On Sotomayor, in her own words, from my LNDT post last night:

Judge Sotomayor said this to a noncitizen drug-dealer, who had just pleaded guilty to drug-dealing: “[I]t is in some respects a great tragedy for our country that instead of permitting you to serve a lesser sentence and rejoin your family at an earlier time I am required by law to give you the statutory minimum. … [W]e all understand that you were in part a victim of the economic necessities of our society, unfortunately there are laws that I must impose.”

In sentencing Louis Gomez, who also pleaded guilty to dealing cocaine, Sotomayor said, “Louis Gomez, yours is the tragedy of our laws and the greatest one that I know. … the one our congressmen never thought about and don’t think about. …

“It is no comfort to you for me to say that I am deeply, personally sorry about the sentence that I must impose, because the law requires me to do so. The only statement I can make is this is one more example of an abomination being committed before our sight. You do not deserve this, sir.”

Sotomayor is now awaiting confirmation to the federal Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. President Clinton and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) last week succeeded in pressuring Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) to move her hearing up a week, leaving ambushed Republican senators on the committee flailing about with little ammunition. It is assumed her next nomination will be to the Supreme Court—since she “looks like America.”

A few more Senate confirmations of judges like Sonia Sotomayor and America will look like the inside of a Mexican prison.

Link here and here to this post and the one preceding it, referencing a print copy of a 1997 article in Human Events Magazine.