The Reason Sotomayor is the First Person of Latino Descent Nominated for the Supreme Court

posted at 7:01 am on May 29, 2009 by dougpowers
[ Obama ]   

Democrats are hailing Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the first person of Latino descent to be nominated for a seat on the nation’s highest court.

It’s implied, loudly, that Latino judges have been, up to now, victims of racism and are only now gaining legal prominence they deserve.

What you won’t hear Democrats in DC say is that there’s a good reason Sotomayor is the first person of Latino descent to be nominated to the Supreme Court — because Democrats derailed the other person who might have ended up as the first one.

In 2001, George W. Bush nominated former Justice Department lawyer Miguel Estrada to a seat on the federal courts of appeals. The congressional left feared the right-leaning Hispanic was on a fast-track to the Supreme Court, so the open-minded, inclusive and diversity-loving Democrats derailed him.

Byron York explains:

Estrada’s nomination for a federal judgeship set off alarm bells among Democrats. There is a group of left-leaning organizations — People for the American Way, NARAL, the Alliance for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, and others — that work closely with Senate Democrats to promote Democratic judicial nominations and kill Republican ones. They were particularly concerned about Estrada.

In November, 2001, representatives of those groups met with Democratic Senate staff. One of those staffers then wrote a memo to Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, informing Durbin that the groups wanted to stall Bush nominees, particularly three they had identified as good targets. “They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous,” the staffer added, “because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible.”

It was precisely the fact that Estrada was Hispanic that made Democrats and their activist allies want to kill his nomination. They were determined to deny a Republican White House credit, political and otherwise, for putting a first-rate Hispanic nominee on the bench.

So remember this and chuckle every time you see Democrats in coming days patting themselves on the back for being so incredibly non-racist while most of the mainstream media claps like trained seals.

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