No Comment — May 26, 2009, 5:00 pm
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In the first of his Supreme Court picks, Barack Obama has given the nod to the early favorite, Bronx-born Sonia Sotomayor. My take on the pick is up now at The Daily Beast. In past years, Supreme Court nomination battles have focused on the hot button issues of the Religious Right: abortion and gay marriage, among other things. More recent polling shows public interest in those issues fading away, while most Americans now pick runaway powers exercised by the Executive as their biggest legal policy worry. On that point, Charlie Savage recently noted that Sotomayor is something of a mystery—the Second Circuit rarely gets this sort of case. Charlie’s piece is excellent, but I’m not so sure about his conclusions on Sotomayor. In the tough way she approaches prosecutors who appear before her, I see a judge who believes that those who wield executive power have to be held to account for it. That should add to her appeal to civil libertarians, who are generally disappointed with many of Obama’s recent calls on national security issues.
More from Scott Horton:
No Comment — April 12, 2013, 11:11 am
A new report from Seton Hall University exposes government surveillance of attorney-client conversations
No Comment, Six Questions — March 18, 2013, 9:00 am
Rashid Khalidi on how the United States sustains the failure of the Israel-Palestine peace process
No Comment, Six Questions — February 4, 2013, 9:00 am
Alex Gibney on his documentary investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of child sex-abuse cases
Amount of cash CNN reporter Peter Arnett says he wore sewn into his clothes while covering the Gulf War:
Babies prefer to look at attractive people.
A woman testified that prostitutes at the “bunga bunga” parties thrown by former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had dressed up as President Obama.
“This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science, and I’ve come to see how it’s done.”
