Sotomayer the Unjust, the Oppressor

I have earlier noted that Judge Sonia Sotomayor has severe shortcomings as a federal judge and would be unsuitable as a Justice of the Supreme Court. I discussed her faults with respect to group identity biases and with respect to her lack of respect for private property rights in posts on 27 May and 3 June of 2009. Today I will discuss another huge problem affecting our individual rights.

This problem is revealed by her decision in the case of Maloney v. Cuomo, which considered whether the recent Supreme Court decision that the people of the District of Columbia have a right to own and bear arms applies to citizens who live in states. Remarkably, Judge Sotomayor found that states have the power to deny their citizens the right to own and bear arms even if they are law-abiding citizens. She held that the Second Amendment does not recognize an individual right which no government in the United States of America was empowered to violate.

It is very clear that the Framer's of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended to protect just such an individual right from all levels of government with the Second Amendment, just as they were doing the same to protect individual rights to freedom of speech and a free press in the First Amendment. Indeed, it has been well-established law that the protections of the First Amendment do apply to all Americans, just as freedom from illegal search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment does. Sonia Sotomayor thinks otherwise with respect to the Second Amendment.

Given this viewpoint that the amendments to the Constitution may or may not, upon her whim, actually serve as protections of the individual and his sovereign rights from the worst predators extant, namely our governments, it is clear that Sotomayor is even more ready than most progressives to eviscerate the Constitution. She is determined that it will not stand in her way when she personally decides that she likes something or she does not. She has already made it clear that it will not stand in her way when it comes to the law being blind with respect to a person's race or ethnic background. She has made it clear that she recognizes little to no personal property rights, if a government body lusts after an individual's property. She has also made it clear that even a right to which an entire original amendment in the Bill of Rights was devoted, earns no respect from her.

We must rationally conclude that not a single right guaranteed to Americans in the Constitution is safe from her predations. She is clearly such a believer in all-powerful governments that no individual right has any real standing with her. If a government wants it, that government gets it. We, as individuals, have no protection from governments based upon our rights, whether to be judged only on the basis of our character, to own property, or to own and bear arms today; but tomorrow we may just as well have no freedom of speech, no freedom to assemble, to freedom to petition government, no freedom of the press or Internet, and no freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. It seems clear that she, as with Joe Biden, believes that individuals only have those "rights" which government chooses to give them. What government gives at one time, it can take away at another and Sotomayor is prepared to help with the taking.