Mark Byron

Racist? No, try a Hispanic homer.

I wanted to see the Sotomayor quote on her being a better judge because of her Latina background in context, and found it here; it's from a speech to a Latino legal group in 2001. Let's kick this paragraph around for a little bit, for the final sentence is what has gotten a lot of conservatives hot and bothered.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina 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.

Is that racist? Or at least ethnocentric, since "Hispanic" is ethnic and not racial, despite the Latino activist group La Raza's name. Not in the way we normally use the word.

Let me try a thought experiment for a moment. We had a case in the news this week where a San Diego guy got busted (or at least threatened with a ticket) for having a Bible study in his house without a license. Let's say we had, say, Harriet Meiers, make this statement; "I would hope that a wise Christian woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a unchurched male who hasn't lived that life."

Would that statement be arrogantly Christianist (or whatever pejorative you want to slap in there)? Not really, since an evangelical Christian could tell the difference between an informal Bible study and a church service that someone from outside that church culture might not. Yes, that is a direct lift from the Sotomayor speech, changing Latina to Christian and white to unchurched.

Is she going to have experiences that you or I (I don't know of too many Hispanic members of the Peanut Gallery other than Ben Domenech, ex-Spudlet Marc Velasquez or my former Midland pastor Tim Ortiz) don't have? Yes. On the flip side, will we have experiences she hasn't had? Yes.

However, there are no shortage of judges with nicely-off European-descended parents with similar suburban or white-collar urban histories. Can they understand the plight of a poor minority kid? Yes, but it is a bit more foreign to them.

On the flip side, is that SD Bible study foreign to a lightly-observant Latina Catholic, where home Bible studies might not be a big part of their culture? That might be one case where a "wise Latina" would be at a disadvantage to an evangelical Anglo guy. She might be more fluent in the nuances of Santeria, but I'd be more fluent in finance and charismatic Christianity.

In an of herself, I don't see her as a better judge than, say, white-bread David Souter, to pick on a ideological peer. However, she will add an extra perspective to the court that, all else being equal, will help. She does come with a left-of-center slant that might make the court the worse for wear, but Sotomayor as a Latina is a plus; it's Sotomayor the liberal that worries me.

Racist? No more so than the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who knew the Greeks invented everything. A Hispanic homer (small H, as in a hard-core fan of the team) might be a fairer description.

End of the Line for the Wichita End-of-the-Lineman

Here is a sad story; George Tiller, a lighting rod for pro-lifer bile for his late-term-abortion clinic in Wichita, was assassinated this morning... in church- "Tiller was shot during morning services at Reformation Lutheran Church while his wife was in the choir, his attorney Dan Monnat said." Tiller was an usher there as well. That brings to mind fellow Wichitian Dennis Rader, who was president of his Lutheran church before being caught as the BTK Killer.

Unlike Rader, Tiller was working within the law; sometimes just barely, as "partial-birth" abortion laws started to bump into his practice. He had been shot before and seen his clinic bombed, as well as being the target of numerous peaceful anti-abortion protests.

Tiller is, as Ricky Ricardo would say, going to have some 'splainin' to do at the Pearly Gates. One can only hope that enough of the Gospel rubbed off on him despite his grisly and misguided occupation to get him a pass through.

Scaring off the Least of These

I noted a comment this week on a 2003 post on megachurches; a guy named Bruce Morrow was stating that one of my old churches from my Kent State days, the Chapel in Akron "persecutes the poor and less fortunate." Mr. Morrow has made the rounds of the web dissing former Chapel pastor Knute Larson.

Does he deserve such treatment. Here's my rebuttal to Mr. Morrow earlier today

Bruce, I can, as a FPOTUS would say, feel your pain. However, I don't recall Larson or the Chapel being anti-poor, unless things changed drastically after I left there.

They may well be guilty of being insufficiently pro-poor. They did lean upscale and I don't recall outreach to the poor being a big part of their ministry. They did a good job of reaching out to the University of Akron campus next-door (literally; they use UA parking lots on Sunday), but were rather lily-white and didn't stress things like food pantries or clothing give-aways to the poor.

