Charles Krauthammer is the latest conservative to distort Sonia Sotomayor's comments in order to smear her as a racist:
On the Ricci case. And on her statements about the inherent differences between groups, and the superior wisdom she believes her Latina physiology, culture and background grant her over a white male judge. They perfectly reflect the Democrats' enthrallment with identity politics, which assigns free citizens to ethnic and racial groups possessing a hierarchy of wisdom and entitled to a hierarchy of claims upon society.
Sotomayor shares President Obama's vision of empathy as lying at the heart of judicial decision-making -- sympathetic concern for litigants' background and current circumstances, and for how any judicial decision would affect their lives.
Of course, just prior to criticizing Sotomayor for believing that empathy lies "at the heart of judicial decision-making" he recounts the story of Frank Ricci and how Sotomayor cruelly refused to ignore the law in order to grant the verdict conservatives wanted. Krauthammer argues that conservatives stand for the principle of "blind justice," (you could say "color-blind justice," since to do otherwise would be enshrining what Krauthammer calls a "racial spoils system") as well as standing "against justice as empathy." Krauthammer, like the color-blind Stuart Taylor, is a supporter of racial profiling and someone who believes torture is justified.
We have here the rudiments of applied conservative legal principles. The letter of the law is inviolable -- except when the government does it in the name of "national security." The law should be impartial and without empathy -- except when it comes to those individuals conservatives find sympathetic. And the law should be color-blind, unless you're going to suspect someone of being a criminal or a terrorist because of the color of their skin.
-- A. Serwer
