Breaking News: Supreme Court Overrules Sotomayor in Ricci Case

This should make Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearings more interesting:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

By itself, this is not necessarily disqualifying. I'm fairly certain that most Supreme Court nominees have had prior cases overturned. However, what makes this more problematic for Judge Sotomayor is her incorrect ruling in this case plays into the growing image of her as a judge who allows identity politics to sway her rulings rather than solely considering the legal precedents and merits of the case at hand. Baring a major smoking gun, I doubt her nomination is in any real trouble. This just gives senators on the judiciary committee something to stir up.

Breaking News: Obama picks Sotomayor for Supreme Court

The Associated Press is reporting that President Obama is going to pick U.S. Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

Links with more info to follow shortly.
Here are the first few:

Sonia Sotomayor: Supreme Court Nominee? All You Need To Know - At least according to the Huffington Post.

From Jeffrey Rosen of The New Republic we get "The Case Against Sotomayor"

SCOTUSBLOG weighs in.

Wendy Long of National Review Online's Bench Memos discouragingly notes:

Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written. She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one's sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.

She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court.

Meet Sonia Sotomayor

Of course, since this is the 21st century we have the obligatory embarrassing You-Tube clip.

As my brother said to me this morning, "Well there are MANY worse choices." Elections have consequences and this pick is just one of those consequences.

Breaking News: Justice Souter to Retire

Another good riddance situation.

NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term.

The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction.

While Souter has been a disappointment since he was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, we can be sure that his replacement will be much worse. The greatest and most lasting damage from last November's election will be the re-shaping of the federal judiciary. I expect President Obama will get to replace at least 3 supreme court justices (Souter, Stevens, Kennedy and Ginsberg) and a whole bunch of lower court judges.

The Supreme Court blows another case

In a 5-4 ruling the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana is wrong in having the death penalty as a potential punishment for raping a child on the basis of it being cruel and unusual. One can reasonably argue that the death penalty itself is wrong and I can respect that point of view. However, if we allow that the death penalty is constitutional then it is a matter of deciding which offenses against societal norms of behavior warrant that punishment. In my view the death penalty should be reserved for the most heinous of crimes that we need to discourage with the harshest of penalties. If brutally raping an innocent child doesn't meet the minimum standard for imposition of that penalty, then nothing should.

Justices Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer, Stevens and Kennedy voted in the majority. The decision a president makes with the longest lasting impact is nominations to the federal bench including the SCOTUS. The next president will likely name two or three justices. I can not guarantee that Sen. McCain will name justices of the high caliber of Roberts or Alito. However, I can guarantee that Sen. Obama will name ones in line with Ginsberg and Breyer. Obama wouldn't even consider someone for that position unless they were dedicated to protecting the guilty and abandoning the innocent.

UPDATE:

Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online's Corner weighs in:

Evolving Standards
The death penalty used to be constitutional for barn-burning, horse stealing, fairly minor thefts etc. I completely agree that our evolving standards of decency make that seem like overkill, pardon the pun. But is it really a sign of our evolving standards of decency that brutally raping a child is also on that list? Are we more decent because we don't consider that a capital offense? I don't really see it.

Nope.