Colorado's Nativist Son

US Person must admit he once lived in the US House district of that major know-nothing, Tom Tancredo.  The experience taught him one thing: ignore everything the extremist says, especially when it concerns his pet peeve, undocumented immigration.   Tancredo is no longer a Congressman after running for the highest office in the land, but he is injecting some of his own special brand of race baiting into the Supreme Court confirmation process and getting national media coverage as a result.  Tancredo told MSNBC that Judge Sonia Sotomayer is a member of La Raza (National Council of La Raza, NCLR).  He called the liberal Hispanic civil rights organization, "a Latino KKK without the hoods and without the nooses". Tancredo may be conflating La Raza with MEChA, a radical Latino student group whose motto he cited is, "Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada".  Sotomayer has no known affiliation with that group.  But Tancredo should know a radical when he sees one.   Sonia Sotomayor made a speech at Berkeley in 2001 in which she said she would bring the experiences and sensitivities of a "Latina" to court.  A fair reading is she made a candid admission that all judges, from the municipal court to the Supreme Court, being human have their legal reasoning shaped by their life experiences.  See Plessy v. Ferguson.  The right wing has gone ape over the statement, claiming it reveals her willingness to ignore the law and engage in social engineering while on the bench. Character assassination is their metier, but Repugnants should realize that vile attacks like Tancredo's on a qualified jurist will further reduce the appeal of their party's politics for most Americans.