Topic category:  Government/Politics

President Obama managed to have now Justice Sonia Sotomayor confirmed before Congress's summer recess, before public appreciation of Obamacare drove down his approval rating and up his disapproval rating.

Sotomayor is lucky to have been nominated and confirmed before Obamacare finally was scrutinized.

But America is NOT lucky to have either Obama in the White House or Sotomayor on the United States Supreme Court.

Last year, with the help of the complicit liberal media establishment, Obama fooled enough voters to win the Presidency.

Many of the people who were led to believe that Obama was not a radical and claims to the contrary were bogus have been learning otherwise.

The malignant messages of Team Obama and the allied liberal media establishment were:

If you opposed Obama, you did not want a black (actually half-black) President and you could demonstrate that you were not a racist by backing Obama.

If you opposed Sotomayor, you did not want a Hispanic United States Supreme Court Justice and you could demonstrate that you were not a racist by backing Obama's choice, Sotomayor.

But the problems with Obama and Sotomayor are their radicalism and judicial activism, not their race or color.

The Judicial Confirmation Network wisely warned before Election Day 2008 that Obama would nominate judicial activists if he was elected.

The great majority of Americans don't want judicial activists on the bench, but they got a President determined to appoint them.

After Obama predictably nominated Sotomayor, the Judicial Confirmation Network opposed and exposed her as a judicial activist.

But Team Obama and the liberal mainstream media secured her confirmation, in important part by having her pose as a proponent of the rule of law.

Wendy E. Long, Judicial Confirmation Network legal counsel, in a recent Bench Memo at NationalReviewOnline, cited Sotomayor's first Supreme Court vote as evidence that Sotomayor's confirmation was achieved by deception.

Mrs. Long:

"Sotomayor on the Job

"Justice Sotomayor’s first vote on the Supreme Court yesterday was to stay the execution of an unquestionably guilty hitman that even Ohio’s Democratic governor wanted to go forward. (It did; she and the liberal activist bloc lost the vote.)

"Who's surprised?

"Sotomayor boosters tried to paint her as a tough-on-crime former prosecutor to counteract her radical-left, anti-death-penalty activism during her days with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

"Remember Joe Biden assuring law enforcement she 'has your back'?

"Remember the White House continually highlighting her work for New York City DA Robert Morgenthau?

"Remember her supporters touting that she had allowed 'the first prosecution in the Southern District of New York of a death-penalty case in over 40 years'?

"Ever catch the Alliance for Justice's report, which said: "Exhibiting a modest and restrained approach to trial process, she frequently concludes that procedural defects resulted in harmless rather than structural error. Her cautious style reveals the temperament of a former prosecutor who understands the real-world demands of prosecuting crime and fundamentally respects the rule of law, while remaining alert to the rights of criminal defendants."

"All these little attempts to mislead and distract were transparently absurd, but it's worth noting, just for the record."

"[T]ransparently absurd" to Mrs. Long, certainly.

But, unfortunately, due to Team Obama and the liberal media establishment, not to millions of well meaning, but minimally informed Americans who have not read the postings at www.judicialnetwork.com and http://bench.nationalreview.com/.

With Obamacare now in deep trouble because most Americans reject socialism, government control of health care and a "public option" as a stalking horse for the single plan Obama publicly admitted a few years ago that he favors and eventually expects, Team Obama is playing the race card again and demonizing opponents of Obamacare as racists and opposition to Obamacare as based on racism and resentment of America's first black president.

But that canard can't be sold nearly as effectively as the one about Obama as the post-racial candidate championing hope and change was sold last year, because opposition to socialism and government control of health care obviously is based on political philosophy and NOT based on race!

People who had no doubt about Obama last year now do.

People who gave Obama the benefit of the doubt last year now don't.

It's not surprising that now Justice Sotomayor followed the Obama strategy: pose as well within the mainstream, use race as a sword and a shield to win and then indulge your radical views. But Abraham Lincoln was right about fooling people, and more and more Americans are no longer enthralled by "The Pied Piper President."

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.