Joe Lieberman (I, CT) has been a stalwart against the Democrat government healthcare plan. When the Democrats found out that they could not get any Republicans to vote for the monstrosity, they decided to put pressure on poor old Joe Lieberman. He resisted pretty well, until it was suggested that his wife’s salary should be withheld until he supported the bill. Shortly after that he caved and is now suggesting that he will support the bill with some minor changes.

The problem with Joe Lieberman is that he was right on the issue up until he caved in to Democrat pressure. Joe Lieberman has a problem that way. He knows what is right and takes a stand on the issues that is right. Then, he gets pressure from Democrats and he caves. When he tells us what caused him to change his mind, it is always something rather trivial. I have a feeling that the real reason is something like the suggested withholding of his wife’s salary until he caves. I have no basis for that feeling, except that the reason given by Joe Lieberman does not make any sense. He had a sensible position and was defending it strongly. Then, for almost nothing, he changes his mind. That just does not pass the smell test.

This change by Joe Lieberman seems to give the Democrats their magic 60 votes to ram their healthcare bill down our throats. That the Democrats persist in ramming the bill down our throats when the polls show that over 60% of the public does not want the bill in any way, does not make sense on the surface. It only makes sense when you consider what the Democrats get out of the bill. They get control over everyone in the country when the bill becomes law. Then, they will regain their majorities by claiming that the Republicans will take away healthcare. The fatal flaw in this scenario is the fact that the healthcare bill does not become active for three years after being enacted by Congress. That would give us time to elect people to repeal the bill. If the bill gets repealed before the implementation starts, nobody will be impacted at all.

Since the Democrats are conducting most of their negotiations in secret, it is difficult to keep up with exactly what is in the bill. Things are going in and out of the bill on an almost hourly basis. When we finally learn what is really in the bill, it will be too late to do much about it.

That our Senators and Representatives are even debating this bill is something I do not understand. It is obvious that the bill is unconstitutional. Anyone who can read can understand that the Constitution does not include anything that gives Congress or the President the authority to take over our health care system. Our Senators, Congressmen and President all take an oath of office. In that oath, they all agree to defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. You cannot defend the Constitution and ignore what it says at the same time. That is just not possible. You either believe in the Constitution or you do not believe in the Constitution. If you believe in the Constitution, you live by what it says. If you do not believe in the Constitution, you have no business being an elected representative of the people. Anyone who votes for this Democrat bill obviously does not believe in the Constitution as written. The Constitution puts handcuffs on the government by telling it what it cannot do and then reserves all other power in the people. People voting for this bill believe that there are no limits on the power of government. That is an unconstitutional position to take.

My hope is that this bill is challenged and sent to the Supreme Court to be thrown out. Even the Democrats, including Sonia Sotomayor, should be able to read the Constitution and see that this bill is unconstitutional.  I expect that the vote would be something like 6-3 to throw it out. This is a no brainer when it comes to whether it is constitutional or not.

With Lieberman’s flip-flop things are not looking good. That the bill still has not passed is a positive sign. That the Democrats are calling everyone names is also a good thing. If they were confident of victory they would not be calling everyone names. There is still hope that this bill can be defeated. With each Democrat that shows that they have no scruples, the hope diminishes. But, you hate to have anything go to the Supreme Court to determine if it is constitutional or not.

Since I work during the Sotomayor hearings, I do not get to hear them live. So, I have to rely on news reports and talk shows to highlight important things that happen during the hearings for each day.

Today, I was listening to the Mike Gallagher show and he played a clip from yesterday’s hearing that would have caused an accident had I actually been driving at that time. I was stopped at a red light when I heard the clip of the question by Senator John Cornyn from Oklahoma asking if there is a right to self defense. As anyone who has read the Constitution knows, the second amendment gives people the right to bear arms. The 14^th amendment says that a citizen of the United States shall not be deprived of Life, Liberty or Property without due process of law. Put those two amendments together and you have a right to self defense. To my knowledge, every state gives their citizens the right to defend themselves against someone who would try to take it. That would make Senator Cornyn’s question as a no-brainer type of a question for someone who knows anything about the Constitution and believes what it says. A citizen of the United States has the right to self defense.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the other hand gave an answer that shall forever be classified as one of the poorest answers ever given by a Supreme Court nominee. She said that she did not know of any cases that the Supreme Court had taken up that addressed that question. That was not what Senator Cornyn had asked, so he asked again. She again tried to evade the answer. Again, Senator Cornyn asked the question in a different more direct way in asking her opinion on the matter, not whether there was case law. She still tried to evade the answer. During this exchange some telling things were at play. Either Judge Sotomayor has no clue as to what the Constitution says or she knows and wants to end it. It was obvious from her non-answers that she believes that citizens of the United States do not have a right to self-defense. If she felt they did have a right, she would have said so. If she did not believe that they had a right, she would try to avoid the answer. Since that is what she did, the obvious answer is that she does not believe in a citizen’s right to self defense. The logical conclusion from that answer is that she does not believe that Americans have a right to keep and bear arms as well.

