Howard Phillips, Chairman of The Conservative Caucus, has called upon members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to probe Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor regarding the following questions:

###

"President Barack Obama was just past his first ‘100 days in office’ when David Souter’s retirement gave him the opportunity to submit his first Supreme Court nominee to Congress. He had been planning for this moment. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama explained what he would look for in a nominee to the high 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 criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.’^[1]

"President Obama reiterated his commitment to ‘empathy’ last week when he commented on Justice Souter’s resignation. He promised to seek someone ‘who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook.’ Apparently, to President Obama, a basic understanding of the plain text of the Constitution is now ‘abstract legal theory.’ But empathy, he says, will produce justice.

"Once again, President Obama has demonstrated that the ‘change we can believe in’ is not the change we need in this country. What we need is a change towards constitutional and biblical fidelity.

"Writing in 1833 in his famous Commentaries on the Constitution, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story explained that empathy is not the same as justice. Justice must be ‘freely, fully, and impartially administered.’ Without impartial justice, ‘neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.’^[2]

"By seeking to nominate to the high court, judges who ‘got the heart, the empathy’ — as opposed to judges who are faithful to the law of the land — we are heading toward that ‘state of savage and barbarous independence’ that Justice Story warned about. That was two centuries ago. Justice Story wasn’t the first.

"Writing 3,500 years ago in the book of Leviticus, the ultimate Law-giver explained the proper role of judges:

" ‘Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour’ (Leviticus 19:15).

"In this text of Scripture, there is no reference to how judges feel about a matter, or how judges should ‘empathize’ with the parties to the case, or even how judges should use their own ethnic background to decide the matter before the bar. The command is to ‘not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty.’ Not feel their pain!

"Contrary to what the ACLU or even the president himself might want, our legal system has codified this biblical command not to respect either the ‘poor’ or the ‘mighty’ in our own republic. The United States Code prescribes the oath that all federal justices or judges are to swear or affirm before performing their duties. The oath states:

" ‘I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [job title] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.^[3]’

"President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, was picked for her empathy rather than her impartiality. In fact, Judge Sotomayor has a record of showing partiality both in her written opinions and as well as outside the courtroom.

"In a 2001 speech at the University of California at Berkeley, Judge Sotomayor said that the ethnicity and sex of a judge ‘may and will make a difference in our judging.’ She went on to declare that ‘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.’

"Fast forward to 2008, where we see how Judge Sotomayor applies her judicial philosophy of ‘empathy’ in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano (now before the U.S. Supreme Court). In that case, local firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, took an examination in hopes of getting promoted. When the results came out, the majority of those who took the test and passed were ‘white.’ The town decided to disregard that exam. The firefighters who passed the test were passed up for promotion, and they sued the town for reverse discrimination. On appeal to the Second Circuit Court where Judge Sotomayor sits, Judge Sotomayor refused to examine the issues of the ‘white’ firemen and threw out the case. So much for Judge Sotomayor’s ‘empathy’ for both sides.

"And finally, one cannot forget the gaffe committed in 2005 in which Judge Sotomayor explained at a Duke Law School forum that it is at ‘the court of appeals is where policy is made.’ Isn’t that the job of the legislature? Judge Sotomayor caught her mistake and quickly said, ‘We don’t make law, I’m not promoting that, I’m not advocating that, you know.’ However, you have to ask yourself, how does an ‘extremely qualified’ judge make a mistake like that?

"Jesus Christ said that ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’

"I think it’s clear where Judge Sotomayor’s heart is — she thinks that her job is to ‘empathize’ with the parties before her as opposed to judging ‘in righteousness . . . thy neighbour.’ And this is why she is disqualified to be our next U.S. Supreme Court justice."

1. A widely quoted 2007 speech that then Sen. Obama gave to Planned Parenthood. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/supreme-court/2009/05/obamasempathystandard_drawin.html?hpid=news-col-blog

2. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/preambles21.html

3. Title 28 chapter 21 § 453.

______________________________

Mr. Renaud is in his final year of law school at the Oak Brook School of Law in Fresno, California and is an official of Vision Forum Ministries in San Antonio, Texas.

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"My name is George C. Joseph.  I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

"We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people.  We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month.  All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. 

"We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community.  We have strong local presence and stability. I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees.  Sunshine Dodge is my life.

"On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them.

"My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars.  This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as "new," nor will we be able to do any warranty service work.

"Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service.  There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.

"Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler's insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.   

"HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN?  

"THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITY

"This is beyond imagination!  My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN.  We did NOTHING wrong.

"This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy.  This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families?  This is a total economic disaster.

"HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

"I beseech your help, and look forward to your reply. Thank you.

Sincerely,

George C. Joseph
President & Owner
Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu"

Source: tothepointnews.com, 5/26/09 

When I was Director of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) in 1973, I cut off the money to all of the entities promoted by Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven.

For example, prior to my tenure, under Sargent Shriver, Don Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, more than 500 chapters of the National Welfare Rights organization were created at taxpayer expense to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Despite my efforts to Defund the Left, when I resigned as OEO Director, following President Nixon’s decision to continue funding the agency and its programs at an even higher level, the Left was refunded by my successors under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

"ACORN, the radical organization charged with voter fraud in several states, owes its origin to a revolutionary strategy developed by two Columbia University sociologists in the 1960s.

