SUPREME COURT NOMINEE SONIA SOTOMAYOR: "Not the brainiest of people"

Scary woman. "Courts make policy" (hat tip terri)

"Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, I know this is on tape and I know I shouldn't say that because we don't make law, I know."

It is interesting to me that the "adult" Bush administration spent months, years even, vetting candidates to the Supreme Court, going through their entire histories, rulings, papers etc.

She has all the bells and whistles of a leftist candidate - Hispanic? Check! Female? Check! Compelling narrative that tugs at the heart? Check!  Brain power? Irrelevant! The left doesn't like too much brains, too much reason and intellect. It confuses them.

Such stupidity is beneath contempt. I want Bork!

Sonia Sotomayor plays right into the policies of the ACLU and CAIR. We are all going to need legal defense funds. (hat tip Kim)

The Liberty Sphere: ALERT! Sotomayor Ruled Against Gun Rights!

He is replacing a lib with a lib ........ let us all pray for the long life of the rational men on the court.

UPDATE: And BTW, Shelomo points out the NY Times screwed up by by calling Sotomayor the "first Hispanic" selected for the court. Go here for the facts.

WASHINGTON (May 26) — President Barack Obama named federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, praising her as "an inspiring woman" with both the intellect and compassion to interpret the Constitution wisely. Obama said Sotomayor has more experience as a judge than any current member of the high court had when nominated, adding she has earned the "respect of colleagues on the bench," the admiration of lawyers who appear in her court and "the adoration of her clerks."

Jeffrey Rosen wrote at TNR back on May 4th:

Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.

The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench," as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue." (During one argument, an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, "Will you please stop talking and let them talk?") Second Circuit judge Jose Cabranes, who would later become her colleague, put this point more charitably in a 1995 interview with The New York Times: "She is not intimidated or overwhelmed by the eminence or power or prestige of any party, or indeed of the media."

Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. It's customary, for example, for Second Circuit judges to circulate their draft opinions to invite a robust exchange of views. Sotomayor, several former clerks complained, rankled her colleagues by sending long memos that didn't distinguish between substantive and trivial points, with petty editing suggestions--fixing typos and the like--rather than focusing on the core analytical issues.

Some former clerks and prosecutors expressed concerns about her command of technical legal details: In 2001, for example, a conservative colleague, Ralph Winter, included an unusual footnote in a case suggesting that an earlier opinion by Sotomayor might have inadvertently misstated the law in a way that misled litigants. The most controversial case in which Sotomayor participated is Ricci v. DeStefano, the explosive case involving affirmative action in the New Haven fire department, which is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court. A panel including Sotomayor ruled against the firefighters in a perfunctory unpublished opinion. This provoked Judge Cabranes, a fellow Clinton appointee, to object to the panel's opinion that contained "no reference whatsoever to the constitutional issues at the core of this case." (The extent of Sotomayor's involvement in the opinion itself is not publicly known.)

UPDATE: Tundra has this: Obama  Picks Activist Judge 

UPDATE: STACLU has this: Rush calls Sotomayor a racist!