As I was saying Robert Gibbs at the White House yesterday warned people like me to be very careful about what we say about Sonia Sotomayor. So, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to turn your radio up because I’m going to have to whisper this so that they don’t hear this at the White House. In fact, those of you who can if you’re in your cars, roll up your windows. Those of you who are at home, take your radios to the bathroom, close the doors. Make sure that no one else hears what I’m about to tell you about Sonia Sotomayor. Are you ready? Got the windows up? There we go, three, two, one. In the year 2004, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled that ownership of a gun is not a constitutional right. That case is at present being appealed before the US Supreme Court, as are a couple other of her cases. In 2004 Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said owning a gun not a constitutional right. She ruled in this fashion as a judge.
President Obama could have chosen a different Hispanic or a different female, but he chose Sonia Sotomayor because she reflects his own racial attitudes. Let’s be honest about this. He’s got anger about race in this country; so does she. It cannot be denied. Can I give you a Thomas Jefferson quote? Thomas Jefferson quote in a letter he wrote to Charles Hammond August 18th, 1821. It’s 188 years later. ‘It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression… that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary;… working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.’
Our Founding Fathers were fortunetellers; they were prophets; they were wise beyond measure. It never fails to amaze me when I go back and read their warnings of the future after they had crafted the US Constitution. I’m very much like these people, my friends, in my ability to prognosticate and prophet the future. Thomas Jefferson warned 188 years ago that the federal government and the germ of its dissolution was in the way the federal judiciary was constituted. Ergo, 188 years later, he’s right. We have Sonia Sotomayor who thinks that the court is where policy is made. Okay, you can lower the windows now, come out of the bathrooms. I’m through.
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RUSH: Mike, play audio sound bite number five again. This is Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary yesterday responding to a question from CBS’ Chip Reid on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.
GIBBS: I think it is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they’ve decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation.
RUSH: That’s a threat. That’s a threat, right? That’s a warning. The White House warning those of us who are critical of Sotomayor and the nomination to be very careful.
From the AP today: ‘Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said his country has boosted its capacity to enrich uranium, another sign of anti-Western defiance by the leader seeking re-election. ‘Now we have more than 7,000 centrifuges and the West dare not threaten us.” Well, shazam, you know, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sounds like Robert Gibbs. Robert Gibbs: ‘Be very careful what you say about this nomination.’ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: ‘The West dare not threaten us.’ Just wanted to point out the similarities.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I have received several caustic, mean-spirited e-mails today during the course of the program and prior to its start from people who are e-mailing me from the account, the website address, to indicate that they’re members of my website community, Rush 24/7, RushLimbaugh.com. I don’t know if I’m detecting a pattern of seminar e-mailers, but each time I have mentioned Sonia Sotomayor today I’ve checked the e-mail: ‘If you’re going to talk about his nomination, please tell us so we can turn off your damn show. If you’re going to talk about Sonia Sotomayor, I don’t care. Let me know when you’re going to be finished.’
Before the program, several e-mails, ‘I am not gonna listen to you if you are going to keep browbeating this subject. We know everything there is to know, go to something else.’ You people that send e-mails like this should know something. This is the last way, the worst way you could get me to shut up about something. Now, when I get e-mails like that, even if they’re regular listeners, you know, ‘When was the last time I told any of you klutzes how to do your jobs, those of you sending me e-mails?’ Well, yes, I did tell one to go get a job, but she’s trying to do that anyway. She didn’t need to hear that from me.
AP has a story today. It is one of their spin meter stories. It’s like a fact check sorta story. The author of the AP story, Matt Apuzzo, and it’s about Sonia Sotomayor: ‘Do judges make policy? Will a white man and a Hispanic woman who look at the same facts and apply the same law often come up with different conclusions? Judge Sonia Sotomayor has said the answer to both questions is ‘Yes,’ and that’s rankling conservatives. Critics say the remarks offer a window into her judicial philosophy. Supporters say she’s only reflecting the reality of the judicial branch.’ And, of course, the AP conclusion is ‘both sides are right.’ However, if you read the entire AP story, you get to the last paragraph. The last paragraph, in an AP story, says this: ‘The problem for Sotomayor is that she went beyond the experience-is-important line. She said the Latina experience leads to ‘better’ decisions than the white experience. It’s hard to imagine a judge getting nominated to the Supreme Court after saying white men made better decisions than black women, or Catholics better than Jews,’ and that’s exactly right.
Now, the conventional wisdom is there’s no stopping the woman. The conventional wisdom is it’s full speed ahead, that the Republicans are going to lay down, nobody’s going to stop her, and it’s probably the case based on the compelling story, but I’ll tell you, I’m reading more and more on the web, there’s some libs upset with this woman. There are some libs talking about the lack of intellectual depth. There’s some libs — this is actually funny — that don’t like her because they can’t find how she feels about abortion. And for the left, let me tell you something, for much of the madcap left, the only thing that matters to them about a Supreme Court nominee is being assured they are pro-choice, being assured they would never vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Because she doesn’t have much of a record on abortion rights and the law, there are a lot of libs out there who are afraid they could end up getting Soutered, meaning George W. Bush accepted the recommendation of John Sununu to put Souter on the court, supposedly a great conservative up there in New Hampshire and he turns out to vote 95% of the time with the liberal bloc on the court.
