MY FORMER PROF TAKES A MEAN SHOT AT JUDGE SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Republican comments about Judge Sonia Sotomayor are amazing and without basis, as when Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh call Sotomayor a "racist."

But equally disturbing and unexpected were the comments of former federal district judge and now University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell who said on The NewsHour that Sotomayor lacks the intellectual capacity or ability to make a mark on Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Judge Cassell taught criminal procedure when I attended law school at the U. back in the year 2000, and he always was very careful to avoid his own personal political views in class.

So when he said without any basis that Sotomayor was in effect an intellectual lightweight, it was shocking. Especially because Sonia Sotamayor attended Princeton for her undergraduate degree and graduated Summa Cum Laude. Then she went on to Yale Law School. If a person is the top of her class at Princeton, she certainly has shown that she is an intellectual heavyweight.

Cassell's negative opinion offered without any evidence shows that he too as a white male would rather engage in casting political aspersions than in accepting another's appointment to the highest court, especially when that other happens to be a female Latina from Puerto Rico. I would have wished that Cassell would have magnanimously wished Sotomayor the best and, furthermore, I would have like Cassell to say what a great Justice she will make on the U.S. Supreme Court.

REPUBLICANS MOCK OBAMA FOR NOT BOMBING NORTH KOREA

Are all Republicans as mean as they sound? Are they all war mongers? Sometimes it appears that way. Consider the response of Newt Gingrich to Pres. Barack Obama's call for nuclear disarmament - he says it is naive and is making America "less safe," repeating a Cheney line. And John Bolton and Richard Perle also weigh in, criticizing Obama. But remember who these guys are - two of the biggest proponents of attacking Iran and bombing North Korea. Imagine the world with Gingrich, Bolton and Perle in charge.

Politico writers Jonathan Martin and David S. Cloud report on Republican reaction to Obama's proposals:

"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he would have attempted to knock out the missile. And Richard Perle, a former Reagan official who was a leading proponent of the Iraq war, mocked Obama for recently trumpeting the prospect for renewing an arms agreement with Russia, saying the president was practicing diplomacy that is utterly irrelevant.

"“Can anyone imagine a Russian nuclear attack on the United States?” said Perle, who said Obama should worry instead about terrorists getting a mass-destruction weapon, possibly with the aid of Iran.

"“Especially in light of the North Korean launch, I thought his speech was otherworldly," said John Bolton, the conservative former Ambassador to the United Nations under President Bush. "What is he saying about the real, concrete threat from proliferant states like North Korea and Iran? We'll take you to the Security Council. Say, there's a threat! That has had no practical impact on either Pyongyang or Tehran before and will not in the future.""

NEWT GINGRICH AND LATINOS SPEAKING SPANISH

We all know there are Americans who are against Latinos speaking Spanish in the U.S. As a boy growing up in Brooklyn, I remember the same prejudice against people speaking Italian or "Puerto Rican." But it is the mark of the uneducated to put down someone for speaking a foreign language in public.

Now we have Newt Gingrich (in an article by Kasie Hunt of the AP as reported in the WashPo) speaking to a group of cheering Republican Women saying that there should not be bi-lingual education in the schools, and that, furthermore, the government should not print voter information in languages other than English.

Hey, I thought we wanted our kids to be educated and be bi-lingual? That's why we send them to schools that teach French, German, Spanish, et al. That's why we require them to have two or more years of a foreign language in high school. But in the world according to Gingrich and a lot of his cheering anti-Latino supporters, the school language requirement is bull, just meant for show. Education and bi-lingualism count for nothing in the "real" world outside of academia.

I congratulate the hundreds of thousands of Latinos who actually are bi-lingual, who want their kids to learn English, but who value Spanish as an equally great and important language. Too bad that so many Americans speak only English.