In a very famous speech several years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that he had a dream — a dream in which his little children would one day be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And the United States has begun to move toward the fulfillment of that dream.

But now there is the nomination by President Barack Obama of a woman who embraces and tries to exalt the making of important legal decisions on the basis of race and skin color. Sonia Sotomayor has made decisions that favored particular groups, not on the basis of their character and qualifications, but based on the ethnic group to which they belong.

She states plainly that she believes in quotas. She even belongs to the Hispanic organization La Raza (translated from the Spanish — “The Race”). Not so long ago, members of La Raza were gathering in large numbers in some of the nation’s major cities to wave Mexican flags in noisy demonstrations. (Perfectly legal, but hardly patriotic demonstrations of love of the United States.)

As a “quota queen,” to use Pat Buchanan’s phrase, Sotomayor should be rejected for a seat on the Supreme Court. The occupants of that court should be blind to factors such as race and skin color. Their task is to determine whether or not a particular law agrees with the United States Constitution.

Harvey Lord, South Paris


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