Sotomayor -- Puerto Rican Nationalist ?

Now I like Puerto Rico (great weather, hotels) and Puerto Ricans, but if this stuff is true, it seems disqualifying ..... then again, we do have Hillary and Holder, those pardoners of P.R. terrorists.....

Former (?) Puerto Rican Nationalist Nominated to North American Supreme Court [Ed Whelan]

On National Journal’s new “Ninth Justice” blog, Stuart Taylor passes along history professor K. C. Johnson’s very favorable assessment of Sonia Sotomayor’s senior thesis at Princeton, as well as the “few jarring elements” that Johnson finds, including:

First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence — as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position. . . .

Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre — in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.


We've Waived the Right to Press Sotomayor on Being a Puerto Rican Separatist Who Couldn't Bring Herself to Say "United States"? [Andy McCarthy]

Besides Ed's important post below, his separate Bench Memos post is a must read. In it, he notes what is likely to become the Left's mantra on this: namely, that if Sonia Sotomayor's meanderings on Puerto Rican separatism — and her allusion to "North American Congress" and "mainland Congress" because she couldn't bring herself to utter "United States" — were such a big deal, why did Republicans fail to object when she was nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997?

This "waiver" argument is laughable. Judge Bork, of course, was defeated as a Supreme Court nominee after breezing to confirmation for the D.C. Circuit. I'd also note the following:
Justice Alito: confirmed by only 58-42 for the Supreme Court after being unanimously in 1990 for the 3rd Circuit.

Chief Justice Roberts: confirmed by 78-22 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 2003 on a voice vote.

Justice Thomas: confirmed by only 52-48 after being confirmed for the DC Circuit in 1989 on a voice vote.

The failure to raise issues in lower court confirmation hearings has never been a bar to raising them for the far more consequential seats on the Supreme Court.