Oppose!

"Senate Republicans must take a stand and vocally oppose this nomination, not on the basis of partisan politics, but in defense of the rule of law and the proper role of the judiciary, principles the president is only pretending to honor."
--columnist David Limbaugh

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Philosophy

"Sotomayor believes that law, like beauty, is entirely in the eye of the beholder. It is therefore of vital importance which beholders are sitting on the Supreme Court. Judicial philosophy is irrelevant, in this view; the only true judicial philosophy is personal philosophy."
--columnist Ben Shapiro

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Not the Metric We Should Use

"If you were going to have open heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is or by the best surgeon you could find-- even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer?"
--economist Thomas Sowell

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Hurdles?

"Since when did securing a Supreme Court seat become a high hurdles contest? The White House and Democrats have turned Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination into a personal Olympic event. Pay no attention to her jurisprudence. She grew up in a Bronx public housing project. She was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at 8. Her father died a year later. And, oh, by the way, did you hear that she was poor? It's a 'compelling personal story,' as we heard 20,956 times on Tuesday."
--columnist Michelle Malkin

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The Oath?

"Why make this complicated? President Obama prefers Supreme Court justices who will violate their oath of office. And he hopes Sonia Sotomayor is the right Hispanic woman for the job."
--columnist Jonah Goldberg

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Identity Politics

"[L]ike conventional liberals, [Sonia Sotomayor] embraces identity politics, including the idea of categorical representation: A person is what his or her race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference is, and members of a particular category can be represented -- understood, empathized with -- only by persons of the same identity."
--columnist George Will

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Bigotry or Empathy?

"In making Sonia Sotomayor his first nominee for the Supreme Court yesterday, President Obama appears to have found the ideal match for his view that personal experience and cultural identity are the better part of judicial wisdom. This isn't a jurisprudence that the Founders would recognize, but it is the creative view that has dominated the law schools since the 1970s and from which both the President and Judge Sotomayor emerged. In the President's now-famous word, judging should be shaped by 'empathy' as much or more than by reason. In this sense, Judge Sotomayor would be a thoroughly modern Justice, one for whom the law is a voyage of personal identity. 'Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers,' Mr. Obama said yesterday in introducing Ms. Sotomayor. 'It is experience that can give a person a common touch of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live. And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of Justice we need on the Supreme Court.' ...[Sotomayor] is a judge steeped in the legal school of identity politics. This is not the same as taking justifiable pride in being the first Puerto Rican-American nominated to the Court, as both she and the President did yesterday. ... Judge Sotomayor's belief is that a 'Latina woman' is by definition a superior judge to a 'white male' because she has had more 'richness' in her struggle. The danger inherent in this judicial view is that the law isn't what the Constitution says but whatever the judge in the 'richness' of her experience comes to believe it should be. ... As the first nominee of a popular President and with 59 Democrats in the Senate, Judge Sotomayor is likely to be confirmed barring some major blunder. But Republicans can use the process as a teaching moment, not to tear down Ms. Sotomayor on personal issues the way the left tried with Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, but to educate Americans about the proper role of the judiciary and to explore whether Judge Sotomayor's Constitutional principles are as free-form as they seem from her record."
--The Wall Street Journal

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Consider the Audience

"The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum."
--English cleric and writer Charles Colton (1780-1832)

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Decay

"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded."
--French political philosopher C. L. De Montesquieu (1689-1755)

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The Rule of The Brute

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
--author Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

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Judges...

"[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men."
--John Adams

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They're Watching

"The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it."
--James Madison, letter to James Monroe, December 16, 1824

Forever Vigilant

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
--George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

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May We Never Forget 5

"I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them. Yet, we must try to honor them -- not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice. Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper."
--Ronald Reagan

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May We Never Forget 4

"These Endured All And Gave All That
Justice Among Nations Might Prevail and
That Mankind Might Enjoy Freedom and
Inherit Peace."
--inscription on a memorial at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach

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May We Never Forget 3

"Not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men."
--Pericles

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May We Never Forget

"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."
--Calvin Coolidge

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May We Never Forget 2

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
--Sir Winston Churchill

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May We Never Forget

"[L]et us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us re-consecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain." --Dwight Eisenhower

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Duty

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."
--John Adams, letter to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1808

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Cost

"I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all the means...."
--John Adams

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Principles, Not Sentiment

"There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.... In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right...."
--James Madison, letter to James Monroe, October 5, 1786

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Pressure...

"Pressure makes diamonds."
--General George S. Patton

Thinking

"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking!"
--General George S. Patton