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The presidential candidate was greeted last Monday at the airport by a jubilant throng, chanting “Azerbaijan is awake, and is supporting its son!” That slogan, shouted in the Azeri language, might sound a little discordant, given that Mir-Hossein Moussavi is running for President not of Azerbaijan, but of Iran.
Republicans kept the pressure on the president’s Supreme Court pick Friday, pushing the idea that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is an activist judge who will bring a leftist agenda to the bench. Meanwhile, the White House tried to soften remarks Sotomayor made in 2001 that have rankled conservatives, who say her assertion that her experiences as a Latina woman might make her judgments more sound than those of a white man brands her as a racist. “I’m sure she would have restated it, but if you look at the entire sweep of the essay she wrote, what’s clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through that will make her a good judge,” President Obama said in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams.
Turning a federal judge — even one like Sonia Sotomayor, who has gone through Senate confirmation hearings before — into a Supreme Court nominee ready for prime time takes a lot of preparation, mock hearings and coaching.
The Republican Party risks further alienation from Hispanics by challenging the nomination of Sonia Sotomayer, who would become the first Hispanic, and third woman, on the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, President Obama nominated 54-year-old Sotomayor — who is of Puerto Rican descent — to replace the retiring Justice David Souter. Sotomayer is a judge on the 2nd U.S.
So why did Sonia Sotomayor get the nod as Barack Obama’s first pick for the Supreme Court? Of the four women in final contention for the job — the competition included two members of his Administration, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as well as his fellow Chicagoan, Appeals Court Judge Diane P. Wood — Sotomayor was the candidate with whom the President was least familiar.
Cecilia Lopez, a student who is the first person from her family to go to college, sees something of herself in the first Hispanic woman to be nominated to the U.S.
(CNN) — Here is a look at the resume and record of federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom President Barack Obama has chosen as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is touted by supporters as a justice with bipartisan favor and historic appeal.
Decades-old time off given women for pregnancy leave cannot be counted when deciding pension eligibility, the Supreme Court decided Monday. The ruling is a setback for a relatively small class of women, many in or approaching retirement, who took maternity leave before a federal law went into effect prohibiting workplace discrimination. That 1979 statute, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, said companies had to treat such time off just like any disability, and it would be credited toward retirement.
President Obama has started arming for the possibility of a major Supreme Court nomination battle, pulling a longtime Democratic power player into the White House to help run the confirmation process, senior administration officials told CNN. Stephanie Cutter is leaving the Treasury Department, where she has served as one of Secretary Timothy Geithner’s most senior advisers during the financial crisis, to be the point person for mobilizing public support for Obama’s pick to replace retiring Justice David Souter, three senior administration officials said. Administration officials say Obama is likely to name Souter’s replacement in late May or early June, before the president leaves for Egypt to deliver a speech to the Muslim world.