If I Were King

In a recent post, Republicans, Obama soften court debate, the Swamp summarized the most egregious comments by the right wing about Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the high bench:

Conservative Republicans have attacked Sotomayor over the comment, with radio’s Rush Limbaugh calling her a “reverse racist,” former Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado saying it appears to be a racist comment and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggesting that if a white male had said something similar, he’d have to withdraw from consideration for the court.

Are these people really as stupid as they seem? Here’s her actual comment:

I would hope that a wise Latino 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.

Well, duh! The American legal system is the domain of white males. Yes, there are ethnic minorities practicing law, and some females, but that’s a recent development. Through the history of American history and English Common Law before that, most laws have been written by white male legislators and interpreted by white male jurists. The law texts have been written by white male professors, and that’s who has taught most of the courses at law school. These white males have predominantly been upper class property owners. So even a Latina or a black woman practicing law today has been steeped in a legal system that is culturally white, male, and propertied.

Anybody who brings additional perspective is likely to “more often than not” reach better decisions. Sure, there are white males that have spent time in the Peace Corps, struggled out of disadvantaged families, or overcome handicaps. They get extra points as well. As long as the members of the court are qualified (they know the law, understand the rules of logic, and can read and write the English language); the greater the diversity of background on the bench, the better justice will be served.

If I Were King I’d do exactly what Obama has done here. I’d take every opportunity to increase the diversity among federal judges. I’d probably be harder to please in some other ways (to my mind, logic trumps the letter of the law, for example) but that’s where I’d start.

Okay, there’s almost nothing there yet, but this morning the owner of A-OK Self  Storage at Freeland (South Whidbey, Washington) called. I’d had a chat with the on-site manager on Monday when I was paying the bill for our 10×10-foot storage unit, and we talked just a bit about how a small website could augment their small yellow-pages presence. On Tuesday she called back and wanted me to send some links of sample sites to the owner. From the time we got off the phone to the time the site was visible, including domain registration, DNS setup, server creation, and uploading a simple tombstone, was just over an hour. By the time the search engines get it indexed, we’ll have a real site attached to it. The royal household is big on stuff, so we always have one or two storage units, and we’ve been happy with the service here. Doubly happy now that they’re a client as well as a supplier!