Did Buchanan do as well as Sotomayor in college?
July 17, 2009 12:28 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
Watching Pat Buchanan's not-so-slow descent into Sotomayor madness has been a depressing spectacle to watch, and an embarrassing one for MSNBC to sponsor.
Witness his attack last night on The Rachel Maddow Show, in which he claimed he graduated from Georgetown University "as high as [Sotomayor] did" at Princeton, and added, "I'm not qualified for the United States Supreme Court. And neither is she."
But in his 1990 book, Right from the Beginning, Buchanan wrote that after being arrested and expelled for assaulting police officers and subsequently allowed to return after his father, "by personal pleading, had the expulsion reduced," "I was graduated cum laude" [original emphasis] from Georgetown in 1961.
Sotomayor graduated in 1976 summa cum laude from Princeton.
This coming from a guy who, no doubt, thinks Antonin Scalia is brilliant.
Madness is often mistaken for brilliance.
-David St. Hubbins,
Spinal Tap
On further examination, Scalia was with the majority in that case, so maybe it doesn't demonstrate his brilliance or lack thereof.
The majority opinion found that executing an innocent person was not necessarily unconstitutional. I'm sure they arrived at that odd conclusion through the fog of their precious "strict constructionist" interpretation.
Sandra Day O'Connor voted with the majority, but disagreed with their conclusion that you could Constitutionally execute an innocent person. She just wasn't convinced that the plaintiff had cast enough doubt on his conviction.
One thing this case demonstrates is that the Constitution is open to interpretation on many issues, and the Republican notion of a "strict constructionist" approach is pure fantasy.
Tell me again how this is a Christian nation founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs but our founding document on which our system of laws is based could allow this?
Imaqine Pat's shrieking if Sotomayor had been the one to assault the police officers?