The mask, such as it was, is dropped

Ed Whelan reports [note: Wendy Long, actually] that Sonia Sotomayor’s first vote as a Supreme Court Justice was to stay the execution of an unquestionably guilty hitman. According to Ed, even Ohio’s liberal Democratic governor wanted the execution to go forward, and it did. Is this the “tough-on-crime” former prosecutor we kept reading about during the confirmation process?
Ed also reports that New Haven mayor John DeStefano Jr. was among the guests invited by the White House to attend last week’s party celebrating Justice Sotomayor’s appointment to the Court. DeStefano was the named defendant in Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven firefighters case. He is also, as Ed notes (citing Justice Alito’s concurring opinion in that case), “the driving force–in collusion with a local racebaiter who is his longtime ally–behind the racial discrimination against the firefighters.”
Sotomayor’s efforts to ratify DeStefano’s racial discrimination, and to keep the matter under the radar screen, were unsuccessful. But at least DeStefano got to go to a White House party.
CORRECTION: The first of the two pieces I linked to, regarding Sotomoyor’s position in the death penalty case, was written by Wendy Long.