So there are some leftists who are worried to death about Sonia Sotomayor. But I made this point on Tuesday. I, you know, read her statement that she made at Berkeley when she said — I’m paraphrasing — but the Latina experience would have much more justification, a much more just result than a white man because of the richness of her life and so forth. And I read that and I put the name John Roberts in it and changed the races around. What if John Roberts, the current chief justice, had said that his rich experience as a white man would render more profound and better legal judgments than Latina women? He’d be toast. If they had found that in vetting, he wouldn’t even make the nomination. He wouldn’t be nominated. I’ve been listening to some conservatives. This really is stunning to me. This is blatant racism. This is blatant bigotry. I know the double standard exists, and as I said on Tuesday, minorities are entitled to have racist views in our country according to the Reverend Jackson because they don’t have any power. They don’t have the power to implement their racism. Well, that’s not true, and it certainly wouldn’t be true if Sonia Sotomayor made the Supreme Court, if she’s confirmed.
Now, we live in a numbed era. People are mind-numbed. There’s so much going on that’s bad and negative, this statement of hers — this is worse than the statement that she said the appellate courts are where policy is made. That’s not racist or bigoted. That’s just arrogant. By the way, she’s not the daughter of immigrants. She’s Puerto Rican. They are US citizens. This compelling story is even being embellished. Everybody has a compelling story. Clarence Thomas has every bit the compelling story this woman has. This woman doesn’t know poverty like Clarence Thomas knew it. This woman doesn’t know discrimination like Clarence Thomas knew it. But we never heard about his compelling story until he wrote his book. The Bush 41 crowd that nominated him, didn’t go that route, they just put him up there. But to proudly say that she does law better, she is fairer, she is the better judge simply because she’s a Latina, a better judge than a white guy, simply because she’s a Latina? ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, you’re always advocating against political correctness and free speech.’ Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think she should be punished for saying it, but clearly it is relevant to her qualifications.
I don’t want to shut her up. I don’t think she should be censored. But the double standard here, we’re talking about the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land where policy is made, according to this woman, and where policy should be made. Look, bigotry is bigotry. Racism is racism. Superiority is superiority. Contempt for people beneath you is contempt for people beneath you. Thinking you’re better than everybody else is thinking you’re better than everybody else. This woman has all of this. There’s not a whole lot of humility here. In fact, I want to go back to this program yesterday, as I play a sound bite of me, which are always some of the best sound bites we play, followed by a sound bite of Obama also in LA yesterday after he told everybody the economy’s coming back from the brink and they ain’t seen nothing yet in a state that’s bankrupt, he then talked about Sotomayor. Here is what I said yesterday on this program.
RUSH ARCHIVE: We have here an angry man with a chip on his shoulder, not some cool, calm, collected guy, but a cold, calculating, angry man who did hear what Jeremiah Wright said for 20 years while sitting in the pews of that church in Chicago. He did hear what Bill Ayers said about America. America’s unjust, it was constituted as unjust, and that unjustness permeates to this day. So now it’s time to change all that and we’re going to change all that by desecrating the Constitution. Hence, Sonia Sotomayor.
RUSH: Now, I think in this bite you’re gonna hear Obama let his guard down at this LA fundraiser. He’s with buddies, he’s off prompter, and you listen. It’s just a short bite, it’s 12 seconds.
OBAMA: This woman is brilliant. She is qualified. I want her confirmed. I want her walking up those marble steps and starting to provide some justice.
RUSH: I want her to start providing some justice. I want her walking up those marble steps and I want her to start providing some justice. Meaning, it ain’t justice coming out of there now. I want her walking up those steps, and I want her to start providing some justice. Street talk. This is the talk of somebody angry. I want her march up those steps and start providing some justice. Justice as she defines it, based on what she said. She’s better at justice ’cause she’s Latina, better at justice than the white guy. Now, folks, in a sane world, she would not have risen to the nomination level because of that one statement. Now, obviously the left, they believe her. The left believes what she is saying. They don’t care about that. They’re worried that she doesn’t have an abortion record. They’re worried about getting sandbagged on that.
But just as Obama is going to return the nation’s wealth to its, quote, unquote, rightful owners, we’re going to have justice, we’re going to have Sonia Sotomayor walking up those steps, she’s gonna provide justice finally. We’re going to not only return the nation’s wealth to its rightful owners, we’re going to get even with the people who stole it in the first place, and that’s the justice we’re going to have. That’s why she was chosen. Sonia Sotomayor was chosen for the express purpose of reflecting his racial attitudes. Let’s be honest. He coulda chosen a different Hispanic; he coulda chosen a different female. He chose Sonia Sotomayor because she is the mirror image of his racial attitudes. I want her walking up those steps and providing some justice! Could have been Al Sharpton saying that.