Patricia Guadalupe Columnist

Everything seems to indicate that federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, of New York, will be the first Hispanic person in the court of major importance in the country when it begins the new meeting. The vote on his assertion was going to carry out this week, but the republicans in the Judicial Committee of the Senate continued with his show and asked to postpone it up to the next week, supposedly to see more thoroughly his record. They know that they do not have the votes to block his assertion but some of they have to suit with the residents in his particular districts and turn like legislators who him were not going to give the go-ahead to any nomination of the president without first fighting.

Part of the show was to speak like moral authorities and to question the speeches and Sotomayor comments, because it was the only way of criticizing since his judicial decisions were not proving to be anything controversial at all that it was possible to see as out of following the foot of the letter of the law. Some of the coreligionists of these legislators have been in escandalitos like adulteries and they to pay to his lover so that it is kept silent, but they do not criticize those. They say that there are matters for the sinner and his god. They prefer to examine under the magnifying glass any comment of the Latin judge, although nothing of what she has said has played a role in his decisions. The hypocrisy level is impressive.

But in spite of the show, simple and simply the judge has the votes. The committee will vote for the next week and then it will take to the plenary meeting of the Senate for a vote before the congressional recess. The republicans have said that out of this delay, they will not prevent a vote from being carried out. There is going to be no type of blockade, they say. What noblemen!

Meanwhile, the Committee of Interior Safety and Governmental Matters is considering THAT several changes GO to the called REAL law, that it tries to present a few federal norms as for the use of personal identity. The immigrants know this law as the one that denies a driver's license to them on not having been that they are in the country legally, as if having thousands of persons driving without license is not a risk to the safety. Any person who believes that those who will not be able to obtain a license will not obtain the falsified one or will stop driving is an ingenuous one. The federal government has postponed the deadline so that the states continue the REAL law GO, but several localities are against of the same one, saying that so much information – like fingerprints, photo, and date of birth, between others – it would create the whole market of theft of identity.

The solution of the federal Congress is to offer a minimal change – non-including the number of Social Insurance – in the licenses, but several states are not sure. The new deadline is next December, and we will see what happens. A little that is not waited change it is the requisite of citizenship or legal residence to obtain a driver's license, because seemingly it is a risk to the national safety to have an undocumented person with license and watching the laws of the good driver. It seems to be preferable that they run the risk of killing to tutiplén driving without license and without knowing what beams they do.