Also, as an evangelical church, they may not have participated in some of the poverty-fighting programs of an "inter-faith" bent. I recall Larson got into some trouble with that inter-faith crowd by pointing out the differences between Christianity and Islam when those on the religious left wanted to focus on the "we're all praying to the same God" meme that was front and center post 9/11.

However, I don't recall them being anti-poor from a Word-of-Faith-style if-you're-poor-you-don't-have-enough-faith perspective. They tended to be more small-b Baptist in their theology, having grown out of a Baptist church.

Bruce, if you could give more details, I'd be willing to a more serious critique, but it would seem to be more errors of omission than of commission.

For instance, the Vineyard church I got married in was getting a bit Yuppie, and some more missional folks in the church left to start a church that did a better job of ministering to "the least of these." The Vineyard folks weren't anti-poor, but just not enough pro-poor for quite a few people's tastes. I think The Chapel may suffer from some of the same issues.

Thinking a bit deeper, I think there may have been some errors of commission as well. Here's a passage from my 2003 post

...I was attending a nice Baptist church in Kent, but I was the only "mature" (a.k.a. not undergrad aged) single adult in the church other than a mentally-retarded woman. Looking for some extra Christian fellowship led me to The Chapel, a generic-evangelical megachurch in Akron of about 8,000 during the early-mid 90s. Where Grace Baptist had one singles Sunday school class, The Chapel had four; a college-age class (very big, since they were right next to the U of Akron campus), a "20-something" class, a "Young Professionals" (late 20-early 30s) class that I went to and a middle-youth "Bridge-Builders" class for the 35+ crowd. A look at the current roster shows that they have two 35+ groups now and two 22-35 classes along with the 20-somethings. That kind of specialization will draw people from all over a metro area.

Let's look at this roster for a moment. I was in a "Young Professionals" class, but I was a doctoral student at Kent State at the time. What if you were a Young Nurse's Aide or a Young Factory Worker or Young Restaurant Cook? Do you fit in a Young Professionals class where your cohorts are computer programmers and medical equipment manufacture field reps and doctoral students in finance?

Mr. Morrow's MySpace page has him down as 42 years old and with an income south of $30K; he's now working in Wisconsin for the state DNR. He's five years younger than I and would have been a potential classmate in the early 90s when I was in my early 30s and he was in his late 20s.

Could that class title have scared him off? Could the yuppified nature of the church scared him off? Even if the Gospel was being preached (and it was, else I wouldn't have gone their as long as I did), was it being lived out by the thousands of stealth congregants who came, got a good evangelical show/service with a good preacher and good choir with a solid mix of modern praise and some traditional hymns, hopped the shuttle bus back out to their car (the place was so big, they borrowed a few Akron city busses for the day to shuttle people from some of the UA lots that were a good hike from the church) and went about the other 6.9 days of the week with little fruit to show for their faith.

I can't say that they didn't do any outreach to the poor, but I don't recall it being their strong suit. Most of the churches I have attended since have done better. The folks there may well care about the poor in theory but may more often than not fail to do so in practice.

That sounds a bit harsh at the Chapel, but you could probabaly look at half the churches in a typical town and come up with the same critique. We may take about caring for the least of these, but have you done something to help recently?

Also, do we have a church where Joe Sixpack is welcome? Often, Joseph Accountant, Esq., is welcome, but the guy in the faded shirt and jeans will get looked at funny by the better-off folks in the pew. If we got the snob out of us, or at least kept it under a tight leash, we might be expanding the kingdom a lot better.

Suffering Fools Ungladly

Interesting piece in the Washington Times (apply grains of right-leaning salt) of a less-than-friendly attitude from the bench of Judge Sotamayor-

Lawyers who have argued cases before Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor call her "nasty," "angry" and a "terror on the bench," according to the current Almanac of the Federal Judiciary -- a kind of Zagat's guide to federal judges.

The withering evaluation of Judge Sotomayor's temperament stands in stark contrast to reviews of her peers on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Of the 21 judges evaluated, the same lawyers gave 18 positive to glowing reviews and two judges received mixed reviews. Judge Sotomayor was the only one to receive decidedly negative comments.

...

