Sotomayor And The Crafty Catholic Lobby

From David Rothkopf:

I had to accept the reality that The Lobby existed exactly as described in best-selling literature and on well-respected blogs. After all, these clearly well-organized, crafty Catholic-Americans were — despite representing only a quarter of the American people — on the verge of augmenting their already defining majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. It was striking in fact that every single member of the Court’s conservative wing, including the Chief Justice, are Catholics as is the court’s noted swing-vote, Anthony Kennedy. And now, this lobby’s latest puppet, Barack Obama, has played right into their hands with his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, a woman whose confirmation would give the Catholics two-thirds of the votes on the nation’s highest court.

Admittedly, Sotomayor would bring to the court more federal court experience than any justice in three-quarters of a century, a distinguished record as a justice, and a story that was movingly and inspiringly American (despite her parents birth in a long-disputed territorial remnant of a fallen empire.) Admittedly, as the first Hispanic nominee and a legal centrist nominated for her first federal job by President George H.W. Bush, she was also a brilliant choice for a political perspective.