"After completing his legal education at Harvard, Barack Obama returned to Chicago to work in an ACORN-funded voter registration project that developed directly out of this radical revolutionary strategy.

"On … May 2, 1966, Columbia’s Professor of Social Work Richard A. Cloward, and his then research associate Frances Fox Piven, wrote a pivotal article in The Nation, articulating ‘a strategy to end poverty.’

"In what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, the article argued a revolutionary approach to mobilizing the poor in the form of class warfare against capitalist forces viewed as exploiting labor and oppressing the poor. …

"Cloward and Piven argued a ‘guaranteed annual income’ should be established as an entitlement for the poor, a right the poor could assert and demand to be paid.

"Arguing for massive registration of poor in existing social welfare programs, Cloward and Piven sought to create a crisis that could be exploited to obtain a fundamental redistribution of power in favor of the ‘have-nots.’

"Advancing their socialist revolutionary aims, Cloward and Piven explained the crisis they sought ‘can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.’

"The Cloward-Piven strategy sought to apply the tactics of the revolutionary civil rights movement, including urban riots, to the poor as a whole, transcending interest-group politics defined by race to involve interest-group politics defined by class.

"Radical black activist George Wiley created the National Welfare [Rights] Organization, or NWRO, to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy.

"Sol Stern, writing in the City Journal, noted that foot soldiers hired by the NWRO were successful in expanding welfare rolls from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s. The result was that in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, ‘one person was on the welfare rolls … for every two working in the city’s private economy.’

"James Simpson, a former White House staff economist and budget analyst, asserts in American Thinker that the ‘vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO’s Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975.’

"William Radke, the founder of ACORN, was a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, before he dropped out of Williams College in 1968 to join the anti-draft movement protesting the Vietnam War.

"He next worked for George Wiley’s NWRO in Springfield, Mass., before leaving for Little Rock, Ark., in 1970. In Little Rock he formed the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, an organization whose name he morphed into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, to form a national organization.

"With ACORN, Radke resolved to apply the Cloward-Piven strategy as a ‘community organizer’ in an effort to recruit radicals to register to vote as Democrats, often fraudulently, in local, state and national elections.

"Radke’s idea was to create a crisis in voter registration similar to the crisis in registration for welfare benefits that Cloward and Piven had initially sought to cause.

"Funded heavily by George Soros through his Open Society Institute, ACORN has followed a three-point strategy that James Simpson described as follows:

1. "Register as many Democratic voters as possible, legal or otherwise, and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
2. "Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
3. "Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards required of voters arriving at polling stations to vote.

"In 1992, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama headed the Chicago operations of Project Vote!, an ACORN effort to register voters nationally. In Chicago, Obama had his biggest impact registering African-American voters on Chicago’s South Side." Source: WorldNetDaily, 5/14/09, Jerome R. Corsi

(CNSNews.com, 5/4/09) – "The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding a study that seeks to discover a link between drinking and having sex among homosexuals in Argentina.

"The study will send researchers to six bars in Buenos Aires to interview both patrons and proprietors in an effort to discover what it is about those bars that may encourage the risky behavior.
 
"The study began on Sept. 30, 2008, and runs through Aug. 31, 2010. It already has cost taxpayers $198,776. By the time the project ends, it will have cost $403,902, according to NIH.
 
"The grant, awarded to the New York State Psychiatric Institute, was provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the division of NIH that studies the effects of alcohol and alcoholism.
 
"The study’s primary focus is to determine the relationship among drinking, bars frequented by homosexuals, and risky sexual behavior to see if certain bars in Argentina might be good targets for HIV-prevention campaigns. 
 
" ‘Targeting public venues in Buenos Aires where men meet, alcohol is consumed, and sexual behavior occurs, the goal of this two-year exploratory study is to understand the various factors that contribute to the creation of a high-risk sexual space,’ the study’s abstract explains.

" ‘To that end, the study seeks to describe the relative contribution of physical characteristics of the place, patron characteristics, type and level of alcohol consumption, and social dynamics that are at play and potentiate each other to result in sexual risk behavior.’
 
"The study has six goals, including the collection of information on six specific bars in Buenos Aires; the appearance, of those bars, alcohol availability, patrons, and types of sexual behavior taking place. The study also seeks to identify which factors contribute to alcohol consumption and sexual behavior in the bars.
 
" ‘The specific aims of this study are to … 2) identify factors that contribute to alcohol use and high-risk sexual behavior in the venues,’ says the abstract.
 
"Researchers will interview 48 of the men who patronize the bars, as well as the bar staff to gather information on the types of alcohol consumed and sexual behavior engaged in. …

"While the study is being conducted in Argentina, it is being funded with U.S. tax dollars.  The grant recipients--who could not be reached for comment--say in the abstract that information gathered in the bars in Argentina might help inform similar efforts in America. …
 
"The study is among a number funded by the NIAAA to examine the relationship between drinking and the spread of HIV, including a study of tourism, prostitution, and HIV in the Dominican Republic and another study examining drinking and HIV among prostitutes in China."

TO: MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES