I’m just wondering how this isn’t a racist attitude. Honest, true, but if having a latin female on the court means introducing an “anti-white-male” element, then how is it that having a vast majority of white males on the court isn’t keeping in place an anti-female, anti-minority “traditional core”? How is it that women and minorities are supposed to trust these white males to take their interests into account when interpreting the law, if the assumption is that anyone but a white male isn’t part of this “traditional core”, but instead represents “third world tribalism”?

It would seem to me that your attitude only affirms the notion that only by having actual minorities and females on the court can the court be assured to protect the rights and values of those people, who you define as apart from our “traditional core”? You seem to acknowledge that race and gender plays a part in how the court adjudicates, and that to keep the court adjudicating in favor of white males, we have to keep the court dominated by white males. Again, this is an honest admission, but clearly it affirms the power of race, gender, and background, more than the rantings of any chauvinistc feminist or minority rights advocate. If anything, it confirms that such people have been right all along, and simply cannot trust those who wish to stack the court with white, conservative males.

Has it not been obvious that the people who are repeating all of the precious P.C. tropes in question have been Sotomayor’s critics? They are the ones demanding that an absurdly high standard of “sensitivity” be enforced. The manufactured outrage is there for all to see, just as it is with every diversity shakedown, which many of the same people also claim to find outrageous. They are the ones at the moment who are claiming that a few comments should destroy a public career. We all know that if the tables were turned they would be decrying the same tactics as an inquisition. If they have been unwilling to stand up to smears against their own allies in the past, because the stigma and pressure were already too great for them to resist, that’s no excuse to buy into applying the absurd standard to someone else.

No one here is saying that there should not be rigorous scrutiny of Sotomayor. No one here is saying that there shouldn’t be an effort to resist and oppose the nomination. They don’t have the votes to stop it, but there is no reason why Republicans need to vote to confirm her. There were rumblings from some red-state Democrats, including Ben Nelson, that they might go so far as to filibuster Obama’s nomination if the judge were too far left for them. Do you think the idiotic lines of attack on Sotomayor have made Nelson more or less likely to break ranks and oppose her nomination?

I’m not bored with the question of affirmative action. I think it is a remedy that, if it ever made sense, has become redundant and harmful. I think Ricci and his fellow firefighters who filed suit with him have gotten a raw deal, and conservatives should be pushing for an end to quotas and preferences of all kinds in hiring. That means that the thing to do now is to channel the energy that is being wasted making weak, ineffective attacks on Sotomayor towards pushing for legislative reform of the relevant statutes to make such outcomes less likely. That isn’t glamorous, and it isn’t as useful for fundraising (which a cynic might suspect is the main reason for most of the controversy), but it will actually address the problem that led to the wrong done to Ricci et al.

Watching conservatives unload on Sotomayor with these weak, easily-refuted arguments annoys me because they are first of all probably not going to stop her confirmation in any case, and in the process they are buying into all of the policing of thought and expression that only serves to empower their opponents in the long run. Woe to the Republican who now makes an innocuous comment that violates the new Sotomayor-inspired standard of super-precious sensitivity. What I can’t understand for the life of me is why conservatives want to protest a double standard by reinforcing a stigma that they otherwise think is excessive. Do you think that white men and conservatives are going to be better off in an even more hyper-sensitive atmosphere in which words are even more easily distorted and twisted to serve someone’s political turn? This is the rhetorical equivalent of getting into a spending contest with the left–whatever else happens, conservatives end up on the losing end. But, no, by all means, charge into the guns with flags raised high. That will show them.

She’s not a racist so much as a typical Latin and Female chauvinist, who is looking out for her tribe and, more importantly, joining the big ANTI-WHITE-MALE COALITION that is the LEFT. Well, we should not permit this opposition to America’s traditional core and Third World tribalism to continue to advance, and we should oppose it with flags waving whenever it rears its head.

In a rare defense of Goldberg, what you’re saying only works if the other side agrees with you and decides to call a truce. As it is, they don’t and they won’t. So the only option left is to hit them where you can. In this case it will be pathetically ineffective, but there is some logic behind it.

I think gets into a larger point which I’ve hammered on before; that the status quo has been New Deal/Great Society legislation, jurisprudence, and government behavior over the past 60 or so years. If one defines radical as not being the status quo, its clear that Obama, and his nominee, are clearly in an almost unbroken line of individuals and policy that have reigned over America, with some notable deviations, for roughly a fourth or so of its history.

I agree that it’s politically inconvenient for them. But if the problem is the bad state of current law, which Sotomayor happens to be following, she can’t simultaneously be quite the precedent-shredding, empathy-filled radical other people are claiming that she is. There may be powerful lines of attack against Sotomayor’s confirmation. I just haven’t seen any of them yet, and the more time that is wasted with these sideshows the less time there will be to talk about the rest of her record.

I’m curious about her views on civil liberties and executive power generally and during wartime in particular. Like Noah, I would find her views on Kelo much more interesting than what has been discussed so far. There might even be a way for the dreaded empathy to lead to overturning Kelo, given its potentially disproportionately negative impact on poor and middling households and communities.

It is remarkable, given her length of service, how little Sotomayor has written on the “hot” issues. In Ricci, did she seek to avoid leaving a paper trail? If so, one can interpret it as prudence or guile; take your pick.

My impression is that people are taking sides without knowing much. If it’s an Obama appointment, it must be bad (good).

As for the identity angle, the endangered species is white Protestant men, under whom the country managed to prosper for 200 years. There must be some around–search the putting greens, yacht and Elks’ Clubs. The “blue-tail fly” can’t have gotten them all.

Presumably had Sotomayor found for the plaintiff, we would now be hearing about how all that infamous “empathy” caused her to side with the dyslexic man against a municipality … as so many people would be only too happy to tell us

Exactly. Flipped on Hannity’s radio show for a moment in the car yesterday, and he characterized Sotomayor as being on “the extreme left” of the spectrum. Of course, he can’t possibly know this, but it was very telling. I’d read a day before the AP’s breakdown of various “hopefuls” (if one can call them that) and it seems Sotomayor has made few hot-button decisions and has virtually no record of outside activism or politics, as some of the others who were being talked about.

Hannity: “the extreme left.” In fact, I’m certain he used a superlative in there — most, worst, awfulest — but I can’t remember it and don’t want to stoop to his level by simply making it up.

Anyway. I’ve long wondered what would happen to Hannity/Limbaugh/etc. if, somehow, one could capture them and submit them to Enhanced Information Techniques — eyes glued open, reading Eunomia or Upturned Earth. For some semblance of “balance,” maybe even a bit of Rachel Maddow or All Things Considered.

Though we’d spare them Olbermann, which has got to be torture.