J.J. Jackson asked:

Liberals are gushing over, and President Obama is praising endlessly, Sonia Sotomayor. Repeatedly we are being barraged by the left with the personal story of one who could possibly be the first Hispanic woman on the Supreme Court. While such tales are always compelling, what is rather annoying is how any time you want to move beyond that superficial and sugary coating to examine her record the left quickly jumps right back to it. In an attempt to keep your attention away from a debate about who should be sitting on the highest court in the nation, people who do not want to examine anything of substance shout, “Look! Up In the sky!” Then they regale you with tales about how Sotomayor can stop a speeding bullet and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

President Obama claims that Sotomayor is smart. He even claims that she believes in the Constitution. But when one stops following his pointed finger into the sky where his nominee supposedly soars, we see that there is a plethora of evidence on the ground that contradicts the rhetoric. And for Sotomayor, that evidence littering the ground is damning and destroys any credibility those that call her smart and a defender of the Constitution may have.

There is one case in particular that sums this point up so succinctly and makes it impossible to ignore that Sonia Sotomayor is neither smart nor a believer in our Constitution. That case is Maloney vs. Cuomo in which Sotomayor signed onto an opinion that flies so far in the face of the facts that she should not be elected bubblegum sidewalk scraper much less nominated to the Supreme Court.

The case involved one James Maloney who was trying to assert his second amendment right to keep and bear arms but had been arrested for carrying a pair of nunchucks. The opinion with which Sotomayor agreed stated that the arrest was warranted because, now get this, the second amendment, “is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government and not upon that of the state.”

Sotomayor did in this decision what liberals always do. She looked for something that she might be able to use to support her opinion and disregarded anything that actually contradicted it. Things like, oh I don’t know, say the 14th Amendment? You know that one don’t you? It says that, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” which makes it clear that the states must, absolutely must, protect the same rights as the Constitution itself protects.

Sotomayor’s opinion does lead to some interesting potential conundrums however. If the second amendment only applies to the federal government as she suggests then what about other rights retained by the people and specifically called out in our Constitution?

Can the states now infringe upon my freedom of religion? How about my freedom of speech? What about my right to petition from redress? After all, unlike the second amendment, the first amendment specifically states that it is Congress that shall make no law regarding such.

Can the states now decide that they do not need a warrant to search my home even though the Constitution forbids such actions? Or can the states now decide to deprive me of a right to due process and a right to jury trial? What about these Constitutional protections written in a similar manner to the second amendment that Sonia Sotomayor believes stops at federal authority only?

Can I now be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment at the whim of the state? Can blacks now be placed back in shackles and shipped off to the plantations again simply for being black? After all, if what is written in the federal constitution only applies to the federal government what is to stop the states from doing any of these things?

Is my right to assemble in jeopardy now because my state legislature might decide that such is not a good idea? Can the state now quarter soldiers in my home without my permission? Can my papers and effects now be seized on the whim of the state alone?

Where does the lunacy of this opinion which Sotomayor agreed with end?

Of course the 14th Amendment renders all of these questions of mine moot. But Sotomayor either never read far enough into the Constitution to find it or is so wedded to ideology that she chose to ignore it. Can we afford to place someone who is obviously a wifty illiterate or dangerous ignoramus at best and a treacherous anti-American radical at worst to a court where such opinions of hers would become the norm and perhaps even the law? Will Americans stop looking to the sky for a super woman that does not exist long enough to ask serious questions and soundly reject her?

Amelie Mag asked:


What is the single lender rule and why is there so much talk about it in the press nowadays? Is the US congress a single lender congress or is it concerned with the best interests of the disadvantaged students, as it claims to be? The following single lender update will try to settle some of these questions and place the debate on the single lender rule in the larger context of its impact on the financial well-being of American students and also in the even larger framework of the direction of American education. Will it become more people-oriented or more-business oriented?

First of all, what does the single lender rule mean? When we talk about student loans and student loan consolidation, the single lender rule immediately comes to mind as a limitation placed on the benefits that the students and their families can derive from consolidation. Under the single lender rule, the students do not have the freedom to choose among different schemes of loan consolidation provided by different financial agents. With the single lender rule in effect, the students can only consolidate if they have contracted all their loans from the same company or governmental agency. The existence of the single lender rule actually affects the decisions about which companies to contact college loans from in the first place. If a student has contracted a loan with “X” for example, knowing that the single lender rule is in place will make him or her contract any additional loans from the same company, so as to keep open the option of loan consolidation.

In fact, this scenario is quite common because a young college student is very likely to take up their first college loan from a large corporation. These companies control the market for student loans, they invest considerably in advertising their financial packages and they keep close ties to the colleges where they often make presentations of their offers. A young college student does not usually have the capacity to understand all the implications of contracting a first loan with a specific company. He or she may not even be aware of the existence of the single lender rule in the first place. Or, even if he is aware of it, he will not be able to understand all the implications of the single lender rule. Moreover, the student is likely to get most of his information on student loans precisely from the presentations organized by a large company. Thus, while the student will be told about the existence of the single lender rule, he will probably not be explained all its implications.

Single lender updates, such as this, are meant to bring to the fore both sides of the debate on the single lender rule. In this single lender update, we also raise the question of whether the US congress proved to be a single lender congress, as it was expected, given the domination of the Republicans and of the strong lobby coming from the financial corporations which have business in education. A single lender congress would not have changed the original text of the bill on the issue of the single lender rule. The original text of the bill would have left this rule in place, but the congress accepted an amendment proposed by a Democrat which argues for the cancellation of the rule. It was not only that the Democrats fought so hard for the cancellation of the rule that they won over the Republicans in the congressional debate. This would not have been possible in the first place, given that the distribution of the seats in both houses favors the Republicans. It is just that both parties managed to agree the cancellation of the single lender rule is unavoidable.

While the US congress cannot be called a single lender congress, it is the conclusion of this single lender update that the congress can be considered to be sensitive to the interests of the corporations. On the one hand, while the cancellation of the rule does affect the interests of the big financial institutions, on many other aspects of the bill (such as flexibility of interest rates or charges for contracting a student loan), the corporations have made important gains. In addition, regarding the cancellation of the single lender rule, the congress decided that it will come into effect only after a specific grace period. In this period, the companies can give a big last push to sell as many consolidation packages as possible. This final push is likely to be extremely profitable as students are being encouraged to consolidate from all sides now, given the low interest rates for student loans.