More Sotomayor

MB beat me to the punch, but I wanted to note two things from this CNN article about Sotomayor's nomination:

As she has risen through the judicial ranks, Sotomayor increasingly has drawn the ire and opposition of conservatives...

"Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written," said Wendy Long, counsel to the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network.

"She thinks that judges should dictate policy and that one's sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench."

Once again, I read conservatives' fantastical nightmares about a liberal candidate for some position, and all I can think is: If only. In reality, Sotomayor is moderately liberal, appointed to the US District Court in '92 by then-President George H.W. Bush, who isn't exactly known as a liberal firebrand.

Secondly, Iain emails about the article: "Brought home to me just what an awful state journalism is in. Other than her name, it gave me absolutely no independently verified facts about Sotomayor whatsoever—just a list of things that different people have said about her. This is all that most people will hear. I'm so accustomed to this now that I almost didn't notice."

And so gets laid the infuriatingly insipid groundwork for our national conversation about one of the 9 people who frequently make life-changing decisions for us all.