t hear him praising Sotomayor’s desire to “make policy” from the bench.  In fact, what I hear Jefferson doing is rolling in his grave over the abomination that Barack Obama’s and Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy is inflicting upon the nation.

Finally, Sotomayor doesn’t make good law.  Too many times, her activist decisions have been overturned.  Of the cases in which she ruled that went before the US Supreme Court, Sotomayor has been reversed fully five out of six times.  And the one time she WASN’T reversed, her reasoning was unanimously faulted by every single justice:

Cases Reviewed by the Supreme Court

• Ricci v. DeStefano 530 F.3d 87 (2008) — decision pending as of 5/26/2009

• Riverkeeper, Inc. vs. EPA, 475 F.3d 83 (2007) — reversed 6-3 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg)

• Knight vs. Commissioner, 467 F.3d 149 (2006) — upheld, but reasoning was unanimously faulted

• Dabit vs. Merrill Lynch, 395 F.3d 25 (2005) — reversed 8-0

• Empire Healthchoice Assurance, Inc. vs. McVeigh, 396 F.3d 136 (2005) — reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Breyer, Kennedy, Souter, Alito)

• Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp., 299 F.3d 374 (2000) — reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer)

• Tasini vs. New York Times, et al, 972 F. Supp. 804 (1997) — reversed 7-2 (Dissenting: Stevens, Breyer)

Sonia Sotomayor is a judge who has been humiliated with an 8-0 smackdown of her judicial reasoning.

And the case that is “pending review” – Ricci v. DeStefano (aka the New Haven firefighter case), is precisely the sort of terrible and racist reasoning that should demonstrate how unfit for the highest court in the land Sonia Sotomayor truly is.

A couple of paragraphs from an excellent article on the case:

Mr. Ricci’s saga started in 2003. At the time, he was one of more than 100 firemen who took a written and oral exam that the New Haven Fire Department (NHFD) administered in order to determine whom it would promote to fill 15 openings for lieutenant and captain positions. In preparation for the test, Ricci, a dyslexic who struggles with reading and retaining information, simply outworked most of his competition. He spent more than $1,000 to purchase books that the city had recommended as useful study guides, and he studied for 8 to 13 hours each day. When the test scores were ultimately tabulated, Ricci’s name was near the top of the list. The promotion should have been his.

It didn’t happen that way. It soon emerged that New Haven’s black firefighters, on average, had performed quite poorly on the same test that Ricci had aced. In fact, not a single African American had scored high enough to qualify for a promotion. When word of this got around, a number of local black leaders with political influence thundered that the exam itself was to blame, arguing alternately that it was racially biased on the one hand, and a poor predictor of an applicant’s potential to fulfill the duties of a leadership position on the other.

This is exactly the sort of thing that Roberts was talking about in his analogy.  We had a law in place; we had a universally recognized system of promotion.  One man, in particular, tried to work as hard as he could within the rules that were supposed to be for everyone, and aced the exam.  But Sonia Sotomayor decided she didn’t like the results, and so she changed the rules quite literally after the game had already been played.

Let’s demand a justice who rules according to the law without prejudice rather than a justice who makes prejudice a basis for her rulings.  Let’s demand a justice who understands that she is under the rule of law rather than a justice who uses the legal system to “make policy.”

We don’t need another radical in robes.

The American people have enough black-robed masters and government bureaucrats imposing their will upon us in blatant disregard of the intent of the Constitution which is supposed to be our source of law.  We have enough officials who conflate their own power and explode the size and role of government as master over every sphere of our lives.  We can do far better than Sonia Sotomayor.