U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has resigned from the all-women Belizean Grove club — waiting for Friday to try to bury the announcement in the weekend news. Sotomayor did not express any personal concerns or regrets about joining an exclusive club and only stated that she did not want it to be a “distraction” from her record.
In a letter to the Senate Judiciary, Judge Sotomayor explained “I believe the Belizean Grove does not practice invidious discrimination and my membership did not violate the Judicial Code of Ethics, but I do not want questions about this to distract anyone from my qualifications and record.” It is the type of Beltway statement that leaves me cold. Before this nominee, liberals fought any nominee who belonged to an exclusive club confined to men or whites. Here, Sotomayor does not regret joining or oppose the exclusivity of the club — only regrets that it has proven controversial. If she likes discriminatory clubs, I would have much preferred her to regain a member and defend her decision. This announcement would only seem normal in Washington: abandoning the association for the express purpose of avoiding any personal repercussions.
Sotomayor was often suggested as a nominee for George W. Bush and has a fairly conservative voting record in some areas like free speech, police abuse, and student rights.
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sicilian 1 & Mespo,
I’ve always liked Luciano/Lansky theoretically, in the sense that both were intelligent, creative men who were innovators in their field. I know that some would be horrified since bother of them no doubt have a long history of heinous crimes to their credit. However, if you read the history of John D. Rockefeller, he too had many murders committed in his name (see Colorado Miner’s Strike) and did many things illegally. Many of our most famous capitalists were veritable criminals in practice. Luciano/Lansky were brilliant and capable, though I wouldn’t have wanted to know or be in business with either of them. They were limited in their options by initial poverty and prejudice and took the path to wealth they deemed easiest. Then too I must guiltily admit to having loved and cried through Godfather I & II, Once upon a Time in America (Leones’ homage to Jewish gangsters) and Goodfella’s. I also watched every Soprano episode from the beginning and spent the last one nervous that tony would be killed. I can’t help it it was nurtured in me as a child, by parents who in typical Jewish fashion raised me to be a straight arrow, setting up decades of guilt and a decade of Psychotherapy.
As a for instance I can remember being in the back seat of my folks car one evening when I was about ten. My parents were reminiscing about old friends and my mother brought up
Toddo Marino. Her comment was about how much she liked going to his bar, how she liked him and what a gentleman he was. The name stuck with me through the years for some reason. About 10 years ago I was watching a History Channel(?) documentary on Lucky Luciano and they mentioned his friend
Toddo Marino. It brought again to me my parents checkered history.
What kept me from ever participating in criminal activity’s,
other than smoking grass, was in part related to what sicilian 1’s harrowing experience in the holding cell that he detailed. One need not have ever gone to prison to understand the inhumanity and cruelty of the jail system.
It is cruel torture, sometimes physical and sometimes psychological. Early on I understood that, also from the movies and books.
The other thing that stopped me was the dichotomy of my parents humane beliefs on Civil Rights, Justice and doing the right thing, juxtaposed by their past lives and associations. The balance towards straight arrowhood came from my first Movie love: Westerns. High Noon, Shane, The Searchers, Magnificent Seven, were morality plays where the hero against long odds, wins the day for justice. The bad guys in all those movies were all criminals and I identified with the lone hero, fighting against the odds, for all that is good and right. By the time the late 60’s brought us more morally equivocal movies like Bonnie and Clyde, my pattern and inclinations had already been set.
Meso,
Thanks for the reply. I agree w/your analysis.
As far as Luciano/Lansky, I meant that to be a LOL!
If I didn’t include that then my apologies.