Dave Weigel points out that Ed Whelan is furious, furious that Sonia Sotomayor expressed happiness at President Obama being elected. In an April 17 speech, she said that “our challenge as lawyers and court related professionals and staff, as citizens of the world is to keep the spirit of the common joy we shared on November 4 alive in our everyday existence." Whelan uses this statement to suggest, once again, a lack of judicial impartiality on Sotomayor's part. There's no end to statements from Sotomayor, in which she says things like "It is very important when you judge to recognize that you have to stay impartial. That's what the nature of my job is. I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona," but neither these nor her actual judicial record can possibly dissuade conservatives from the predetermined conclusion that she is an activist.
While I'd guess that Sotomayor, based on her personal politics, voted for Obama, a feeling of civic pride based on the fact that the nation elected its first black president was shared by a great deal of people in the aftermath of the election, including conservatives. Weigel also writes that "the conservatives on the court, such as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, are common presences around D.C. conservative events." And duck hunts. And then there was the time that the conservative majority on the court unilaterally decided that the Republican candidate should be the next president of the United States.
-- A. Serwer