"She does not suffer fools gladly," said Kevin Russell, a partner for Howe & Russell P.C. who argued a case before Judge Sotomayor about respiratory ailments suffered by the men and women who cleaned up ground zero after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "I guess it is predictable that some of those fools would then complain about it."

...

Legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen documented concerns from 2nd Circuit law clerks and New York prosecutors in a piece he wrote for the New Republic earlier this month. In the piece, he quoted anonymous members of the New York legal community who described Judge Sotomayor as an intellectual lightweight and "kind of a bully on the bench."

Other than the "intellectual lightweight" part, might she be the left's answer to Antonin Scalia? He doesn't exactly suffer fools gladly either, and will give both rhetorical barrels to his colleagues if he thinks their arguments are full of it. No one accuses Scalia of being a lightweight (at least if they know any better and/or aren't well lubricated), but he isn't known as a shrinking violet on the bench.

They may have to institute a three-knockdown rule if those two lock horns; figuratively speaking of course, since I don't see Scalia hitting a lady.

Justice is Blind, and Heartless?

I've had a rough week (my students sometimes read, so I'll have to be a bit less transparent than I have been in the past), so I'm just now getting around to the issue of judge Sonia Sotomayor as the new Supreme Court nominee.

On one level, she's an affirmative action hire, a two-fer as a Hispanic female; however, unlike the last AA nominee, Clarance Thomas, she has a far better record as a judge on both the federal district and appellate levels. That's not to say that Thomas was unqualified, but he only had a year or two on the DC circuit and was rushed a smidge to fill the "black seat" being vacated by Thurgood Marshall.  Thus, you can't play the quota-hire card on Sotomayor, at least not with any honesty.

Sotomayor is left-of-center to be sure, a fair replacement for Souter on an ideological basis; not a total knee-jerk liberal, but enough of one to make conservatives justifiably uncomfortable. However, I haven't seen any red flags that would make moderates blanche enough to make a conservative filibuster hold up. The RINO Sisters of Maine will vote for her in all likelihood, and that gives 61 votes for cloture as long as all 59 Democratic and liberal independent senators are on hand; they can even let Ted Kennedy stay at home with his brain cancer recovery and still get 60. If Al Franken finally gets his MN seat approved, they can give an ailing Porkasaurus Rex a pass on showing up as well.

The final vote may go further into the 60s, as a few moderate or polite Republicans may vote for her to avoid looking nativist for voting down the first Hispanic SC justice.

A few points in the debate have bothered me to this point.

(1) Conservatives ragging on the virtue of empathy and/or compassion in a judge, harkening to the "justice is blind" meme. However, you don't always want a judge that will coldly apply the letter of the law without any mitigation. The same guys who are ragging on the empathy of Sotomayor or other liberal judges would rip a local judge for closing down a kid's lemonade stand on health code violations and/or the lack of a sales tax licence, or banning a backyard treehouse on building code violations.

Conservatives want empathy, but not empathy that goes against their favored classes (businesses, traditional religion, white guys).

(2) Sotomayor's faux pas for saying that appellate courts are where policy is made. As they say in Washington, a faux pas is an accidental telling of the truth; here's CNN's coverage of her 2005 Duke comments.

"All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is — Court of Appeals is where policy is made," she said. "And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't 'make law,' I know. [Laughter from audience] Okay, I know. I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it. I'm, you know. [More laughter] Having said that, the Court of Appeals is where, before the Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating. Its interpretation, its application."

American law is based, in large part, of the British tradition of common law, where the rulings of judges in the past make up the lion-share of law; where laws have not been clearly written, it is up to judicial precedent to fill in those gaps. So, she is right in that the appeals courts are making law in a very literal way.

What is at issue is how to make such interpretations and how much weight to pay past decisions, of how much a judge should stare at stare decisis.

(3) Saying that she's a better judge because she's a Latina comes over as "racist" to the white guy pundits. She's partly right, since she'll have a broader perspective than the average Anglo jurist. Applying the law requires understanding the circumstances where it is being applied, and there will be some advantage of having a minority member of a court to bring that perspective to bear on the deliberations.

Yes, you can get that perspective by interviewing people of a given ethnic group or by having staffers of that ethnic group put in their $0.02. However, a broader group is likely to give a more robust decision rather than a homogeneous group that lacks perspective.

