Justice Sotomayor orders halt to enforcement of so much of Obamacare as

[No Elephants]

requires employers to pay for health insurance that covers birth control.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/1/justice-delays-healthlawsbirthcontrolmandateaftercatholicoutcry.html


As you will recall, Justices Breyer and Kagan, like the other Justices who had been nominated by Democrats, voted with Roberts on the part of Obamacare that imposed the individual mandate. However, they diverged from the other Justices nominated by Democrats to hold that Congress could not withhold all federal funds from states that refused to expand Medicaid.

IMO, both parts of that decision reeked; and Kagan and Breyer were on the wrong side in both parts (while Ginsburg and Sotomayor were only the wrong side of the mandate portion of the decision).

Now, birth control is an issue, just as it was before the SCOTUS decided Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut

FYI, Griswold wasn't that strong a decision, given the facts. If I recall correctly, the precise state law involved in that case was so broad that a doctor giving birth control information to a married couple violated the law, making all their conduct criminal. The SCOTUS struck down that law, but that decision does not cover the case that the SCOTUS is about to hear. Obviously, there is no precedent for the Obamacare requirement.

IMO, all three branches of government have failed the people, who, btw, pay for all three branches to live and work like pashas. Gyms, dining rooms, staffs, limos, Secret Service protection, junkets. Yeayyyy. Nothing too good for our betrayers on our dime.

After all, giving away the United States to the 99% while blaming the poor is hard work. The only thing that saves them is that they have so much experience doing it that it now comes naturally to them and seems normal. Unfortunately, it seems normal to us, too. I guess. That's the only reason I can think of for putting up with this crap.

[Enthusiast]

1. All three branches of government have failed miserably.

I mean all three have completely failed. Failed us utterly.

Imagine discussing birth control as if it something that should be revisited. And why did the President appoint such a justice?

[No Elephants]

2. I don't know her record on the district court or the circuit court.

It use to be that the American Bar Association rated nominees to the Supreme Court, but that went out the window not long after Thomas.

Her record before her appointment by Bush 41 to the District Court raised questions in my mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor

BTW, she was registered as an independent, not a Democrat or a Republican.

She went to good schools, but was not an academic star in college or law school, as so many SCOTUS Justices were. She was a summer associate at a large New York firm, but the firm that had had hired her and observed her work all summer did not offer her a job for after graduation, as is typical.

While saying that her performance was lacking, she describes the lack of an offer as a kick in the teeth--not a wake up call or a motivator to excel in the future, mind you, but a kick in the teeth.

Seems as though she did not find a job in third year interviewing process either. Seems as though Cabranes, who was counsel to Yale, hd mentored her while she was in law school, ad got her a job after law school as a prosecutor. His wiki is very interesting, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_A._Cabranes)


And also a volunteer position.

Based upon another recommendation from Cabranes,<65> Sotomayor was a member of the board of directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1980 to 1992.

Appointed to the board of directors for 12 years, fresh from an undistinguished career in law school?

As a prosecutor, she seems to have won praise, though, apparently, that took working 15-hour days Then, this:

Sotomayor and Noonan divorced amicably in 1983;<62> they did not have children.<20> She has said that the pressures of her working life were a contributing factor, but not the major factor, in the breakup.<64><67>

From 1983 to 1986, Sotomayor had an informal solo practice, dubbed Sotomayor & Associates, located in her Brooklyn apartment.<68> She performed legal consulting work, often for friends or family members.<68>

As far as I am concerned, the above is the same as saying that she either quit or was fired from her job as a prosecutor, followed by 3 years that, professionally speaking, were totally unaccounted for. So, in the same year, 1983, she won a big case, yet immediately quit or was fired from her job, divorced and went into professional limbo for three years? Something is not hanging together there.

But then, her wiki says that she went to work for a very small (by NYC standards) private law firm in 1984. Huh? Typically, you don't have a practice in your home and work for a private firm. So, which was it?

Mind you, it would be extraordinary if her wiki were not gone over with a fine tooth comb when she was nominated and monitored ever since. I observed Palin's changing over and over in the first few days after her name was mentioned as a possiblity for VP.

And then, in Sotomayor's wiki, there's this.