One of the important requirements for a Supreme Court Justice is a command of the English language. Sonia Sotomayor displayed a rather poor command of English by confusing imminent and eminent. She used eminent when she meant imminent. That may seem like a small misstep, but in someone who will end up analyzing every word in a case brought before her a mistake like that would be costly. The other Justices on the Court all displayed a fantastic command of the English language, even those that I disagree with know the language well. Judge Sotomayor would be at a huge disadvantage in the court if she cannot use words properly.

Yesterday was not a good day for Sonia Sotomayor. The Republicans asked her questions that she was not prepared to answer. As a result, they had her floundering for answers. When she has a prepared script, she comes across as average. When she gets off script, she is obviously over matched by even some of the light weight Senators that were asking questions. Now, to give credit where credit is due, Senator Cornyn is a medical doctor and extremely intelligent. To be outmatched by him is not a disgrace for 99% of the population. Sonia Sotomayor is attempting to be a Supreme Court Justice. She is not part of the 99% of the population. She is supposed to be part of the top 1% of all Americans just to be nominated. She is showing by her answers that she is not in the top 1% at all. She is more likely in the top half at best.

For his first Supreme Court selection, Barack Obama did not pick one of the best qualified. He picked an affirmative action nominee. That lowers the quality of the court dramatically. Stephen Breyer is not one of the top Justices on the Supreme Court, but he is no slouch either. He can hold his own with almost anyone on the bench, with the exception of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Roberts. Sonia Sotomayor will not be able to match wits with any of the other justices. She will be the brunt of jokes and will not even understand what is going on.

If Sonia Sotomayor had any personal integrity, she would realize that if she cannot match wits with Senators, she will not be able to match wits with the other Supreme Court Justices. Since she would obviously be the bottom of the barrel, she would either have to spend 10 times more time than anyone else or be the laughing stock of the bench. The bad part is her unintelligent vote would have the same weight as that of Justice Scalia. Talk about injustice. That would be the height of injustice on every case she sat and decided. She should remove her name from consideration and allow Barack Obama to get his first selection right. Since she has always been an affirmative action pick, I doubt that she will see anything wrong with being the affirmative action pick for the Supreme Court. That would just confirm my judgment of her intelligence.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor started her confirmation hearings this morning. Senator Leahy started things off with a disjointed discourse designed to blunt any Republican opposition to her nomination. What his ramblings did was open more questions as to how he could justify his comments. There had been no evidence put forward, to date, that would back up anything that he said. Senator Orrin Hatch referenced Judge Sotomayor’s rise from relative poverty to the cusp of the Supreme Court of the land. There are so many of those rise from poverty stories, it is a wonder that anyone would think it unusual in America. In a socialist country, the rise would be unusual, but in America things like that happen every day.

Since I started taking notice of Supreme Court nominations, Judge Sotomayor has to be the least qualified to sit on the bench that reached the hearing stage. There were some that were nominated that washed out prior to getting hearings and they do not count. Judge Sotomayor disqualified herself from the bench when she made the racist or sexist comment (or both) that a Latina woman would be a better judge than a white male. Nobody that was racist or a sexist with comments like that has made it to the hearing stage since probably the early 1900’s. Back then, there were Supreme Court Justices that belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. Today, finding someone with views like that is unusual. You would have to hunt pretty hard to find someone with racist or sexist views like that. Unfortunately, they do not seem to be uncommon in the Obama administration.

Judge Sotomayor will almost surely be confirmed by the Senate. The Republicans have said that they will not filibuster the nomination. For the Republicans to filibuster a Supreme Court nomination is wrong, even with one as bad as this is. The trick will be to get Judge Sotomayor to disqualify herself in the confirmation hearings. That will be nearly impossible as she has undoubtedly been told what to say by Democrats. The Democrats hold 60 votes in the Senate, so stopping her nomination is almost impossible. The best the Republicans can hope to do with this nomination is to prepare the public for the next bad nominee by Obama.

