Sotomayor: I Disagree With Obama's Empathy Standard
Update: A Wise Latina Woman, With Her Richness of Experiences, Will More Often Than Not Commit Perjury in Her Confirmation Testimony

Interesting.

I just heard it and will look for a link but Jon Kyl of Arizona asked Sotomayor if she agreed with Obama's idea that the law will only get you so far in deciding some cases. She said she disagreed with the President.

Now, I don't believe that for a moment (at least as a practical matter) but it will make an interesting ad on judicial nominations in 2010 and 2012.

Nicely done.

Now he's going after her on her bias in favor of Latinas and their role in the law.

More [ace]: She keeps calling her exultation of her own biases a "rhetorical flourish" and disingenously claims she never meant what she meant. For example, Kyl quoted her discussing a court that split along gender lines, the three women voting one way, the two men the other. The quote obviously was intended to suggest that either there were gender differences in the interpretation of the law, or even (in accordance with Sotomayor's we're-better philosophy) that the women were right because they were women.

Sotomayor's response? I never intended that remark to suggest some sort of gender difference in the application of the law.

What?

Huh?

Kyl makes the further point that it is important to be aware of biases and prejudices, but only so as to be alert to them in order to correct for them. He puts it to her simply: You can't correct your biases because you're not "on alert" for them at all; rather, you praise them as affirmative goods. You're not looking to correct them in order to make a positive contribution to jurisprudence; but indeed believe that your biases and prejudices are your positive contribution to jurisprudence.

She offers another dog-food answer about how she never intended to mean what she meant, and that she was only trying to inspire young Latinas, and who can argue with that?

Steven Hayes on FoxNews says he's "blown away at how she's trying to twist her speeches," at her naked disingenousnes in flatly stating that her words don't have their obvious meanings, and in fact often have the opposite meanings.

I'm blown away too. This is not a walk-back. This is brazenly lying while giving testimony. And lying is of course reason to vote against nominee.

You can promise you won't sin any further. You can offer context or mitigation for past sins. You can argue your statements weren't even sins at all.

You can do all of that.

But you can't just repeatedly lie about having made those statements or meant what you clearly did when you made them. That is every much a lie as claiming you weren't in a particular location on a particular date or that you don't know someone you know well.

We see now her philosophy of interpreting the Constitution -- or any words, in fact. Words mean precisely what it is advantageous for them to mean at any moment, no matter how strained or even how nonsensical that claimed meaning may be.

Powerline: She Lies. [ace] "The opposite of the truth," they say.

Idiocy: [ace] I wanted to comment on this. Thankfully palin steele, the non-partisan, states the stupidity for me:

Sotomayor can't be lying because only she knows the intent of her words. DrewM, don't you realize it doesn't matter what her words means prima facie. It only matters what she INTENDED, and you can't prove her intent beyond what she is now saying she meant. So you can't prove she is lying.

Posted by: palin steele (the only non-partisan on AoSHQ)

It is indeed difficult to prove someone is lying about what they meant. That does not, however, mean it's impossible, or mean that they're telling the truth even if you can't prove they're lying.

That's why this form of perjury is so popular. See Hillary "I can't recall" Clinton lying about Whitewater (where she later "explained" that she'd said she'd never worked on Whitewater at all, despite billing records proving she worked on it for dozens of billable hours, because she didn't know the development was called Whitewater; she only knew it according to its three-letter billing code) and Bill Clinton, who didn't believe, he said, that he was "alone" with Monica Lewinsky while using her as a human humidor.

But one's intent is indeed a factual matter just as their actions are a factual matter. Almost every crime requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the criminal had criminal intent. Intent is, indeed, defined as a fact of the crime which must be proved.

We can prove that Sonia Sotomayor is lying: She said the same thing at least six times and a simple familiarity with the English language and semantic logic tells us what she meant.

She is now telling us that everything she said previously was said in a made-up childhood language called "Opposite Talk," where everything she says means the precise opposite.

This is a lie.

If I were to be sued for libeling Sonia Sotomayor, I could attempt a defense that each time I called her a liar, I was not in fact calling her a liar and had no intention to do such a thing; indeed, when I called her a liar, I meant a "wise truth-teller."

I could attempt this defense, but I would lose, at it is absurd. Everyone knows what my words mean and therefore my intent in using them.

posted by DrewM. at 02:21 PM

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