The Sotomayor Hearings

I have nothing to complain about so far. The Republican members of the committee are doing exactly what they should be doing. They’re asking most of the right questions. Unfortunately there’s no one that’s going to address Sotomayor’s stance on the Separation of Church and State although I doubt that’s going to be much of an issue.

I’m still sort of lukewarm about her if the truth must be told. I see very little in her judicial record to give me a warm fuzzy feeling about how she’ll make decisions.

I grew up in a housing project in the Bronx as well, but in the more Liberal North Bronx. I had a pretty good Cuban buddy in high school that lived around Simpson Street in the South Bronx and he was a hell of a lot more conservative than I was.

He’s probably a big Republican contributor these days. We used to fight like cats and dogs when the conversation got to politics. Luckily we had more in common than not in those days.

The thing is he wasn’t the exception. In general the Hispanics I knew tended to be well to the right of center on a lot of things. They also all tended to be very religious.

Well, maybe not all. I had a Mexican friend that I used to go to church with every Sunday until we figured out that we could hang out in the bowling ally near Burke Avenue for an hour or so and then go back home.

The only Hispanic friend I had in college was also Cuban and he was a little nuts. We used to smoke grass and hit the bridge clubs in Manhattan together. He finally ended up working as a pharmaceutical salesman but, when people asked him what he did, he used to say he was a drug dealer. I remember some interesting facial expressions after that one.

To be honest with you I knew more about Alito than I do about Sotomayor and, while clearly I generally don’t agree with many of Alito’s positions, I felt reasonably comfortable with him. Perhaps because he was so much better than that washer woman Bush first nominated or because he made it clear that he stood by the principle of stare decisis.

Anyway, we shall see what we shall see.