“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Hussein Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, made the above comment in 2001 and backtracked as if she can put those words back into her mouth. She also said she would use “empathy” in her judicial decision making as she has in the past.

Yet another judicial nominee seeks to impose the “empathy” standard on the courts. He thinks judges should base rulings on a plaintiff’s status, legislate from the bench and amend the Constitution.

Indiana federal judge David Hamilton stands poised to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to assume a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals serving Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. He’s a former fundraiser for Acorn and a former leader of the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

He is also another in a series of activist judges who believe the U.S. Constitution is not etched in stone but made of clay, ready to be molded into anything they want. He shares the beliefs of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Edward Chen, nominee for the Northern District of California, that laws can be made from the bench and that empathy, not original intent, should be a judge’s guide.

“Part of our job here as judges is to write a series of footnotes to the Constitution,” Hamilton says. “We all do that every year in cases large and small.”

And that’s precisely the problem. The law should be applied equally and evenly irrespective of who the plaintiffs or defendants might be. Otherwise, equal protection under the law goes out the window.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hamilton said that “empathy” was “important” in fulfilling a judge’s role.

“Empathy is the ability to understand the world from another person’s point of view,” he said.

But the only “point of view” a federal judge needs to understand is that of the Founding Fathers and the US Constitution!

According to Hamilton,

“A judge needs to empathize with all parties in the case — plaintiff and defendant, crime victim and accused defendant — so that the judge can better understand how the parties came to be before the court and how legal rules affect those parties and others in similar situations.”

And here we thought justice should be blind and not wear its heart on its judicial robes.

Hamilton, who was nominated to the district court bench by President Clinton even though he had no judicial experience and was rated as “not qualified” by the ABA, has a history of overturned rulings and admonishments by colleagues and superiors about exceeding his authority.

After Hamilton blocked the enforcement of Indiana’s informed consent abortion law, the Seventh Circuit disagreed, saying:

“No court anywhere in the country … has held any similar law invalid in the years since (the Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood vs.) Casey. Indiana is entitled to put the law into effect and have that law judged by its own consequences.”

Judge Hamilton and Barack Hussein Obama – blind justice, indeed!