CJ MORGAN accuses KMB of cherry picking an out of context quote. Here is a link to the complete text of Judge Sotomayor's speech as reported in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Posters can decide for themselves whether seeing the context makes it better or worse.

Here is the paragraph in which the quote appeared

"Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, 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 not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. 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 experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

It is not clear whether the "inherent physiological … differences" refer only to gender or whether they refer to "national origins" as well.

Here is a link to the comments about Judge Sotomayor's nomination that appeared on the website of the National Council of The Race (La Raza).

http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/57500/

The NCLR is the leading Hispanic lobby group in the US.

Dear KMB,

Thank you for giving me the extra websites,
and explaining your concerns about this
particular nominee to the US Supreme Court.

While I can understand your concerns, I still
feel that you can rest assured that nothing
too extreme will be allowed to take place.
Sonia Sotomayor - if her nomination is a
"shoe-in," as you feel it will be, won't
actually have all the power to make any
decisions on her own. She's going to be
one of several judges on the Supreme Court.
And her opinion is one out of several, in the
final decision making process.

The Supreme Court as you know is the court of
final appeal in the US and it consists of at
least five judges (increased to eight in 1995),
including the Chief Justice.

I don't think there's much to be concerned about.

"Secondly, Telstra doesn't sell the white pages. They are free. Advertising appears to be insignificant. So it is not like Desktop Marketing's efforts actually lost Telstra any income. Indeed, to the extent that Desktop Marketing reduced the number of white pages distributed, it probably saved them money."

That puts a different light on it rstuart. I wonder what the main beef was, or if there was a beef at all just a kneejerk reaction?

Yellow Pages would be different because I believe subscribers pay an annual listing fee but the White Pages case is a bit perplexing.

Bring Sonia Sotomayor here WE NEED HER!

NEW DEVELOPMENTS.

ASymeonakis, CJ Morgan, Foxy

You may be interested in this from Associated Press.

"On Friday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Sotomayor acknowledges she made a poor word choice." [Referring to Sotomayor's now notorious comments about "a wise Latina woman"]

See:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gybh1tAJNK3I6fP1gJUsFOhJe5AAD98G6SF00

The "rags to riches" part of Sotomayor's story seems to be mostly her parent's doing. To quote AP again:

"… Sotomayor did not live her entire childhood in a housing project in the South Bronx — she spent most of her teenage years in a middle-class neighborhood, attending private school and winning scholarships to Princeton and then Yale. "

"She now earns more than $200,000 a year and owns a condominium in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood of million-dollar-plus homes. Her brother, Dr. Juan Sotomayor, is a physician in North Syracuse, N.Y., whose practice doesn't accept Medicaid or Medicare — programs for the poor and elderly — according to its Web site."

The picture that emerges from the AP article is of someone who mostly grew up in relatively comfortable circumstances and played the race / ethnicity card when it suited her.

A case of spin, spin and more spin

Judges are in contempt of Parliament whenever they sit without a jury. The Parliament of the Commonwealth is a bit meretricious , and tolerates other tarts, because it is not very diligent in maintaining its power and dignity. Between 1993 and 1996, Parliament basically legislated to abolish single Judge Courts, in line with s 79 Constitution by s 45 Trade Practices Act 1974, but not one Judge, supposedly bound by S 5 Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 and S 109 Constitution, has applied that law ever since.

It made it illegal to exclude ordinary Australians from participation in court proceedings, and in section 40 and 41 Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 the money to pay them to do so has been appropriated. S 45 Trade Practices Act 1974 makes any contract made to exclude anyone and if it lessens competition it is illegal. The States and Commonwealth should be competing to deliver justice to Australians. They are not, and in fact the entire legal profession is the last great cartel. Both the Commonwealth and States are corporations. They should not be entitled to delegate corporate power to an individual, but they have and it is corruption.

The Contract, made between the subjects and the Queen in 1900, said in s 79 Constitution, judges and courts, were required for the exercise of federal jurisdiction. Instead we have Judge and Court, when the words in S 5 says binding on the courts judges and people of every State notwithstanding anything in the laws of any State. It must be a hidden quality in a Judge that he never did punctuation at school, or learned the meaning of a Capital letter.

For a Judge to legislate, he or she is taking away the peoples prerogative. A court can disallow legislation, and the High Court did in 1996, but in 2004, in contempt of Parliament and their own Oath of Allegiance, took the Queen off all process issued out of the High Court. This is contempt of Parliament but not one member has yet complained. They don’t value Parliamentary authority, do they