Sunstein & Obama [Jonah Goldberg]
THE CORNER BLOG
From a reader:
Mr. Goldberg,
Does Prof. Sunstein want to be taken seriously?
As noted at NR, this is the man who said the following regarding Sen.
Obama's knowledge of Constitutional Law:
³The first thing to know,² Professor Sunstein said, ³is that he knows this
stuff inside and out, and he has the credentials to be easily appointed to
the court himself.²
Now Prof. Sunstein should know that Sen. Obama did not write anything while
heading up the Harvard Law Review nor publish anything while he served as an
adjunct faculty member at Chicago. And if the qualifications for the Supreme
Court are simply a Harvard Law degree or teaching one class at a law school,
then we're lowering the bar quite drastically.
And Prof. Sunstein either knows or should know of Sen. Obama's infamous
statement about qualifications for the Supreme Court:
"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's
like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to
be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that's the
criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges."
As Ed Whelan has noted until he's blue in the face, this trashes the
jurisprudence of dispassion, which is an accomplishment that western
civilization has struggled for centuries to achieve.
That Obama could spout such a line, and for Prof. Sunstein to claim that
Sen. Obama could easily serve on the S. Ct., is to realize that neither man
is qualified for the role they currently hold, let alone any future role.
McCain, Obama & Latinos [Jonah Goldberg]
From First Read:
When CW Is Wrong: There was a growing consensus during the Democratic primary season that Obama was going to struggle with Latino voters — due to the exit polls, his race, and McCain's immigration stance. In fact, in that now-famous conference call in which Hillary Clinton indicated that she would be open to serving as Obama's running mate, that response was spurred by concern by New York Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D) that Obama was going to have trouble with Latinos. But it looks like that CW — at least right now — was wrong. In addition to our recent NBC/WSJ poll, which showed Hispanics breaking for Obama 62%-28%, a new survey of 800 Latino voters from 21 states finds that 60% of them plan to vote for Obama versus 23% for McCain. That is down considerably from the 40%-plus Bush received in 2004. It's no longer fair to say that Obama has a problem with Latino voters; McCain does. This was a case of conventional wisdom that was never based on fact, just semi-informed speculation based on primary exit polling and bad stereotypes of Latinos.
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