01/26/2022
John Derbyshire recently commented on ignorance on the Supreme Court, naming two instances, or as he put it, one and half:
The half was Justice Stephen Breyer claiming that there were, actual quote, "750 million new cases yesterday," end quote. The population of the U.S.A. last Thursday was in fact 332 million and change, according to the Bureau of the Census' population clock.
Well, look: Obviously Justice Breyer meant to say "750 thousand." That "million" was a slip of the tongue, of the kind that we all make, although people as old as Justice Breyer — he’s 83 — make a lot more of them than the average. That’s why I've only given him half a demerit.
I might have given him a totally free pass except that Justice Breyer also claimed, when working the numbers, that vaccines and masks would prevent a hundred percent of coronavirus infections. Not even the most fanatical proponents of masks and vaccines claim that. That is just ignorance.
The real depths of dumbassery, however, were plumbed by Justice Sotomayor.
Stephen Breyer, 83, has just announced his retirement — Sotomayor, only 67 will be around for years. Breyer’s been on the Court since Bill Clinton’s first term, and is presumably resigning to let Biden appoint another "liberal" Justice before either 2022 (a possible GOP Senate) or 2024 — a Republican "coup," which I think is what the Left will call any Republican being elected.
Unlike the late Justice Ginsburg and the now-retired Justice Souter, he was not robbed or beaten on the Washington, D.C. street by young men of no particular color; he was, in 2012, robbed at machete-point on the Caribbean island of Nevis, which is part of the West Indian nation state of St. Kitts and Nevis, population 50,314, also by men of no particular color [Justice Breyer robbed by machete-wielding intruder at West Indies vacation home,Fox News, February 13, 2012]. By "no particular color" I mean that’s what was reported in the papers — if any of these people had been white, the press would have said so.
In spite of this, all these judges produced reliably pro-criminal and pro-black jurisprudence. If a conservative Supreme was a victim of black crime, the Left would try to get him to recuse himself on crime cases.
In a column written before the election, Pat Buchanan wrote that
The last white man appointed to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president was Stephen Breyer back in 1994. At 82, he is now the oldest justice serving.
The days of white liberals dominating the rising party of America’s people of color may be over this decade.
In that same column, he noted that Candidate Biden had already promised, any time he got a vacancy, to nominate a black woman:
"As everyone knows, I made it clear that my first choice for the Supreme Court will make history as the first African American woman justice" [Joe Biden’s Supreme Court shortlist: White people need not apply, by Brad Polumbu, Washington Examiner, September 21, 2020].
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