Sotomayor the opening step in a Latina Woman majority

The right wing press seems to be in a great huff over Sotomayor's comments about the positive impact of a wise Latina woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. Let me make her defense for her, although she'll probably work this out in time for her testimony before the Senate. She was noting that one wise Latina woman on a bench with a bunch of old white guys might bring a perspective not otherwise available.

If there were already eight such and she was saying that only another wise Latina woman would work, I think we would have reason to criticize her. But that is not the case now and the likelihood that it will ever be a concern is minimal.

What we should be concerned about is that this will make six Catholics out of nine. Salon seems quite complacent, noting that we have had a majority of white Protestant men almost all the time since the founding of the Republic. Perfectly OK, except that I might note that until recently law schools graduated virtually no women so it would have been remarkable to have seen any on the Supreme Court, and that the country has always had a Protestant majority. Hardly surprising that this group formed a constant majority.

Frankly, I think the group most unrepresented is the unchurched. There are nine justices and, going by strict proportionality, you'd expect one of the justices to coincide with the number who publicly deny any religious affiliation. If you went further and accounted for the number who in practice have none, you'd expect a far larger number.

But it's impossible to get to the top of the judiciary, any more than to get elected to high office in this country, unless you publicly profess your faith. Any faith, it seems, is better than none, even though this is logically contradictory for those who seriously believe in the infallibility of their own inspiration.

Someday, a candidate for something important will state, when queried about his faith, "None. It's all rot and poppycock." But I'm not holding my breath.

One final point. English has no inflections for gender. If we're going to go beyond English, should we be saying "Latinas women?" Do we say "francaises women?" What do we do with languages we can't transcribe?

I don't mind importing words, but when they come ashore they should follow the rules. Latino is an English noun/adjective for people, primarily from this hemisphere, who speak or whose ancestors spoke, Spanish. It's the only word we need.

What now in Sri Lanka

It has been announced that Vellipulai Prabhakaran is dead. The LTTE is finished as a semi-conventional military force.

In 1864, Lincoln ordered Sherman to march through Georgia to the sea. In 1865, after victory of the Confederacy, he aimed for reconciliation although he didn't live to achieve it.

In 2005, Mahinda Rajapaksa became leader of Sri Lanka with a hard-line view towards the LTTE. Now in 2009, he has succeeded in his own march to the sea. Will he take this opportunity to look on his devastated and divided country as Lincoln did in 1865? We can hope, but history has provided us with very few Lincolns.

The Error of Peak Oil

There is a lot of worry that the world has reached its maximum petroleum production level and will now, or soon, begin to reduce the annual production. Given the assumed increase in world demand, led by China and India, this produces an alarming scenario.

First, of course, if production drops, prices will rise, and demand will fall. As prices rise, production sources that were previously uneconomical are brought online, although not immediately. To a considerable extent, this is a self-liquidating problem.

But more than that, there would be no tight supply situation except that Americans have been allowed to buy more than half their requirements on credit from foreigners. We have just about maxxed out that credit card. It's been a great run for people like the Chinese, as they have used America's feckless disregard for its own interests to excise most of our manufacturing capacity, but pretty soon, they're going to realize that they are taking worthless paper in exchange. The United States and Zimbabwe have more in common than we like to admit.

For years, we lived high by liquidating our capital. The capital is gone and we owe foreigners much more than they owe us. We are now living on their forbearance. With the federal deficit now above 10% of GDP, the myth that the federal government takes its debt obligations seriously isn't going to wash. When that bubble bursts, the greenback is heading sharply south and Americans will be paying record oil prices even if the rest of the world isn't. When Americans only consume the oil they can pay for, there won't be a peak oil problem.