This is pretty much what I think of Sotomayor

Sonia's Senators

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Supreme Court: Some Republican senators made acceptable noises against Judge Sonia Sotomayor on her first day of confirmation hearings. But stopping her will take a lot more. They must expose her extremism.

After the Senate Judiciary Committee members' opening statements were completed on Monday, laughter ran through the hearing room after panel chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., seemed to announce that Judge Sotomayor would in a few minutes be administered the "oath of office."

But no — he meant the oath preceding her testimony.

In introducing Sotomayor, New York Sen. Charles Schumer said that, due to Sotomayor's extensive judicial experience, he hoped her hearings would matter less than those of previous nominees.

Finally, Republican committee member Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina assured the woman who may well end up being the most liberal Supreme Court justice in history that "unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to be confirmed."

The bipartisan message seems to be: Why have hearings at all?

Asked about Graham's defeatist remark, a self-satisfied Chairman Leahy said that "for the sake of the Senate" he wanted Sotomayor's nomination "not to be a party-line vote."

Translation: While all Democrats vote their party line, he hopes a bunch of Republicans will vote the Democratic party line too.

Leahy may not have to worry. Liberal Supreme Court nominees always seem to win plenty of Republican votes. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg won confirmation by 96 to 3 in 1993, in spite of having been a chief litigator for one of the most extremist organizations in the country, the powerful ACLU.

Justice Stephen Breyer slid through almost as easily in 1994, by 87 to 9, the only bump in the road being liberal Ohio Democratic Sen. Howard Metzenbaum grumbling that he was too pro-business.

Sen. Graham may want to continue that ignoble GOP tradition of playing dead, but some GOP senators understand what is at stake.

The panel's ranking Republican, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, warned that President Obama's "empathy standard" would lead to a world in which "unelected judges set policy, Americans are seen as members of separate groups rather than simply Americans, and where the constitutional limits on government power are ignored when politicians want to buy out private companies."

Sessions called Sotomayor's statements on bias influencing her rulings and appellate courts working as policymaking bodies "shocking and offensive."

And he noted that when she chaired the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund's litigation committee, it "aggressively pursued racial quotas in city hiring and, in numerous cases, fought to overturn the results of promotion exams." That helps explain why she was overturned in the New Haven Fire Department case.

Sonia Sotomayor has publicly called everything from the death penalty to the SATs racist. Her wacky rulings include ordering prisons to let Hispanic inmates wear Santeria voodoo beads, even though the jewelry doubles as gang symbols.

This is an ideologically driven judge with an agenda. Sessions and his colleagues have a duty to all of us to expose her record fully.