A defense of some of Sotomayor's words that's kind of damning itself, part of it
...There's no denying that Republicans on the committee put Judge Sotomayor in a difficult moral position, and I need not elaborate on their own culpability for doing so. Either Judge Sotomayor had to misrepresent what she knows judges (all judges, conservative and liberal) do in hard cases, or she had to risk defeat. I'm willing to concede that this is not an easy choice, but I nonetheless think that she made a serious mistake...
A: If being questioned about things she's said and done puts her in a 'difficult moral position', that's her damn problem: they're SUPPOSED to question her on these things.
B: He seems to be saying that getting on the Supreme Court is worth 'misrepresenting what she knows', i.e. lying. If she's willing to lie and dissemble this way to get on the court, she's got no business being there.
Sen. Patrick Leahy sucks. Which we already knew, but still.
Trying to head off criticism of a controversial comment, Leahy misquoted Sotomayor’s own words in kicking off the second day of her confirmation hearings. . . .
LEAHY SAID: “You said that, quote, you ‘would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would reach wise decisions.’”
THE FACTS: If that’s all Sotomayor said, the quote would barely have mattered to opponents of her nomination. The actual quote, delivered in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley, was: “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.”
Leahy’s revision dropped the controversial part of the phrase, the part that has attracted charges of reverse racism.
Either that, or he's just a lying politician who wants his party in charge, no matter what.
You want to see where hate crimes laws and speech codes lead? Read this.
Steacy, for example, used his Nazi membership to write encouraging words to a racist group called B. C. White Pride. He praised them, told them their racist posters were "great" and promised to distribute their literature. Your tax dollars at work.
Other CHRC investigators went further. One praised Nazi leaders ( "I still say [Adrien] Arcand is our man!"); called for Canadian police to discriminate against blacks ( "exactly when will white cops understand that they should stand by THEIR race?!"); and trashed a Jewish youth group ( "if people spent the time building fellow WNs [White Nationalists] up rather than tearing them down we'd be dangerous. Unless your goal is to tear people down in which case go join Hillel or something.")
At least 12 CHRC prosecutions have been tainted by CHRC staff or witnesses using agent provocateur tactics like that. They've even written Nazi shorthand for "Heil Hitler".
Steacy testified that at least seven CHRC staff have access to Nazi membership accounts: Steacy himself, his two personal assistants, investigator Sandy Kozak, lawyer Giacomo Vigna, manager John Chamberlin, and former CHRC investigator and current serial witness and complainant Richard Warman.
By sheer numbers, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has more Nazi members than the tiny Canadian Nazi Party did when it briefly existed in the 1960s.
If real police and prosecutors behaved this way, they would be suspended and any criminal charges tainted by such misconduct would be stayed. Not so at the CHRC, which lacks an internal affairs office or written operational policies. It doesn't even have a code of ethics.
One last thing: it seems the nannies are just so concerned about tobacco that they want the military to ban smoking by troops, even in the friggin' war zone. I think this covers it nicely:
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