Good evening infidels.  Here's my take on the President's first Supreme Court pick.  As someone who practices constitutional law and who has done dozens of appeals at the state level, and primarily at the federal court of appeals level and US Supreme Court level, I think I have something to offer above and beyond the driblle you will get from all the plethora of wankers and the uninformed who don't know anything about the law or the courts.

I'll make it short and sweet so even the lefties out there can understand.

1. She is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.

2. She has the academic and judicial credentials plus a great record as a prosecutor.

3. Her opinions don't offer much, but I will confidently say she is as liberal or more liberal than David Souter based on what I've read, including the recent reverse discrimination case which is up before the US Supreme Court.

4. She has made some disturbing comments both in a speech she published which is available online and in the Duke conference which is also on you tube along the lines that a judge's ethnic background should make a difference in how he or she votes on a case and that judge's should look beyond the law in making decisions. Finally, she was dead wrong in making the statement and even joking about that appellate courts make policy. This is not the role of the Court.  In fact, in speaking to one of my law partners today who sat on the Court of Appeals for over 20 years and served with over  a half dozen women including some who sit on the Florida Supreme Court noted to be, that he never encountered a situation where any judge based their opinions on anything other than the law and found it perverse that a judge would even consider the thought that a latin woman was better qualified than a white male to render a judicial opinion.  Justice is and must be blind and based on the law and that little thing called the Constitution.  As he put it,

"In other words, a majority of male judges looking at the same facts and reading the same arguments should reach, and would have reached, the same results. There are lots of very good reasons for putting women, Hispanics, Jews, and those of other non-wasp male heritage (plus an occasional wasp male), on an appellate court, but expecting that gender or ethnic background (as distinguished from those – whether liberal or conservative- that may have a biased political agenda) to change the outcome of cases should not be one of them. The same should be true of growing up in a low income household or neighborhood, a background shared by a large number of conservatives and liberals alike."

5. She will pass confirmation and will sit on the US Supreme Court next term.

6. She won't make a difference on the court.  Why?  Well the most important thing on the Supreme Court is the number 5 as Justice Brennan once noted. It's the ability to get 5 votes.  I don't care how great a judge you are or how pure to your ideology you are.  If you can't get 5, you're just going to be a nice dissenting opinion with no effect on the law. E.g., Justice Scalia.  This judge is similar in that her reputation is that she cannot and has not been able to get consensus on her court.  She's a clear liberal vote, but won't make a difference in this Court.  Who are the consensus judges? I mean Justice Stevens, Justice Roberts, Justice Kennedy, they are consensus builders and thus the key votes in close 5-4 cases. And to those who don't have a clue, and that includes many, the number of per curium decisions under Roberts is higher than in previous courts. Why? Consensus building.

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Now, that being said,  it is my opinion that none of the Republicans should vote for her confirmation. Why do you ask? Why should we vote against her if she is qualified for the Court?  The Answer is simple.  The Democrats have politicized this process going back to Robert Bork. It's never going back to the old days when everyone simply gave deference to the President.  But that's not the main reason.  The main reason is Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

Justice Roberts is probably one of the most brilliant men to ever sit on the Court.  No one comes close to him in his abilities and qualifications. Yet the Dems, including then Senator Obama voted against him even though he was qualfied for the job.  Same goes for Samuel Alito. He sat on the same court as the current pick. Yet they voted against him too.  Why did the Dems vote against Alito and Roberts even though they were qualified?  The did so because they are cowards with no convictions.  They'd rather please their pro abortion lobbyists than vote on qualifications and give deference to the President, even though the GOP gave deference to Clinton's picks.

They tried to vilify Roberts and Alito; unfairly solely for political gain.  And the Dems take pride in saying they voted against their confirmation.  Obama voted against them, well it's payback time. We should give the Dems the same treatment they gave President Bush with his nominees. Political? Yes. But they started it. And we should not cower in our position as the minority party in the Senate.  Every GOP senator should vote no and when asked why? They should say for the same reason Obama and his leftist minions voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito. (Of course what is so funny is the read from the wanker telegraph where they deem that our voting against their nominee is akin to acting like a second grader, but when they vote against our nominees, that's ok. Just shows you what intellect you get from the pusillanimous left.)

UPDATE:  As a reminder,  here is the reasons then Senator Obama gave for voting "NO" for the confirmation of Justice Roberts:

Back in 2005, Obama said, in explaining his "nay" vote on Roberts:

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. Moreover, he seems to have the comportment and the temperament that makes for a good judge. He is humble, he is personally decent, and he appears to be respectful of different points of view. It is absolutely clear to me that Judge Roberts truly loves the law. He couldn't have achieved his excellent record as an advocate before the Supreme Court without that passion for the law, and it became apparent to me in our conversation that he does, in fact, deeply respect the basic precepts that go into deciding 95 percent of the cases that come before the Federal court -- adherence to precedence, a certain modesty in reading statutes and constitutional text, a respect for procedural regularity, and an impartiality in presiding over the adversarial system. All of these characteristics make me want to vote for Judge Roberts.

The problem I face -- a problem that has been voiced by some of my other colleagues, both those who are voting for Mr. Roberts and those who are voting against Mr. Roberts -- is that while adherence to legal precedent and rules of statutory or constitutional construction will dispose of 95 percent of the cases that come before a court, so that both a Scalia and a Ginsburg will arrive at the same place most of the time on those 95 percent of the cases -- what matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases that are truly difficult... In those 5 percent of hard cases, the constitutional text will not be directly on point. The language of the statute will not be perfectly clear. Legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision.

In those circumstances, your decisions about whether affirmative action is an appropriate response to the history of discrimination in this country or whether a general right of privacy encompasses a more specific right of women to control their reproductive decisions or whether the commerce clause empowers Congress to speak on those issues of broad national concern that may be only tangentially related to what is easily defined as interstate commerce, whether a person who is disabled has the right to be accommodated so they can work alongside those who are nondisabled -- in those difficult cases, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart.

It is not a judge's heart that should decide an appellate decision.  The law is what should guide the decision.

UPDATE: A well written op ed in today's WSJ on the nominee - read it here.

Update: Here's what was said about her in the NY Times back in 1998 ....