One flip-side to that is that we often have a liberal false-diversity, where we have all the ethnic and life-style groups covered, but they all come from a hard-left academic hothouse, where the blacks, Anglos, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, gays, deaf, disabled and quilting aficionados are all liberal. However, that doesn't seem to be the problem with the current Supreme Court, which is fairly representative of modern political thought.

This may be a bit tacky, but given that she is a Puertorriqueña from New York, she might (at least rhetorically) be the niece of one of the Sharks from West Side Story. She was born in 1954, which would have made her a tyke when the Romeo and Juliet story got recast in post-WWII Nuevo York with the Puerto Rican Sharks and Anglo Jets gangs played the roles of the Montagues and Capulets; or should that be reversed, since Maria is Juliet and Juliet was a Capulet.

Anyway, while we could do far better, if we have to pick a left-of-center judge (that's what you get when you pick a left-of-center president, like it or not), Maria's niece isn't all that bad of a choice.

Grace Drive?

I was driving in town a bit north of our apartment, and noted a sidestreet named Grace Drive. I thought to myself that that is a theological misnomer, since we can't drive towards grace. Grace is given by God, not earned; if we earned it, it wouldn't be that unmerited favor that defines the term grace.

Can we drive towards sanctification? Yes, to an extent, but we'll never fully get there in this life. However, grace is something that only God can grant; it is so far away from our earthly selves that any drive towards it will come up short.

Why VBS?

We're getting towards the end of the school year and, like a good annual flower, the VBS signs are starting to pop up in front of churches here in Lexington.

My question to the peanut gallery- how did we settle on the term Vacation Bible School and the one week, Mon-Fri (with allowance for an occasional Sunday kickoff) format? It has become so standard, we no longer have to utter the phrase proper, just the VBS acronym. Does someone do Summer Church Teaching or Summer Bible Classes? No, everyone (or almost everyone) calls it VBS.

Monday Musings

Let's see if I can get back to blogging on a regular basis. I don't have a huge readership, but what I do have appreciates what I do share.

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They're done with the slow-motion elections in India, and the coalition headed by the Congress Party (that's the party of Nehru and the Ghandis) got a majority of the vote. I think that's good news, given that Congress seems to have drifted to the free-market side of things over the years after years of being more socialist-oriented.

Even though the BJP tends to be a bit more free-market oriented than Congress, it also has the baggage of Hindu nationalism that will manifest itself in its supporters gooning it up and killing Christians, Sikhs, and Muslims. Given a choice between Tony Blair and a paleocon with a goonish streak, I'll take NuLab, thank you.

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I haven't been paying too much attention to the NBA playoffs this year; it might be a bit of fatigue after the Pistons were a non-factor for the first time in many years. We have something of a changing of the guard, with a Cleveland-Orlando series in the east and a Lakers-Denver series. In the east, Boston couldn't quite get it done without Garnett and Chauncey gets to go to a seventh straight conference final, this time with a new horse.

We're a series away from Madison Avenue's dream series, Kobe vs Lebron.

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Speaking of new horses, we have the oddity of a jockey having a shot at a Triple Crown without a horse having one. Calvin Borel jumped ship from Mine that Bird to ride superfilly Rachel Alexandra to a Preakness win. If RA is healthy, he'll have a very good shot of winning a Triple Crown on different horses for the first time in history.

The Prodigal Returns

I'm baaack. I haven't been away from blogging for this long in the seven-plus years I've been at this, but a combination of allergies and depressing news that I'd rather not think about have kept me from the keyboard. Also, a rather engaging Monday night investments class has given me an outlet to talk shop of economic issues along with whatever I'm supposed to be lecturing on that night.

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When age-peers die, it spooks me a little, so this story of Wayman Tisdale passing was sad. Sports fans remember his as a power forward at Oklahoma and three NBA clubs, but for folks who hang out on the smooth jazz channel, he was an is rather than a was, having a solid second career as a jazz bassist. Unlike a lot of basketball players who will dabble with music as a hobby, Tisdale became a legit jazz star.