Her clients were mostly international corporations doing business in the United States;<29> much of her time was spent tracking down and suing counterfeiters of Fendi goods.<12><69> In some cases, Sotomayor went on-site with the police to Harlem or Chinatown to have illegitimate merchandise seized, in the latter instance pursuing a fleeing culprit while riding on a motorcycle.<12><69> She said at the time that Pavia & Harcourt's efforts were run "much like a drug operation", and the successful rounding up of thousands of counterfeit accessories in 1986 was celebrated by "Fendi Crush", a destruction-by-garbage-truck event at Tavern on the Green.<72> At other times, she dealt with dry legal issues such as grain export contract disputes.<69> In a 1986 appearance on Good Morning America that profiled women ten years after college graduation, she said that the bulk of law work was drudgery, and that while she was content with her life, she had expected greater things of herself coming out of college.<67> In 1988 she became a partner at the firm;<35><54> she was paid well but not extravagantly.<73> She left in 1992 when she became a judge.

I can see her accompanying police to verify that they seized counterfeits that were hurting her clients. But, pursuing a culprit while riding a motorcycle in Chinatown? NY lawyers do that?

At every stage of her career, she says she worked hard, but did not perform especially well. Three years of her career raise questions, to say the least. At the end of those very same three years, out of all the women in America, GMA picked her to profile? Why?

In 1986, she says she expected more of herself. (Not being paid extravagantly at the firm strong suggests that, even this small firm did not find her services especially valuable, either.) Her wiki is then silent about the years 1986 to 1992, except that she left this small firm in 1992 to become a judge because Bush 41 nominated her to the federal bench? Why?

But, wait.

In 1987, Governor of New York Mario Cuomo appointed Sotomayor to the board of the State of New York Mortgage Agency, which she served on until 1992.<75> As part of one of the largest urban rebuilding efforts in American history,<75> the agency helped low-income people get home mortgages and to provide insurance coverage for housing and AIDS hospices.<7> Despite being the youngest member of a board composed of strong personalities, she involved herself in the details of the operation and was effective.<65><74> She was vocal in supporting the right to affordable housing, directing more funds to lower-income home owners, and in her skepticism about the effects of gentrification, although in the end she voted in favor of most of the projects.<74><75>

Sotomayor was appointed by Mayor Ed Koch in 1988 as one of the founding members of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, where she served for four years.<7><76> There she took a vigorous role<74> in the board's implementation of a voluntary scheme wherein local candidates received public matching funds in exchange for limits on contributions and spending and agreeing to greater financial disclosure.<77> Sotomayor showed no patience with candidates who failed to follow regulations and was more of a stickler for making campaigns follow those regulations than some of the other board members.<65><74> She joined in rulings that fined, audited, or reprimanded the mayoral campaigns of Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani.

wow. Her volunteer(?) work is by far the most impressive part of her resume.

So, a member of the board of directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1980 to 1992, the board of the Mortgage Agency from 1987 to 1992 and a founding member of the NYC Campaign Finance board from 1988 to 1992 and allegedly working full time for those years, too?


Something is not hanging together there, either.


I am also not thrilled with the comment in her wiki that she found crimes between "my own people" the saddest. Sadder than white on white crime or black on black crime? Or white on black, or black on Puerto Rican? Why? For that matter, how is any one robbery or murder or kidnapping sadder than any other?

When combined with her comment that a Latina might make better judicial decisions than a white male, I begin to wonder. Granted those two comments are not a lot, but, then again, I don't know a lot about her.

All I know is that her wiki raises a hell of a lot of questions and doesn't explain (to me, anyway) why she got on the federal bench in the first place. As I said, I don't know her record on the district court or the circuit court, though. Maybe she hits her stride in public service positions?

[No Elephants]

3. Sorry. Major mea culpa.

My above post said that Sotomayor's college and law school years were undistinguished. I was very wrong about college. Sotomayor was graduated summa cum laude from Princeton. However, she does not seem to have distinguished herself at Yale Law School and law is the issue.

[No Elephants]

4. Looking around more, it appeas Cabranes was, as I began to suspect,

pivotal in Sotomayor's career. http://news.muckety.com/2009/06/23/jose-cabranes-was-an-early-mentor-to-sonia-sotomayor/17071

Also turns out that he was a founding member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the chair of the board in 1980, when he "referred" Sotomayor to the Fund.

Cabranes was also very well-connected in NY, thanks in part to his parents and to his own formidable resume. Supposedly, he was on Clinton's short list for the SCOTUS nomination twice, being edged out by Ginsburg and Breyer. (Surprising. I would have thought that Clinton would have loved to have appointed the first Hispanic Justice. I assume that there must be a strong reason why Cabranes did not make the cut.)

The woman whom Cabranes married in 1984 was the first witness on behalf of Sotomayor at her confirmation hearings. She is also an intelligent woman but Cabranes seems to have used his connections with Yale on her behalf, too, because she was about to become an associate professor there when they married and she was at one point later, acting dean.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/16/style/jose-cabranes-and-kate-pressman-wed.html

[Enthusiast]

5. Thanks for all the background information.