During the hearings for Justice Kavanaugh, there were charges that he was too political or too biased in one direction. The implication was that Supreme Court Judges should not be political. That is a reasonable standard, but is it applied evenly?<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Newsbusters<\/a> posted an article that included the following:<\/p>\n Despite acknowledging that she should not do so, on her current book tour United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor nevertheless waded into politicking, bashing both the Federal Government\u2019s response to Hurricane Mar\u00eda in Puerto Rico and exhorting Latino voters to go to the polls \u201cto change this life for us Latinos.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n In separate interviews with Telemundo and Univision, Sotomayor\u2019s partisan edge was evident. On its October 16 national evening newscast, Telemundo featured Sotomayor\u2019s message as part of that network\u2019s Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) campaign<\/a>, currently being deployed in partnership with an array of politically liberal-aligned voter mobilization organizations (including Voto Latino, UnidosUS, Hispanic Federation and Mi Familia Vota).<\/strong><\/p>\n …That same evening on Univision\u2019s national evening newscast, Sotomayor was featured bashing the Federal Government\u2019s massive response to Hurricane Mar\u00eda in Puerto Rico. She even prefaced her criticism that \u201chelp\u2026is not being received\u201d by acknowledging she was wading into political matters.<\/strong><\/p>\n …Evidently for Sotomayor, the fact that following Hurricane Mar\u00eda Puerto Rico was the object of the largest disaster commodity federal response<\/a> and the largest generator installation mission in U.S. history was not enough, nor was the fact that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development alone has allocated to Puerto Rico $20 billion in Community Development Block Grants, a figure more than twice the size of the U.S. Caribbean territory\u2019s annual budget for its entire government.<\/strong><\/p>\n At least Sotomayor was wise enough, during her interview with Univision, to remain diplomatic about fellow Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s recent arrival to the Court, saying that \u201cAmong colleagues there is always a welcome. He is a new member of our Court. We have to work with him and now we are beginning our new family. We work together, so let’s let this time pass.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem in Puerto Rico was not the amount of aid–it was the corruption involved in distributing the aid.<\/p>\n On October 17th, USA Today<\/a> reported:<\/p>\n FBI agents raided municipal offices in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Tuesday, seizing documents and digital records as part of an investigation into fraud allegations related to the city government.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Special agent in charge Douglas Leff said federal investigators are also looking\u00a0into\u00a0potential\u00a0obstruction\u00a0of the investigation. According to\u00a0Leff, agents believe\u00a0documents tied to the reported irregularities in the city’s purchasing procedures might have been taken from the building or falsified.<\/strong><\/p>\n If Justice Sotomayor is going to get involved in politics, she should at least do us the courtesy of getting her facts right. The problem is not the Trump administration–it is the corruption in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During the hearings for Justice Kavanaugh, there were charges that he was too political or too biased in one direction. The implication was that Supreme Court Judges should not be political. That is a reasonable standard, but is it applied … Continue reading