Fact Check Fact Check
The AP spanks Sen. Patrick Leahy for his “creative rewrite of history.” AP stops short of spanking itself, but never mind, this is astonishing enough from a press agency, where coverage of matters such as the Sotomayor nomination, the 2008 presidential election, the Iraq and Afghan war, our nation’s efforts to combat terrorism, and transgendered matters has been, when not just heavily slanted, distorted to the point of obfuscation and misrepresentation.* OK, never mind all that, here’s the AP’s Matt Apuzzo, with a Fact Check:
WASHINGTON (AP) - In endorsing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy did some creative rewriting of history. And he put quote marks around it.
Trying to head off criticism of a controversial comment, Leahy misquoted Sotomayor’s own words in kicking off the second day of her confirmation hearings.
Sotomayor’s public comments are as much a part of the hearings as her lengthy judicial record. Here’s a look at some of the claims made Tuesday about those comments, and the facts.
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LEAHY SAID: “You said that, quote, you ‘would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would reach wise decisions.’”
THE FACTS: If that’s all Sotomayor said, the quote would barely have mattered to opponents of her nomination. The actual quote, delivered in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley, was: “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.”
That’s great. I don’t know why that observation failed to make it into the AP’s daily story on yesterday’s hearing, which focused on how Sotomayor “pushed back vigorously” at Republican efforts to “undercut her with her own words.”
Apuzzo’s fact check goes on to note that Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, was correct when he quoted Sotomayor as saying: “the court of appeals is where policy is made” and “The law that lawyers practice and judge declare is not a definitive—capital L—Law that many would like to think exists.”
Reynolds notes the AP spanks Sotomayor in another sidebar, a featury slap at how ”Sotomayor elaborated, clarified, expanded, retracted … drew loopy circles on her paper; she ran rhetorical circles around her past words.”
Powerline notes Sotomayor’s hoop-jumping on the issue included creatively rewriting history to claim ”wise” kinship with Sandra Day O’Connor. As Legal Insurrection, WPost’s Ruth Marcus caught it. Unclear why that didn’t make its way into this AP “wise Latina” fact check. Volokh Conspiracy, cruelly piling on, notes further misstating of the Kelo decision regarding public taking of private property.
About that unfortunate quote, Apuzzo and the AP’s daily coverage both fail to note that Sotomayor did not just let it drop once, though the daily allows a cryptic reference in a Sessions quote that cites her repeated statements over a decade, without explaining to readers what the heck he’s talking about. Unless CQ Politics is grossly inaccurate, then the AP fact check should properly note that versions of Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” remark” were featured in her speeches at least four times between 1994 and 2003. Which tends to suggest that, regardless of whether she thinks her personal beliefs about the superior thinking of a particular race and gender has any bearing on her judicial decisions, she does appear to have held views that diminish and disparage the abilities of another race/gender group.
Media Matters, in its own indignant fact check, squawks that there’s context. She was talking about race and gender discrimination cases. This is an important point. Because for the last 40 years, race and gender discrimination has been embraced by large parts of American government and society, as long as it for the purposes of advancing racial and gender groups that have historically faced discrimination. Therefore, if Sotomayor is a bigot, she’s a mainstream, well-intentioned one.
But as AP stories have tended to note in advance of getting into the daily give-and-take about the merits of the nominee, none of this matters. The Democrats have the majority, and as long as she doesn’t crack in the hearing room, she’s in.
HotAir hurtfully notes Soto’s so-so reviews so far.
Nothing so-so about this one. Surber channels Georgetown law prof Seidman’s disgust over an “intellectually unqualified” Sotomayor’s “perjuring herself.
Malkin rounds up the “ritual assurances.”
Powerline on senatorial gesturing and speechifying as a substitute for asking questions.
Yeah, whatever, like Surber says, it’s all ”a big waste of time.”
Memeorandum rounds it all up.
In other mainstream bigotry developments, Hyscience and NetRightNation want to know why the Obama admin’s latest hate crimes push is so discriminating about what constituttes a hate crime.
* In prior AP scholarship:
Ayers Pal-ship Stretch Repudiated
Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant?
Sprechen Sie Deutsches Mit Einer Tauben Welt
AP Analysis: War is Hard, We’re Depressed (Can We Leave Now?)
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:37 am on Wednesday, July 15, 2009
One Response to “Fact Check Fact Check”
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July 15th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I’m not sure that this will turn out to be a bad pick, all things considered. It’s true that she has obviously let her personal views interfere with her judgements in the past, and that’s not good. She’s also been less than honest when questioned about past decisions and statement, which even the AP has manged to pick up on. I think she’ll have a harder time doing that in the Supreme Court without making herself look foolish. She’s not likely to have the ability to perform the mental gymnastics required by the other justices (Ginsburg in particular) to justify their poltically based opinions. She will (hopefully) have to consider the fundamentals of a case more carefully, rather than starting at the answer and figuring out a viable path to get there as we see with the more brilliant judges.
That’s the best case. The worst case is that she simply becomes a reliable liberal voter who has little influence on the rest of the court or setting precedent. Which, while not ideal, is not a terrible outcome.