Laura Ingraham, last heard claiming that the English language is "in decline" due to Mexican "jingoism," implied on her radio show on Tuesday that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, cared more about her "immigrant family background" than the Constitution.
What so incensed Ingraham was Sotomayor's remark on Monday, while speaking to a group of Yale Law students, that she was the first Supreme Court justice to use the term "undocumented immigrant" rather than "illegal alien." Sotomayor explained her move by saying that calling undocumented immigrants "illegal aliens" struck her as "insulting."
"Her duty is to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and that's what she says?" Ingraham railed. "Why do we have a Supreme Court justice whose allegiance obviously goes to her immigrant family background and not to the U.S. Constitution?" she continued. "So we have no rule of law. We are going to pick and choose who has to follow the law in the United States."
"So why is Dinesh D'Souza, then, being targeted? Why is he being targeted? Why does that law apply?" Ingraham continued to rant.
Worth noting: As Media Matters' Ellie Sandmeyer rightly points out, not only is Sotomayor, as a Puerto Rican American, a U.S. citizen, but her so-called immigrant parents are, too. In Ingraham's defense, she could hardly be expected to know that; the law granting Puerto Ricans American citizenship was only passed in...1917.
You can listen to Ingraham's attack below, via Media Matters:
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