White House tries to prove Sotomayor's smarts

[Bozita]

Source: The Hill

White House tries to prove Sotomayor's smarts
By Alexander Bolton
Posted: 05/27/09 04:43 PM


White House officials have assembled a squad of distinguished legal experts to rebut charges that Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s Supreme Court pick, is an intellectual lightweight who puts her political views ahead of the law.

White House advisers and allies have scrambled to repair the damage to Sotomayor’s reputation inflicted by an article published early this month in The New Republic, a left-leaning magazine, which painted Sotomayor as “not that smart.”

Several prominent legal scholars, including law school classmates of Sotomayor, assembled by White House officials Wednesday afternoon sought to dispel that characterization during a conference call with reporters.

Martha Minow, a professor at Harvard Law School and onetime classmate of Sotomayor, said that she teaches Sotomayor’s opinions at Harvard and that her body of work “shows a great deal of craft.” Minow also called Sotomayor a judge who takes a “careful adjudicatory approach.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/white-house-works-to-dispel-not-that-smart-sotomayor-rap-2009-05-27.html

[Oregone]

1. She's no Harriet Myers

[AlbertCat]

12. Or Clarence Thomas!

[lapfog_1]

2. Nobody, and I mean nobody

graduates summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton, without having an exceptionally fine intellect.

[Twinguard]

7. Bingo

Keep your eyes peeled for "gotcha" questions.

Personally, I can't wait to see this racist, activist, dumb, affirmative action pick in action. I'm popping popcorn, this is going to be good.

[Cha]

3. "tnr, a left leaning magazine"?

It was moderate and right leaning during the bush years.. when I stopped my subscription.

[elleng]

19. Was pure LEFT when I first subscribed,

many years ago; I quit them when they turned, WAY before bush.

[Triana]

4. The MINUTE they start defending the negative definitions the wingnuts have created of this woman...

...they have LOST.

They have LOST.

I hope she is somehow confirmed anyway - but the WORST WORST WORST thing they could do is start defending against the wingnuts DEFINITIONS of her.

All that does - is VALIDATE them. Ugh.

[AlbertCat]

13. They have LOST.

In a way. Why is the RIGHT still defining where things go?

Because 1) the MSM is still run by the RW or is mostly still afraid of being labeled "Liberal".
2)Many many people we never hear about but run things from the long Bush years.... and the long Reagan years AND even Clinton years (remember how the RW Congress was then?)... that's a real long time of RW prominance... they are still in DC doing what they do. DC is always way behind the times and clueless. Go there! See the monuments! See the museums! But you can feel the "bubble". It's like an isolated prep school or something. And the rudest city I've ever been to. Makes NYC look like Victorian Garden Party.

[frazzled]

5. What "damage to her reputation"?

The Hill needs to prove that assertion, not just throw it out as a given.

FWIW, Martha Minnow is the daughter of Newton Minnow, the Kennedy-era FCC chair of "television is a vast wasteland" fame).

[high density]

6. What damage to her reputation?

Who believes that crap?

[madaboutharry]

8. There is also an unspoken theme

to the "She's not that smart" memo. That theme, in my opinion, is that Sotomayor is an "affirmative action judge" who was pushed along because she was 1) a woman 2) a latino and 3) from the projects in the Bronx.

It is the same "not one of us" attack that dogged Bill Clinton (white trash) and Barack Obama (where do I begin).

The GOP will always be a restricted country club.

[rocktivity]

9. HIT PIECE ALERT!!!

Where's the proof that she ISN'T smart, The Hill? Is this your idea of being fair and balanced? Who are these critics and what are their possible political agendas? Doesn't this make you part of the problem?

:headbang:
rocktivity

[struggle4progress]

10. Princeton degree. Yale degree. Nominated for S District NY by Bush I and confirmed by Senate 1991.

Nominated for 2nd Circuit by Clinton and confirmed by Senate 1998. Lecturer at NYU and Adjunct at Colombia.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. The smears have begun.

Courtesy of The Hill. :puke:

[Bozita]

14. Now, here's a different report on the same WH conference call...

http://washingtonindependent.com/44606/will-sotomayor-disappoint-liberals

Will Sotomayor Disappoint Liberals?
By DAPHNE EVIATAR 5/27/09 5:29 PM


Having just listened to a conference call of legal experts set up by the White House to provide reporters the Obama administration’s spin on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, I have to wonder if liberals, when they’re done defending Judge Sotomayor from the right’s attacks, may end up being disappointed with the president’s choice.

According to the White House’s experts, President Obama’s just chosen an extremely cautious, legalistic nit-picker.

“She’s a lawyer’s lawyer,” said Paul Smith, a partner at Jenner & Block who participated in the call.

“She’s someone who cares about the craft, about the details of facts,” he said. “She’s a cautious lawyer….who was a corporate lawyer herself….She reads statutes narrowly.”

Harvard Law Professor Martha Minow described Sotomayor’s decision in a securities case that turned on the how Sotomayor read the word “buyer.” In fact, she read the law so literally that the Supreme Court reversed her, said Minow: “they said, ‘let’s be not so stingy’ ” about it.

Sotomayor’s opinions, according to Kevin Russell, a partner at Howe & Russell who writes for SCOTUSblog, reveal a “judicial modesty” that’s “very respectful of precedent.” In a case brought by the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, for example, she rejected a challenge to President George W. Bush’s “global gag rule,” which prevented foreign organizations receiving U.S. funding from using their own money to provide abortions or abortion assistance.

more...

[Xipe Totec]

15. If she's so smart, how come she won't release her birth certificate?

Oh, wait...

Wrong meme.


Never mind...

[high density]

18. I hope she doesn't have a crazy pastor too. NM

[bongbong]

16. Why bother?

I thought intellectualism was one of those "elitist" things that only America-haters did.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

17. you only have to mention Bush, Rush, Cheney, Palin, Rove's IQ

between them their IQ is probably 50

Joe six pack has an IQ of 160

[benld74]

20. IF Sotomayor is not that smart, I guess that makes SLAPPY an EINSTEIN

[steven johnson]

21. She sounds like she'll cut you off at the knees if not the scrotum if you're not prepared

Not everyone can deal with a strong woman.

"It's her style," said New York-based lawyer Julia Heit, who counts herself among Sotomayor's fans and who's practiced in Sotomayor's 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for three decades. "She wants answers. She wants the attorneys who appear before her to be prepared. And she's demanding, as she well should be.
"As an aside, I should say life will be easier when I don't have to confront her."

Sotomayor earned considerable praise among the lawyers quoted in the almanac. However, she also elicited critiques that range from "she can be a terror on the bench" and "she is temperamental and excitable" to "she can be a bit of a bully" and "she can get harsh at oral argument."

He further characterized Sotomayor as a "wonderful colleague" who doesn't mince words. He said she had "in a not insignificant number of cases changed my mind . . . both by charm, but mainly by the force of her legal argument."

Fischer, a Republican who's now in private practice, praised her as "one of the most prepared jurists I've ever argued before on every level."..."She ran a tight court," Mazurek said, "and that can result in some lawyers saying that she has a difficult temperament."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68949.html