His album titles often borrowed from his basketball career; his debut album, Power Forward both described his basketball position and his crisp, energetic bass style. What proved to be his final release (barring any posthumous records of stuff that was "in the can"), Rebound, marked one of his major stat columns in basketball and his now-failed attempt to recover from cancer.

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Lexington is horse country, so we get wall-to-wall coverage of the Triple Crown events. One of the more interesting Preakneses in a while will go down this afternoon, where Calvin Borel has an interesting spot of being in line to win a personal Triple Crown. He rode Mine That Bird to a upset win in the Kentucky Derby and rode superfilly Rachel Alexandra to victory in the Kentucky Oaks the day before.

Bo-rail has opted to go with Rachel Alexandra, who has dominated the fillies and needs competition. It's scary in that it reminds me of an equally dominant Ruffian, where her primary jockey, Jacinto Vasquez, was riding both her and top colt of the year Foolish Pleasure; when the two met in that fateful match race at Belmont where Ruffian broke down, Vasquez opted to ride Ruffian.

RA is the early favorite, with Mine That Bird relegated to a 6-1 co-third choice.

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More blogging later. I have to go help with a clothing give-away at church.

Bo-Rail and John Henry 2.0

Last year, I mentioned that I was picking Dennis of Cork, a 20-1 shot, to place in the Kentucky Derby, because "with last year's winner Calvin Borel aboard. I have a hunch that Bo-rail will have him in the hunt at the end." I did that before the race, and would have made $11.60 on a $2 bet, for DoC did come in third.

Before yesterday's Derby, my mythical trifecta had favorite Friesan Fire to win, Bob Baffert trained Pioneerof the Nile (that's not a typo, they had to merge Pioneerof to get it into the 18-character limit) to place (I look for good trainers, and he's one of the best) and Borel-packing Mine that Bird, a 50-1 shot,  to show.

Well, like last year, I went 2-for-3. Last year, I missed Eight Belles tragic run to second place before breaking two legs and being "put down." This year, I missed Friesan Fire getting smothered in the Churchill Downs clay, coming in next to last. However, Pioneerof The Nile did come in second and ...

...Bo-Rail struck again. He brought Mine that Bird along the rail, doing a worst-to-first run that included a how'd-he-do-that burst on the inside past the lead trio.

What is interesting is that Mine that Bird is a gelding, so he has the prospect of a long career, unlike, ahem, fully-functional colts who go to stud right after their three-year-old season. He may make a run at John Henry's career as a great gelding who got to race for many years due to the lack fo stud value.

Which Souter Seat Suitor Will Suit Obama?

It's interesting that the week Arlen Specter switches parties, David Souter decides to hang up his Supreme Court gown at the end of the term.

We just about have a filibuster-free Senate, at least for judicial nominees. There are 57 Democrats and two liberal-friendly independents, and you can pretty much bank on the RINO Sisters of Maine going along with anything short of the Devil incarnate as a nominee. That's 61, 62 if Al Franken gets on board by the time the nomination is voted on.

This will likely be the first time in recent memory that we've had such a lopsided Senate and the specter of a filibuster didn't loom over a prospective nominee. Souter was a product of the modern judicial fights, as the elder president Bush wanted to avoid a nomination brawl and nominated a bland, moderate New Hampshire jurist. The joke at the time was that Souter avoided all water sports, so he didn't Row or Wade. Once on the bench, he set up shop on the liberal side of the court more often than not.

The next person in that spot will not likely to have that judicial hydrophobia; they're likely to be a loyal liberal who will bow at the altar of Roe v Wade. Here's CNN version of the short-list, with another George HW Bush nominee, 2nd circuit appleate judge Sonia Sotomayor, heading things up; she has Souteresque "moderate-liberal views" per CNN. The conventional wisdom, at least as NPR had it down on my way into work this morning, was that Obama would pick a woman to give Ruth Bader Ginsberg someone to go to the Little Girl's Room with; Sotomayor would be a two-bagger, being both a woman and the first Hispanic justice.

The sad-interesting thing is that while the right side of the Blogosphere will rant and rave over whoever Obama nominates, they're not in any position to do anything about it; there are 61 folks who won't listen to them unless Obama picks someone with horns and a tail.