Mistaken Identity
There was perhaps no more “in real time” polarizing set of U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments than the ones presented last Friday concerning multiple cases tied to Biden Administration COVID vaccination requirements. Much of the polarization came from the justices themselves, who may have set a record for the number of long questions in which they telegraphed their personal views on the topic.
A number of justices perceived as liberal came up with a surprising number of false statements about the virus and its impact; it was so bad, even the Washington Post had to “fact check” them. The worst offender super-spreading false facts appears to be Justice Sotomayor…more on that in a moment.
Liberals then tried to find false facts by justices perceived as conservative, which led to a claim that Justice Gorsuch said hundreds of thousands die each year in the U.S. due to flu. The audio seems to dispute that, but a transcript error was all some needed to make the claim…a claim that same Washington Post said was not valid because Gorsuch did not say “hundreds of thousands”.
As if all that weren’t bad enough Friday, on Saturday POLITICO–no friend to conservatives–ran a photo purporting to show a group of maskless individuals having dinner in close quarters at a fancy Washington, D.C. restaurant Friday night. In the photo, they identified Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Schumer, Senator Klobuchar…and Justice Sotomayor. The same Justice Sotomayor who participated in the court’s oral arguments that same day remotely due to concerns about COVID…apparently she had no problem dining with Democrat lawmakers.
Twitter exploded over that, even with the censoring of conservatives. And there it was, with a nice photo to prove it.
The only problem…while the photo was real, it was not Justice Sotomayor at the restaurant, but instead Majority Leader Schumer’s wife. Her back was to the camera, she apparently looked like the Supreme Court justice, and the tipster who gave it to POLITICO misidentified who was in the photo.
POLITICO quickly apologized and noted it should have checked out the tipster’s photo more closely. I’m sure there are plenty of folks today who did not hear the correction, or heard it and figure it’s a cover up and that the justice really was there.
Regardless, it shows just how eager we are to stir things up and think the worst of our governmental leaders…because too often, they live up to that belief.
