Image 01 Image 03

Sonia Sotomayor wants Religious Litmus Test!

Sonia Sotomayor wants Religious Litmus Test!

“…think there is a disadvantage from having (five) Catholics, three Jews…”

If one Supreme Court Justice gets her way, there will be a religious test for the next SCOTUS nominee….as well as the standard abortion litmus test!

Not happy with the proposed nominee offered by President Obama, Sonia Sotomayor offered her faith-based suggestions:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the Supreme Court needs more diversity, amid the politically charged debate about filling a vacancy on the high court.

“I … think there is a disadvantage from having (five) Catholics, three Jews, everyone from an Ivy League school,” Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice, said Friday at Brooklyn Law School.

However, she did not mention by name Judge Merrick Garland, a white male with a Harvard Law School degree whom President Obama recently nominated to fill the vacancy of Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative voice on the court. Scalia died unexpectedly in January.

Conservative talk show host Tammy Bruce notes the obvious hypocrisy:

It’s somewhat ironic that Ms. Sotomayor holds these concerns as she herself is a Catholic from New York who attended Yale. Her own awareness of what she thinks is an issue undermines the core of her own argument, that people like her can’t be good SCOTUS judges. On the other hand, maybe she’s confessing that she’s not? Honestly, if people like her are the problem (Catholic, Ivy league education), why did she have no problem accepting the honor for herself?

If she’s serious with her passion about the problem of Catholics and Jews who go to good schools, she should have told President Obama, “No, no. Not me, I’m exactly what you don’t want. Go find the right pagan or atheist, preferably one who doesn’t have an education at all. Only they can save the court.”

As a Catholic American, I am particularly perplexed that she feels another Catholic wouldn’t be up to the task of rendering fair decisions based on the Constitution. Has she been unduly influenced by her faith?

Intriguingly, there seems to be different levels of Catholicism when it comes to SCOTUS nominees:

When John Roberts was nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, left-wingers accused President Bush of “Playing the Catholic card.” When Bush selected Samuel Alito, these same critics sounded the alarms over the prospect of a “majority” of the Supreme Court justices being Catholic. One would think that the selection of yet another Catholic to sit on the high court would drive these folks right over the edge. But for some reason, Sotomayor’s Catholic credentials didn’t seem to matter. Is that because she is viewed as reliably liberal?

When Justice Roberts was nominated to be on the high court, Senator Dick Durbin told CNN that he considered it fair game to probe Roberts about his Catholicism. After Sotomayor’s selection, Durbin released a glowing statement never once mentioning her religion. When Senators Arlen Specter and Dianne Feinstein questioned Roberts, they both asked him whether he agreed with President John F. Kennedy about the separation of church and state. Neither of them mentioned Sotomayor’s religion in their respective statements on her selection.

Progressives everywhere have every reason to appreciate the Roberts appointment. Not only was his vote the one that allowed Obamacare to live, but he looks like the Wild Card vote in an upcoming decision on Obama’s use of executive orders:

Thee Supreme Court appeared split along ideological lines Monday as justices took up one of the most significant challenges yet to President Obama’s use of executive power — an election-year dispute over his bid to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and make them eligible to work in the U.S.

…[C]omments by Chief Justice John Roberts helped keep a final decision in doubt, as he suggested a possible quick-fix in a key part of the policy. In doing so, he gave possible hope to the White House and its allies, even if a split decision still appears the most likely outcome.

Let me suggest that if Sotomayor truly feels that opening up a seat to a non-Catholic would be a good thing for diversity, she can resign. David Souter retired in 2009, so she is under no obligation to stay until death.

However, I will credit her suggestion about the Ivy League background: It is the wisest part of the Latina’s rant.

(Featured Image via YouTube/TheAmericanView).

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

Someone should probe Senator Dick Durbin…about his Catholicism. Durbin is Planned Parenthood’s godfather.

~~~

Ruling Class Sotomayer, for diversity’s sake I suggest Justice Janice Rogers Brown.

Another reason why this lady should not be a member of the Supreme Court.

I’m going out on a limb here a bit to suggest that, at least in part, the Catholic/Jew thing has been a form of armor in a Supreme nominee.

After the Kennedy presidency, it was very dangerous for an elected official to even be seen as MAYBE being anti-Catholic or anti-Semitic. So senators had to be careful. At least up until Bork, and then Thomas. Teddy Kennedy taught the U.S. new levels of nasty, on lots of levels.

My, how times have changed…

What an outrageous headline. Only conservatives can have litmus tests.

Justice Mike Lee would be swell!

Scalia wanted a religious litmus test too.

4 Jews 5 Catholics is grossly unrepresentative of the country. Every controversial decision could be blamed on the Jews and the pope.

If she were truly wise she would save her breath, our first Latino president will making the nomination.

NC Mountain Girl | April 19, 2016 at 10:06 am

It bothers me more that several of the current Justices have little to no experience in the private sector. It was law school and then straight into government, academia or social activism. Some others only worked in DC based law firms, rotating that work with political appointments when their party held the White House.

Perhaps she is advocating for a Muslim judge or two???

mumzieistired | April 19, 2016 at 11:13 am

Is this a hint that she is planning to resign to allow for the religious shift she advocates?

There should be one litmus test – the Constitution. It may be an oversimplification, and asking a lot in this day when we’ve strayed so far from it, but it should be demanded of every nominee that they defend a position, hypothetical or not, in Constitutional terms. If that had been done with Sotomayor we’d not have had to endure the “wise Latina woman’ silliness and she’d still be playing softball with the kids at Harvard. Rigorously applied it would end the discussion re Muslims on the bench and in government (Ben Carson has it correct), and discussions like this that are nothing but dangerous distractions.

    Owego in reply to Owego. | April 19, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    Meant to add and forgot, that IMHO sitting justices have absolutely no business – none – expressing publicly any opinion about nominations to the Court. If she wants to be a part of the discussion, sway public opinion, or bring pressure of any sort in any arena she should resign.

buckeyeminuteman | April 19, 2016 at 1:02 pm

Baptists are the largest religious denomination in the US and yet there’s not a single one on the Court…outrageous!

It’s the Constitution and only the Constitution that matters. Justices are not to push policies which violate the Constitution. They are not to make law, rewrite law or convert something that wasn’t a tax into a tax. They are not to rewrite what constitutes a marriage or to violate a state’s right to decide what is protected by the 10th amendment. Just who do those clowns think they are? We’re in this mess because some of them are political hacks and social justice warriors and not justices.

So, what does she think would be “wise”? Fewer Jews and more Catholics?

The Court, any court, should not be political at all! All they are suppose to do is make sure our government is obeying The Constitution. I say kick ’em all out and start over. They must all be crooked.

I remember when Harriet Miers’ name was floated for the Supreme Court. Oh, the scathing comments because she did not graduate from Harvard! or Yale! And, she was a PPProtestant, possibly -gasp!- evangelical, a religious group not represented at all on the Court.

And wholly unqualified, despite being an experienced, big-ticket litigation attorney. How did that happen?

I concluded that her real problem was that she was not a part of the class that would like to establish themselves as our rulers. We do have an attempted oligarchy in this country. I suspect that is why the Republican party made the mistake of thinking they could get away with running Jeb Bush for election as President.

As appellate judges go, Sotomayor’s a flake.

As Supreme Court justices go, she’s as dumb as Obama.