The GOP has to pay for embracing the vitriol that led to Dr. Tiller's assassination. They don't get a pass anymore.
Imagine their outrage if someone of Muslim descent attacked a parishoner in church. Imagine their outrage if a black man had gone into a white church and shot the place up. Imagine their outrage if a disgruntled Mexican kid shot a white father because he forbid his daughter to go out with him.
Now the press reports "abortion foes are worried" this might stifle debate. Well, here's a news flash: When you resort to murder to make your case, you lose your right to engage in a debate. The bullet does not overrule the ballot. There is no room to compromise on that point. Anyone who doesn't condemn these acts and the vitriol that spawns them is aiding and abetting. This is particularly true of elected officials who pander to these extremists.
The question the GOP has to address before any debate is simple:
Are you with the terrorists or against them?
I think we know the answer to that question. But that isn't the only question they have to answer...
Let's talk about the attacks on the judiciary. According to a recent report, threats against judges are mushrooming.
According to the U.S. Marshals Service, the number of threats against federal judges and prosecutors has mushroomed from 500 in 2003 to 1,278 in 2008. It is on track to go even higher this year. There are no statistics on the number of threats against state and local judges.
US District Court Judge Reggie Walton, the man who sentenced Scooter Libby, has received his share of threats. He makes no bones about what drives this toxic behavior. He places some of the blame on talk show hosts:
"The type of vicious attacks sometimes that you see coming from certain players in the media, I think contributes to the problem."
Gee... who would that be?
Limbaugh and DeLay were just some of the more prominent voices going after judges during the Terry Schiavo fiasco. What are we to make of Tom DeLay's comment
This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change...The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."
And that was just the first one I found with a quick trip to Google. There are many more for anyone who has the time and the stomach to review this tried and true method for working the GOP base into a lather.
With this as a background it is not surprising the same sort of nonsense is being pushed with regards to Judge Sotomayor. In fact, if they didn't resort to ridiculous personal attacks I would be surprised.
If you think the attacks on her are really about her ethnicity, you are mistaken. When they attack "empathy" or the fact she is a woman, make no mistake, they are attacking Choice. If they could use a more frontal assault they would, but her record precludes that. That is why their attack du jour is focused on a sentence fragment. I'm talking about the comment we've all heard played over and over again from her Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001 except without any context:
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Note... there is a word missing from that quote:
SECOND, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Ahhh.... what was First?
First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise.
Ahhh... and what is she responding to in this comment?
Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.
Ok, but that isn't the whole of her speech. Quite the contrary. That portion is sandwiched between these two comments:
First we have the lead-in:
In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.
She recognizes the ground-breaking Civil Rights rulings of the 20th century were all made by courts composed exclusively of white men. But she is not blind to the fact that the people who pled those cases were not. And that is an important point.
But she then follows the oft-misquoted segment with this observation that recognizes the merits and demerits of her opponent's argument:
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. [emphasis added] I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
She then goes on ... in an admirable display of insight and -- dare I say it, empathy -- to explain this apparent disparity. Unlike her foes in the GOP, it is not because those who opppose her ideals are evil. No, it is more mundane:
However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care.
If she stopped there, then she would have only gone half-way. Fortunately, she accepts the responsibility of following her argument to its logical conclusion:
Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
If she were to merely stop there, that would be more than any rabid idealogue could ever do, but she goes further and here we see why Obama was "blown away" by her in their meetings. This is a woman of substance who does more than merely recognize the challenges that exist. She exhorts her audience to embrace them and make them their own.
I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation.[emphasis added] For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach? For all of us, how do change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?
These are tough questions. These are the sort of questions one expects serious thinkers to raise. These are the kinds of questions we all should be asking. And should the GOP decide to relinquish its embrace of extremists and hate speech, it is a discussion we may someday be able to have in the public square. But there is no seat at that table for those who brandish weapons. Sorry. The bullet will not overrule the ballot. On that there can be no compromise.