Topic: NewsBusters
Warner Todd Huston has long been one of NewsBusters' more aggressively clueless writers, and he demonstrates his aggressive cluelessness once again in a July 14 post bashing Sonia Sotomayor.
Attacking a CNN commentary by Jeffrey Toobin calling Sotomayor "a liberal in the cautious and careful mode" of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Huston retorted with a barrage of unsupported and undefined assertions:
Since when is Ginsburg a “cautious and careful liberal”? She was, after all, once the chief litigator for women’s rights for the extremely leftist group the ACLU. The reason she was picked by President Bill Clinton to take a seat on the Court is because she was an activist liberal. Not “cautious” in the least.
Yet, here is Toobin remaking Ginsburg’s story into that of a stolid, “cautious” liberal so that he can give cover to Sotomayor’s activism on behalf of minority set asides. The truth of the matter is, however, there is nothing “cautious” about either Sotomayor’s or Ginsburg’s liberalism. They are both of the extreme variety compared to the average, conservative Democrat’s.
Huston offers no evidence that either Sotomayor or Ginsburg are "extreme," let alone his definiton of "extreme" vis-a-vis his definition of an "average, conservative Democrat."
Huston then takes on the "wise Latina" comment:
Her supporters have said that this quote has been taken out of context and that read in context with the rest of the speech, this single sentence culled from the whole is easily misconstrued. But that is simply not the case. The New York Times helpfully published the entire speech and there is no way, when all is said and done, not to understand that Sotomayor is asserting in a straight forward manner that minorities -- "Latinas" in particular -- are better judges than white men. She further asserts that white men are less likely to have such experiences that will make them a good judge unless they are fortuitous enough to have reached "moments of enlightenment" that will put them on par with minorities.
Put plainly, she is saying "Latinas" make better judges simply by virtue of being Latinas. That is as perfect an example of racist sentiment as can be imagined.
One must admire the chutzpah of Huston acknowledging complaints that Sotomayor's statement was taken out of context -- then going ahead and taking it out of context anyway. The context, of course, is that Sotomayor was referring specifically to "race and sex discrimination cases" -- which Huston mentions nowhere in his screed and conveniently omits from the speech excerpt he included in his post.
Huston then made a big deal about how "five out the six cases that Sotomayor decided in lower courts that appeared before the Supremes were reversed by that court" -- even though he lists seven cases. Huston didn't mention that the Supreme Court typically reverses a large majority of the appeals court cases it considers, nor did he mention that prior to his elevation to the high court, at least four rulings Samuel Alito made as an appellate judge were overturned by the Supreme Court.
If Sotomayor's reversal rate disqualifes her, Alito'sreversal rate should have disqualifed him, right?
Huston can't be bothered by such trivia. He's too busy smearing Sotomayor as "A racist with low grades and a sense of entitlement that has been reversed or scolded in five out of the six cases of hers that have appeared before past Supreme Court sessions."
Yes, it seems Huston really does graduating summa cum laude from Princeton is evidence of "low grades."
