Posts Tagged ‘double standards’

Well at the Volokh Conspiracy (via Glenn) we discover what law professor Louis Michael Seidman of Georgetown thinks of the hearings so far. He doesn’t like what he heard yesterday:

Speaking only for myself (I guess that’s obvious), I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor’s testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified. How could someone who has been on the bench for seventeen years possibly believe that judging in hard cases involves no more than applying the law to the facts? First year law students understand within a month that many areas of the law are open textured and indeterminate—that the legal material frequently (actually, I would say always) must be supplemented by contestable presuppositions, empirical assumptions, and moral judgments. To claim otherwise—to claim that fidelity to uncontested legal principles dictates results—is to claim that whenever Justices disagree among themselves, someone is either a fool or acting in bad faith.

Not what you’d call a ringing enforcement is it.

I’m not a law professor, or a lawyer, I’ve only argued one civil case before a judge and jury personally against an experienced lawyer (I won.) so I can’t claim anywhere near the experience of law or how it works that the many lawyers who blog can, but I can say this…

…I’ve read Glenn Reynolds for a lot of years and I don’t recall too many assessments this blunt about an individual’s professional competence that wasn’t cloaked in comedy:

If her politics were different, this would be clear evidence that she is unfit.

Professor Reynolds is one of the most honest men in blogs and has been for a decade. The law is his profession, he teaches the law. If after this statement anyone is going to convince me that Judge Sotomayor deserves this position they have quite a hill to climb. Her professional experience on her resume may meet the minimums necessary for the position she is up for, but that’s all.

Haven’t really been in the mood to blog lately but I was really taken by the idea the Judge Sotomayor was on the board of an organization that she seems to have no idea what it advocates or believes.

Any normal person who would attempt to make that case would be laughed out of that room.

It is rather amazing to see this going on. Jeff Sessions has been devastating, but unfortunately it will be ignored by the MSM.

After a night of studying Sotomayor’s testimony, Republicans will have more questions about what they view as her misrepresentation of her record. GOP senators know that Democrats are committed to confirming Sotomayor, and, with a 12-to-7 advantage in the committee and 60 votes in the full Senate, they don’t need any Republican support to get it done. But they are troubled by her answers, by her attempts to deny the clear meaning of her words from the past. And that could result in growing, rather than diminishing, Republican opposition. “We heard a lot of things that were not factually buttoned down,” the senior GOP aide said. “If that’s because she and the White House think she has the votes and doesn’t have to answer, then some Republicans are going to be troubled by that.”

I can’t see how any conservative can support this person, and unless a liberal or moderate doesn’t believe that the truth is important or actually believing what you say you believe matters this has to be a problem.

This vote should be a litmus test for conservatives, any republican who can vote for this woman after yesterday’s testimony is not worth our votes or our money.

US News finds it difficult

Posted: July 9, 2009 by datechguy in catholic, opinion/news
Tags: , ,

Via Hotair we see US news figures that it’s time that family values just go away:

So it’s time for a bipartisan cease-fire. Bipartisan because readers will write in with their list of cheating Democrats—but it’s the GOP that, as a party, has styled itself as pious defender of marriage. Take the marriage front out of the culture war. Spare us any more awkward scenes of a pol, aggrieved spouse standing stone-faced next to him, pronouncing himself a sinner and then refusing to answer more questions (or, Sanford-style, giving a solo performance with more mawkish details than we really want or need).

And that cease-fire ought to extend to the latest incarnation of “family values,” the crusade to “protect” traditional marriage from gays who want to marry each other. The Republicans’ peccadillo problem undermines their (sometimes contrived) moralism on the issue. They should spend more time protecting marriages from internal problems than trying to gin up voter angst over bogus external threats.

So apparently because some people can’t keep their vows we need to change the definition of marriage, what nonsense. Hey lets follow this to it’s natural end. Let’s not pass judgment at all.

If a person doesn’t want to hire a woman because she is a woman we should let it go.

If a person doesn’t want to rent to blacks or hispanics or asians we should let it go, after all haven’t we all guilty of racial sensitivity?

Hey and that whole civil war thing too, who were we to pass any sort of judgment on another culture, if you don’t like slavery don’t own a slave.

And furthermore we object to places like Saudi Arabia that don’t allow the vote to woman, after all we have people who abuse women here.

And that whole honor killing thing, hey we can’t make a cultural judgment when ours is so imperfect.

And those people who object to kids using drugs, hey some of them might have used pot when they were young so we certainly have no business judging them, in fact we should do the whole Sharon Stone and put not only the condoms but the coke and pot on the table in bowls, after all we know they are going to do it anyway.

Why even have marriage vows, we know men can’t keep them, in fact why have any laws restricting sex at all, it’s just not in the nature of men and we all know that in the 60’s we celebrate the Woodstock generation and free love who are we to say.

And hey sometimes we have a friend in a police force fix a parking ticket so we certainly can’t object to lobbyists trying to get a good deal for their clients.

This is the end result of this kind of nonsense. And nonsense it is. The idea that when you can’t always live up to your values you drop the values is the path of the coward and the fool. As the saying goes:

“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried.”

I’m sure the author would like to leave it untried. A lot easier to do what you want when there are no rules, isn’t it? Talk about someone who needs to read the Pope: Caritas in veritate.

A little too far for me

Posted: June 23, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: ,

As you would know from reading this blog I don’t have a lot of love for radical Islam but this proposal from Sarkozy of France is a bridge too far for me:

Speaking at the Palace of Versailles, Mr. Sarkozy confronted one of the most hotly debated social issues in France, saying there was no room in the republic for burqas, the garments that some Muslim women wear to cloak their bodies and faces.

“The issue of the burqa is not a religious issue. It is a question of freedom and of women’s dignity,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “The burqa is not a religious sign. It is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission, of women.”

To enthusiastic applause, he said, “I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory.”

You don’t assimilate people and control radical Islam by denying people rights any more than you control crime by stringent gun laws. It is necessary to instead enforce the law consistently across the board. Put police in Muslim areas in force. Make sure that if Jews, Gays or anyone else are attacked or intimidated that the full penalty of the law awaits them. Make sure that the rights and responsibilities of citizenship apply to all.

This is a case of barking up the wrong tree.