During the 1970 Senate debate over Richard Nixon’s nomination of G. Harold Carswell to the US Supreme Court, Mr. Carswell was characterized by his opponents as a mediocrity. (Now, admittedly, considering who Obama has foisted off on us mediocrity looks pretty good.) Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska took to the floor of the Senate to defend the nominee:
“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”
What was sort of funny at the time has actually happened, in spades. David Souter and Anthony Kennedy have been valiant and indefatigable champions of mediocrity since joining the court.
At one time, the Supreme Court was divvied up by race and ethnicity. We had a Jewish seat, then a black seat (this seat also served as a representative of the lazy and the mediocre when Thurgood Marshall held it, but it is now vacant because Clarence Thomas is not a liberal), and a woman’s seat. For a short while there was a Catholic seat, but now it is hinted that there are just too many Catholics on the court.
The nomination of Judge Sotomayor represents a natural evolution in parceling out Supreme Court seats. Rather than the so 1970s criteria of race and ethnicity, her role on the court will be to ensure that bigots and racial supremacists have adequate representation.
She’s off to a rousing start. She’s a member of a racialist group, the Council of La Raza, she has extolled her own ability to render “better” judgment because of her sex and ethnicity than a white male (aka, the guys who brought you Western Civilization), and she has ruled that race not trumps competence in civil service promotions. The future of bigotry seems to be in safe hands and Senator Hruska, unbeknownst to himself or anyone else at the time, has been revealed as a prophet.
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