The Democrats have let the cat out of the bag on their plan of attack for the nomination process. The Republicans plan to bring in Frank Ricci, the winning firefighter in the suit that she thought was unimportant. The Democrats plan to destroy Frank Ricci instead of hearing what he has to say. That is typical for the Democrats. They never listen to facts; they just plan to attack the truth instead of listening. That way they make people not want to confront them. It is a shame that they have to stoop to this kind of tactic whenever they know they are on the losing side of an argument. They should be willing to accept that they cannot win all arguments.

The Democrats are trying to portray Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a strict constructionist on Constitutional issues. For them to make that claim is laughable. Just take the Ricci case as an example. It is an easy case to decide and she got it wrong. She has had 60% of her cases overturned that were brought to the Supreme Court. That is a higher rate than almost any other appellate judge in the country. It at least puts her in the lower half of the appellate judges. If her rate were 40% overturned, it would be a much better case that she tries to follow the law as written. The best case would be if her rate were close to 0%. Then the claim would be supported by facts. Right now, their claim is extremely weak.

We will be bombarded with Senators trying to impress the TV cameras this week. We will get little information about Sonia Sotomayor, except for what the Democrats what us to hear. That is backwards from what should be happening. We should learn a lot about the nominee and hear little about the Senators. It is a shame that we have actors in these positions, instead of real Senators. Whatever happened to the true statesmen like Daniel Webster and Thomas Jefferson? We are stuck with Barbara Boxer. That is a poor trade. I guess you get what you deserve. We have been working towards the Barbara Boxers of the world for many years. We have tried to marginalize the Daniel Webster’s and Thomas Jefferson’s.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Ricci v deStefano case that was decided by the Supreme Court. At the time I had read only preliminary reports. The report I read said that the decision was 9-0. At least that is how I remembered it. It also said that the underlying Constitutional issue was not to be decided and the vote on that one was 8-1 with Justice Thomas the only one voting to decide the Constitutional issue. The actual vote on the Ricci case was 5-4. Some reports had the decision as 5-4 and others as 9-0. The ones with 9-0 were reading Justice Ginsberg’s minority report and interpreting it.

Justice Ginsberg and Justice Scalia said basically the same thing in their minority and majority reports, respectively. Both said that the second court of appeals had not followed the law and was not doing their job. They also said that the standard for deciding whether the case should be decided one way or another should not be whether the defendant would be sued, but whether they would be held liable. In this case, the city of New Haven was obviously liable in denying the firefighters their promotions. The only real difference between the reports by Ginsberg and Scalia is in how they determined how the court should have responded. Justice Scalia said that the court should decide in favor of the firefighters as they had been discriminated against. Justice Ginsberg said that the firefighters deserved the sympathy of the court and that was the proper remedy of the court. So, the difference was in how to apply the law, not in whether the city was liable. That was so obvious that they felt anyone could have seen that.

For the most part, my blog of yesterday was correct. I was incorrect in a few particulars and those I wanted to correct today. The main one was the actual final vote of the Supreme Court. That actual vote was 5-4. I reported the vote as 9-0. Rush Limbaugh among others said that the difference between Scalia and Ginsberg was so small that in effect the vote was 9-0.

I was correct in my assessment that the Supreme Court was voting on the fitness of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to sit on the Supreme Court. I stand by this assessment as all nine justices voted that she showed exceedingly poor judgment as an appeals court judge in this case. I am sure that all nine of the Justices would agree that anyone with judgment that poor would not make a good Supreme Court Justice.

Some liberal pundits are saying that Judge Sotomayor would be the liberal equivalent to Justice Scalia. That is something that has no evidence. Of course, liberals do not need evidence to conclude that something is true. Look at global warming and you see that all you have to do is say something is true and a liberal will believe it. So, if you say that Judge Sotomayor will be the liberal equivalent of Justice Scalia, liberals believe it. She has not shown any ability to write. Her writings have been exceedingly dull at best. She does write better than Barack Hussein Obama, but my 10 year old writes better than Obama. She can give a decent speech, but her speeches show none of the intellectual prowess that Justice Scalia is famous for. I guess that other than speaking and writing, she would be the equal of Justice Scalia. Of course, if you subtract writing and speaking there isn’t much left to go on.

Sonia Sotomayor is an intellectual lightweight. She is a racist. She writes poorly. Her speeches are decent, but nothing to stay up late for. Other than being an average speaker, she perfectly reflects the person that nominated her for the Supreme Court. If she actually makes it to the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas will make her look like the fool she really is. Chief Justice Roberts will also make her look like an intellectual lightweight, though he is much more laid back than Justices Scalia and Thomas.

Sonia Sotomayor should not be on the Supreme Court. That is a true statement, unless there is information that has not come to light yet. Since Democrats would have put out the best information first, I doubt that we will find out anything better on her in the coming few weeks. Given the preponderance of Democrats she will probably be confirmed by the Senate. That would be a travesty. It would not be the first, nor sadly will it be the last.

Today, the Supreme Court announced their decision on the Ricci case involving the white firefighters that were denied a promotion entirely because of race. In effect, this decision was a referendum on Sonia Sotomayor because she was one of the judges that denied the firefighters their day in court at the appeals court level. She did not think that the case was important enough to even give it the time of day. The Supreme Court thought otherwise and took the case. They made a decision and unlike most Supreme Court decisions, this one was not even close. The vote was 9-0. The Supreme Court said that the white and Hispanic firefighters were denied the promotions because of race and race alone.

Barack Obama and the Sonia Sotomayor supporters have to be blown away by the decision. In recent years we have been accustomed to decisions that were 5-4. A decision that was not close was 6-3. This one was 9-0, which rarely happens in the high profile cases that get reported on the news. In effect, the Supreme Court was saying that Sonia Sotomayor was outside of the judicial mainstream. How the decision will play out in the final analysis is yet to be written. That is because Democrats are so good at spinning bad news as good news. But, any way you cut it, this is bad news for Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

For those that wonder what the Ricci case was about, I will give a short report. This short report will get the basic ideas right, but may contain an error or two. The city that started this whole affair wanted to promote some firefighters to Captain and Lieutenant. They contracted with a firm that specialized in producing racial neutral tests. The test was determined to be racial neutral before it was given. When the results were announced, 20 white and 4 Hispanic firefighters had passed the test out of the pool of just under 40 who took the test for Captain. The results were similar for Lieutenant. After announcing the results, the city did not certify them as they decided that not enough black firefighters had made the list. In the city’s decision, the test was racially biased because not enough black firefighters made the list. After throwing out the results of the test, 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter sued the city. The case became known as the Ricci case after one of the firefighters.

At the appeals court, Sonia Sotomayor and the majority decided that the case did not deserve a decision. They tried to bury it with a non-decision. They were forced to make a decision, so they just rubberstamped the lower court’s decision by attaching the lower court’s report to their report. The judges on the appeals court that disagreed wrote scathing reports. The case was selected as one of the about 300 cases that the Supreme Court heard this year. It was decided that they would hear this case, prior to Sonia Sotomayor being nominated to sit on the Supreme Court.

How is Sonia Sotomayor going to sit on the Supreme Court when they just gave her a trip to the proverbial woodshed? She should have known better. This case was so obvious that a second grader without any legal training could have gotten it right. The only way you could have gotten this case wrong is if you had your mind set in the wrong direction in the first place. Anyone with an ounce of fairness and objectivity could have seen that the city was obviously wrong. Sonia Sotomayor was so racially charged that she was unable to see the case for what it was. She could only see the case for what she wanted it to be. How many other cases are there that she decided on what she wanted them to be?

The 9-0 decision brings into question the ability of Sonia Sotomayor to even see clearly the difference between right and wrong. If she has a mindset in one direction, she would be unable to see the truth if it hit her square in the jaw. Any Senator who votes to confirm her today would be an obvious racist or someone who is so tied to racial politics that the difference is like that between a 6 and the sum of 3+3. I believe that if the vote to confirm were today, she would not be confirmed. The Democrats have to hold off for a time to let the waters calm down on this one.

Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation is on thin ice at this time. More information is needed on what she believes is right and wrong. I know that sounds stupid for a question, but she could not tell the difference in an obvious case. She has some difficult questions to answer now. I was for letting her be confirmed and fight the next one. Now, I see that she is so far out of the judicial mainstream as to be in the mountains, not the water at all. Until I am satisfied that this case was a case of brain freeze (highly unlikely), I will be against supporting Sonia Sotomayor. I will urge all I know, including my Senators and my Congressman to urge her defeat as well. I know my Congressman does not vote to confirm, but he still needs to know my position. I feel that strongly about it right now.