Commentary: Meeting quotas on the Supreme Court

As I understand it, retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter should be replaced by a liberal Hispanic woman who possesses "humility" and "life experience." Let's see, how about Mother Teresa? Oh wait, she's not Hispanic.

Of course I'm joking to make a point (yes, I know Mother Teresa is deceased), but I'm tired of all of the gratuitous advice President Obama is receiving about who should replace Justice Souter. It looks like a quota system to me, and I'm opposed to quotas whenever and wherever I see them. As the late, great Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, people should be judged on the content of their character rather than on the color of their skin (or other extraneous factors, like ethnicity).

The neo-conservative Weekly Standard identified a prospective candidate who meets the criteria: Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is the "betting favorite."

"Many conservatives will want Republicans to stand on principle and to make the constitutionalist case against Obama's judicial activist nominee," the Standard continued. "It could be a demoralizing few months for conservatives, as the (John) Roberts and (Samuel) Alito confirmations were for the left." Well, in politics turnabout is fair play, so conservatives are just going to have to live with the president's liberal, activist appointee.

At the same time the Standard noted that "ACLU-like court decisions and left-wing Justice Department briefs and actions, in areas ranging from national security to social issues (i.e. abortion), will remind lots of Americans about aspects of liberalism they, quite correctly, dislike."

Personally, I'd like the president to appoint someone who reveres the U.S. Constitution as the basic Law of the Land, and I don't care what that person looks like, or what his or her ethnicity is.

There are competent jurists across the ethnic and racial spectrum; not all white males are dunces and not all minorities possess brilliant legal minds (think ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales).

Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, an African-American, has downplayed the War on Terror and suggested legal "rights" for enemy combatants. No thanks! Let's stick to the law on those issues and at the Supreme Court.

- Retired diplomat Guy W. Farmer, of Carson City, is a part-time courtroom interpreter.