I am not sure to even pay attention any more. The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has brought out the incomprehensible yet again. As I have stated in previous blogs, we need more then one party to have serious debates about issues. But as events unfold in our political landscape it becomes clearer that the other major party has no interest in providing intelligent discussions. Outside of the political sphere on this issue are the usual blowhards, Limbaugh  ("Look, bigotry is bigotry.  Racism is racism.  Superiority is superiority.  Contempt for people beneath you is contempt for people beneath you.  Thinking you're better than everybody else is thinking you're better than everybody else.  This woman has all of this.  There's not a whole lot of humility here". Has he listened to his own show. Full transcript)  Glen Beck ("Hey, Hispanic chick lady! You're empathetic ... you're in!") to name but two. Now comes another group throwing their hat in the ring. The head of the so called Center for Immigration Studies comes  out with this beauty, "Most e-mailers were with me on the post on the pronunciation of Judge Sotomayor's name (and a couple griped about the whole Latina/Latino thing - English dropped gender in nouns, what, 1,000 years ago?). But a couple said we should just pronounce it the way the bearer of the name prefers, including one who pronounces her name "freed" even though it's spelled "fried," like fried rice. (I think Cathy Seipp of blessed memory did the reverse - "sipe" instead of "seep.") Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to.

That's Rich coming from Mark Krikorian. As a tangent here, the CIS is "... animated by a pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision which seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted."

Funny how the staff (or their progenitors) of this Center would probably have trouble entering this country as per their own mission statement.

Center Staff

Mark Krikorian, Executive Director
Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research
Cynthia Owens, Director of Administration
John Wahala, Assistant Director
Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies
Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Policy
Stephen Steinlight, Senior Policy Analyst
Jerry Kammer, Senior Research Fellow
Jon Feere, Legal Policy Analyst
Thomas P. Redding, Research Associate
Bryan Griffith, Communications Associate
Karen Jensenius, Demographer
Alex Coleman, News Editor
Tomika Herrien, Project Assistant
Patrick McHugh, Publications

Center Fellows

Don Barnett
Michael Cutler
Marti Dinerstein
John Miano
Stanley Renshon
David North
Jan Ting