Word: avoider
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Sotomayor is right that much of her record demonstrates her opposition to judicial policymaking. In some of her opinions as an appellate judge, she sounds like Justice Antonin Scalia in her insistence that judges should avoid policy considerations at all costs. "The duty of a judge is to follow the law, not to question its plain terms," Sotomayor wrote in a 2006 dissent. "I trust that Congress would prefer to make any needed changes itself, rather than have courts...
...some of her speeches, Sotomayor seems to acknowledge that courts sometimes play a policymaking role. But her testimony and judicial opinions suggest that judges should avoid legislating from the bench at all costs. That should mollify those who worry that she will be swayed by empathy rather than the Constitution, but it's a less-than-complete description of how judges actually behave - or perhaps what she herself believes. At this point in our polarized judicial politics, it's too bad that Senators and Supreme Court nominees can't say in public what many of them recognize in private...
Having insisted throughout the war that it was taking extraordinary care to avoid civilian casualties, Israel has rejected allegations to the contrary, suggesting they lack a basis in fact and are instead driven by agendas hostile to the Jewish State. But suggestions of bias and hostility toward Israel are a more difficult response when similar claims are made by Israeli soldiers involved in the operation. In March, a group of soldiers who had fought in Gaza told a forum at an Israeli military college of a number of instances in which Palestinian civilians had been killed as a result...
...improper use of white phosphorous; massive deliberate destruction of property; and numerous instances of civilians killed in mistakes allegedly resulting from overly permissive rules of engagement. There are no allegations of My Lai-type deliberate massacres; rather, the unnamed soldiers paint a picture of commanders so determined to avoid their own troops being harmed that they demanded that their men take an overly aggressive posture on the ground in Gaza, not hesitating to fire on any potential threat in an urban environment where, as one quoted his commander as saying, "anyone is your enemy...
...grouping is all the more important because the global financial crisis underlines how individual countries, even supremely powerful ones, cannot rely on go-it-alone approaches. "I am acutely conscious of what happens when you simply allow things to drift to unrestrained nationalism," Rudd told TIME. "[I want to] avoid long-term strategic drift, avoid the possibility of America drifting away from Asia." And, as an Australian, he believes he has the power of "a creative middle-power diplomacy [that is] friends of all, enemy of none...